Challenge Your Assumptions . . .
Critical Thinking is a superpower, but we don’t practice it as much as we should!
On this July 4th, we could even regard that as “independent thinking” . . .
We make assumptions all the time. This is part of our “Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow” dichotomy, beautifully articulated by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman in his book of the same name.
This explains the two ways we make decisions and choices.
Fast, intuitive thinking, and slow, rational thinking.
Fast, intuitive thinking enabled us to evade predators and survive evolution to our current state.
When driving or crossing the street, fast, intuitive thinking is still very valuable. It’s a life saver.
But for the more nuanced and ambiguous world of work, we need to practice slow, rational thinking and challenge our assumptions.
All of them.
In a moment of serendipity, while writing this, an article in Management Today crossed my virtual desk.
“Groupthink is the enemy of transformation” by Ritavan, Author of Data Impact.
Addressing exactly this topic.
We all tend to lean on “what worked yesterday” . . .
“A mindset of constantly disrupting assumptions” is essential. “Innovation and true transformation require the courage to think independently – and the discipline to build solutions from the ground up. Otherwise, you’re just spinning wheels and calling it progress”.
The original catalyst for my thoughts on this topic, apart from daily discussions with my own colleagues, was a fascinating piece by Usman Sheikh this week, describing the same challenge.
He describes the case study of Haier Smart Home. Whilst the piece is a little hyperbolic, there is a key point that Usman makes.
Haier Smart Home is a Fortune 500 business, a global leader in home appliances.
In 2012, they fired 12,000 managers overnight, and since then revenue doubled from $20B to $40B . . .
All good so far . . . 😉
The claim is that this growth success was due to breaking up the company into 4,000 micro-enterprises (MEs). Each one fully autonomous with its own P&L, zero reporting hierarchy, living or dying by results. Support functions became MEs too. HR, IT, logistics were all forced to compete.
This is a very nuanced topic, and the cause and effect here may not be quite as clear as indicated.
BUT . . .
Challenging assumptions is key, even long held ones . . . .
The Dunning Kruger effect, a cognitive bias, is heavily influenced and enabled by such assumptions.
Usman shares some great questions, to which there are no simple answers, but plenty of “received wisdom” (and assumptions)!
- Co-ordination: “How do we coordinate better?” vs “Why coordinate at all – where is there value an where is there not?”
- Innovation: “That’s how we’ve always done it” vs “Why do we exist, what is the root business problem, and what are the all the potential options to address that?”
- Speed. “Piloting “agile teams” while preserving existing hierarchy and process” vs “How do we best drive, and balance, speed, quality of outcome and cost?”
- Problem Resolution. “Quick Fix” vs “Asking Why?” (deeply . . )
There are many more that we experience every single day.
The road to better decisions lies in critical thinking skills.
We have to have to practice these more.
The harder we practice, the luckier we get . . .
You can read Usman Sheikh’s take on the Haier transformation here . . . .
You can read “Groupthink is the enemy of transformation” by Ritavan in Management Today, here . . .
Thanks for reading . . .
Challenge Your Assumptions . . .