#ThinkfullyHabits — #ThinkfullyHabits

What happens if you are faced with a problem where you can't define the objectives in advance and there’s no apparent ‘right’ answer? What if there’s not enough known about the goals or that things feel too tangled and complex to work out?

There are some problems which can’t be solved very well through using the usual route of identifying the objectives, defining the desirable outcomes and working through a series of scheduled tasks to get there. The Psychologist Gary Klein recognised these as ‘wicked problems’ that need managing in a different way*. It’s these problems where experiments may be the only way to find the route forward.

Depth ThinkingThinkfullyJune 9, 2020Problem solving, Experiment

#ThinkfullyHabit: Think ahead

Do you find yourself in more and more situations where it is nearly impossible to accurately predict or forecast the future? If so, and you find yourself either freezing and unable to respond due to the uncertainty, or leaping forward blindly, then it might serve you well to switch your focus towards speculating what possible outcomes may happen next.

How you think ahead turns out to be quite crucial. A helpful way is to actively anticipate for future outcomes and prepare for potential problems and opportunities. This is different from predicting or forecasting the future, and certainly distinct from guessing what might come next. So, what makes it different? It's when we proactively tune in to emerging patterns, recognise threats or promising signs, extrapolate trends and run through potential consequences - essentially, it’s about being able to imagine a range of possible futures and go on a mental time travel through them all.

Depth ThinkingThinkfullyMay 22, 2020Mindsets

#ThinkfullyHabit: Jump from conclusions

We have a tendency to jump to conclusions and to stop exploring the facts and information earlier than we should. We like answers to questions; and as efficiently as possible. It’s even truer in times of greatest uncertainty, so in the current climate this is something we need to be evermore aware of. Jumping to conclusions too soon can mean leaping to premature answers based on what seem to be reasonable (but often incorrect) assumptions, all because we want to resolve uncertainty.

Depth ThinkingThinkfullyMay 22, 2020Bias

#ThinkfullyHabit: Speak up

Have you ever stopped yourself putting forward a view or an idea, assuming that someone else has already thought of it? Or felt that an idea was too obvious and didn't need saying because you’d expect everyone else to be thinking the same thing?

It turns out that we can be poor at judging how valuable our ideas are and not very good at evaluating how unique our ideas may actually be.

Depth ThinkingThinkfullyApril 16, 2020Bias

#ThinkfullyHabit: Draw your own conclusions

Drawing can help reveal patterns more clearly, explore ideas more fully and imagine alternative outcomes more easily. We are not talking about being an artist or drawing a piece of artwork, we are talking about visualising what we are trying to make sense of – whether through diagrams, sketches, flow charts or visual representations. It’s not about aesthetics or creating an outcome in its own right, it’s about tapping into visuals as an alternative to language.

Depth ThinkingThinkfullyJanuary 16, 2020Ways of working

#ThinkfullyHabit: See Red

How often do we think we’ve understood the whole picture, only to find out our perspective has been one-sided and we’ve missed something? Red Teaming came about during the Cold War as a way of looking from the enemy's perspective. It was used to get people to put themselves in the position of the enemy in order to think through the less obvious and unanticipated scenarios that could then be planned for.

Depth ThinkingThinkfullyDecember 6, 2019Teams

#ThinkfullyHabit: Ditch the cookie cutter

When faced with lots of information or data, it may seem most efficient to categorise into groups and filter out the anomalies, but it can be incredibly insightful to focus on what doesn’t fit.

What’s the odd one out? What isn’t behaving as you’d expect?

Depth ThinkingThinkfullyOctober 9, 2019Bias

#ThinkfullyHabit: Become a sceptic

The term sceptic is derived from the Greek skeptikos, meaning “to inquire” or “look around”. Being sceptical is very different from being cynical. If being cynical is about distrusting information, particularly when it challenges existing beliefs or holding views that cannot easily be changed by contrary evidence, then being sceptical is about looking for additional evidence before accepting someone’s claims as true.

Depth ThinkingThinkfullyOctober 9, 2019Mindsets