Thinking about Thinking
Decision making of top managers and the successful.
This will help you to:
Understand limitation in our thinking process
Systematically and quickly solve problems
Overcoming biases in thinking
See the world from a different perspective
Be more successful in life
INTRODUCTION
Did you know that our brains have limited thinking capacity, therefore the mind cannot cope directly with the complexity of the world. Rather, it constructs a simplified model of reality and then works with this.
Our brains are generally weak.
This is why it is easy to multiply 2 x 4 in the head than 222 x 444 and also why a person can not compare good and bad decisions before acting because our minds are not designed to solve complex tasks without external aids like paperwork or computers.
Yet many people try their best to use their plain heads to solve complex life problems thinking they are smart enough to do so.
Why do we make bad decisions?
Let us use a simple life example: The last time you had to buy something important, where you able to come up with the pros and cons of the product before you bought? Or the last course you studied, did you compare the pros and cons of studying it before you started?
But I know you did one thing common thing: for the things you accepted you only considered its pros and the things you rejected you considered only the cons.
The reason is simple our brains can not process two tasks at the same time, so we choose the one that sounds nice or my friend talked about, buy things my friend bought, that which is beautifully advertised your favorite TV commercial, to prevent our selves from the complex task of thinking for ourselves.
Normally we think within the confines of our understanding of things instead of reality, but this is not always well adapted to the requirements of success in the real world.
FOR SIMPLICITY WE CREATE OUR OWN VERSION OF REALITY
We hate to think.
We base on the information we get through our senses/advert/friends/newspapers/radio/etc, but this input is mediated by a mental processes that determine which information is attended to, how it is organized, and the meaning attributed to it.
Example: if you read a newspaper or listen to a radio station, though a lot is written down or talked about, the brain only picks up what you want e.g. sports, lifestyle, health, , music, business, etc. Don’t you think this has an impact on your life?
Our past can build or crash us.
What we perceive, how readily we perceive it, and how we process this information after receiving it is strongly influenced by past experience, education, cultural values, role requirements, and organizational norms, as well as by the specifics of the information received.
Generally we see the world through a lens or screen that channels and focuses, thereby may distorts the images (reality) that are seen. These lenses are known by many terms—mental models, mind-sets, biases, or analytical assumptions.
A generation ago, few managers/people were self-conscious and introspective about the process by which they did analysis. The accepted wisdom was the “common sense” theory of knowledge—that to perceive events accurately it was necessary only to open one’s eyes, look at the facts, and purge oneself of all preconceptions and prejudices in order to make an objective judgment. BUT……..
This thing called mind sets.
Mind-sets and mental models are inescapable. They are, in essence, a distillation of all that we think we know about a subject. The problem is these mindsets are hard to change. That’s why we need to ensure that the mind remains open to alternative interpretations in a rapidly changing world.
Why the most experienced fail?
The disadvantage of a mind-set is that it can color and control our perception to the extent that a person with most experience may be among the last to see what is really happening when events take a new and unexpected turn.
The problem is when faced with a major paradigm shift, managers/people who know the most about a subject have the most to unlearn.
One advantage of mind-sets is that they help managers/people to get the work done on time and keep things going effectively between those events that we call accomplishments.
The biases and weakness discussed result from how our minds work. Today, there is greatly an increased understanding that managers/people do not approach their tasks with empty minds. They start with a set of assumptions about how events normally transpire in the area for which they are responsible.
If managers/peoples’ understanding of events is greatly influenced by the mind-sets or mental models or assumptions through which we perceive those events, there is need to understand the impact of different mental models on management/work performance.
THINKING IS A MENTAL PROCESS/ THINKING ANALYTICALLY
The diverse problems that impede accurate thinking, are those inherent in human mental processes and are surely among the most important and most difficult to deal with.
Thinking is a process?
Thinking is fundamentally a mental process, but understanding this process is hindered by the lack of conscious awareness of the workings of our own minds. We have no conscious experience of most of what happens in our own mind.
Thinking as a skill.
Thinking analytically is a skill like carpentry or driving a car. It can be taught, it can be learned, and it can improve with practice. But like many other skills, such as riding a bike, it is not learned by sitting in a classroom and being told how to do it.
Some of the best managers/people developed their skills as a consequence of experiencing management failure early in their careers. Failure motivated them to be more self-conscious about how they do their work and this sharpened their thinking process.
Most people achieve at least a minimally acceptable level of managerial/work performance with little conscious effort beyond completing their education. With much effort and hard work, however, Managers/people can achieve a level of excellence beyond what comes naturally through coaching.
Regular running enhances endurance but does not improve technique without expert guidance. Similarly, expert guidance may be required to modify long-established work habits to achieve an optimal level of analytical excellence. An analytical coaching staff can help managers/people hone their analytical tradecraft would be a valuable supplement to classroom instruction.
Decision making of top managers and the successful.
This will help you to:
Understand limitation in our thinking process
Systematically and quickly solve problems
Overcoming biases in thinking
See the world from a different perspective
Be more successful in life
INTRODUCTION
Did you know that our brains have limited thinking capacity, therefore the mind cannot cope directly with the complexity of the world. Rather, it constructs a simplified model of reality and then works with this.
Our brains are generally weak.
This is why it is easy to multiply 2 x 4 in the head than 222 x 444 and also why a person can not compare good and bad decisions before acting because our minds are not designed to solve complex tasks without external aids like paperwork or computers.
Yet many people try their best to use their plain heads to solve complex life problems thinking they are smart enough to do so.
Why do we make bad decisions?
Let us use a simple life example: The last time you had to buy something important, where you able to come up with the pros and cons of the product before you bought? Or the last course you studied, did you compare the pros and cons of studying it before you started?
But I know you did one thing common thing: for the things you accepted you only considered its pros and the things you rejected you considered only the cons.
The reason is simple our brains can not process two tasks at the same time, so we choose the one that sounds nice or my friend talked about, buy things my friend bought, that which is beautifully advertised your favorite TV commercial, to prevent our selves from the complex task of thinking for ourselves.
Normally we think within the confines of our understanding of things instead of reality, but this is not always well adapted to the requirements of success in the real world.
FOR SIMPLICITY WE CREATE OUR OWN VERSION OF REALITY
We hate to think.
We base on the information we get through our senses/advert/friends/newspapers/radio/etc, but this input is mediated by a mental processes that determine which information is attended to, how it is organized, and the meaning attributed to it.
Example: if you read a newspaper or listen to a radio station, though a lot is written down or talked about, the brain only picks up what you want e.g. sports, lifestyle, health, , music, business, etc. Don’t you think this has an impact on your life?
Our past can build or crash us.
What we perceive, how readily we perceive it, and how we process this information after receiving it is strongly influenced by past experience, education, cultural values, role requirements, and organizational norms, as well as by the specifics of the information received.
Generally we see the world through a lens or screen that channels and focuses, thereby may distorts the images (reality) that are seen. These lenses are known by many terms—mental models, mind-sets, biases, or analytical assumptions.
A generation ago, few managers/people were self-conscious and introspective about the process by which they did analysis. The accepted wisdom was the “common sense” theory of knowledge—that to perceive events accurately it was necessary only to open one’s eyes, look at the facts, and purge oneself of all preconceptions and prejudices in order to make an objective judgment. BUT……..
This thing called mind sets.
Mind-sets and mental models are inescapable. They are, in essence, a distillation of all that we think we know about a subject. The problem is these mindsets are hard to change. That’s why we need to ensure that the mind remains open to alternative interpretations in a rapidly changing world.
Why the most experienced fail?
The disadvantage of a mind-set is that it can color and control our perception to the extent that a person with most experience may be among the last to see what is really happening when events take a new and unexpected turn.
The problem is when faced with a major paradigm shift, managers/people who know the most about a subject have the most to unlearn.
One advantage of mind-sets is that they help managers/people to get the work done on time and keep things going effectively between those events that we call accomplishments.
The biases and weakness discussed result from how our minds work. Today, there is greatly an increased understanding that managers/people do not approach their tasks with empty minds. They start with a set of assumptions about how events normally transpire in the area for which they are responsible.
If managers/peoples’ understanding of events is greatly influenced by the mind-sets or mental models or assumptions through which we perceive those events, there is need to understand the impact of different mental models on management/work performance.
THINKING IS A MENTAL PROCESS/ THINKING ANALYTICALLY
The diverse problems that impede accurate thinking, are those inherent in human mental processes and are surely among the most important and most difficult to deal with.
Thinking is a process?
Thinking is fundamentally a mental process, but understanding this process is hindered by the lack of conscious awareness of the workings of our own minds. We have no conscious experience of most of what happens in our own mind.
Thinking as a skill.
Thinking analytically is a skill like carpentry or driving a car. It can be taught, it can be learned, and it can improve with practice. But like many other skills, such as riding a bike, it is not learned by sitting in a classroom and being told how to do it.
Some of the best managers/people developed their skills as a consequence of experiencing management failure early in their careers. Failure motivated them to be more self-conscious about how they do their work and this sharpened their thinking process.
Most people achieve at least a minimally acceptable level of managerial/work performance with little conscious effort beyond completing their education. With much effort and hard work, however, Managers/people can achieve a level of excellence beyond what comes naturally through coaching.
Regular running enhances endurance but does not improve technique without expert guidance. Similarly, expert guidance may be required to modify long-established work habits to achieve an optimal level of analytical excellence. An analytical coaching staff can help managers/people hone their analytical tradecraft would be a valuable supplement to classroom instruction.
GIVING IS BETTER THAN RECEIVING
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Scofield
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