Business Critical Thinking
Business Critical Thinking
Internationally renowned Executive Coach, Pete Freeman has teamed up with Roy van den Brink-Budgen, (Click here for website). arguably the leading global expert in critical thinking so put together a suite of assessments and development tools (training and coaching) to help turn decision making in to a key competitive advantage for your organisation.
As leaders we are paid to think and take the best decisions we can. In a VUCA world, beginning to emerge from the Covid crisis, facing a significant recession, rising unemployment and an increasingly difficult international trading environment, the decisions your leaders take have never been so impactful.
Previous success will not be a reliable predictor of future winners.
Leaders will need to think differently, flexing their priorities quickly to circumstance, whilst retaining clear sight of their core values. They will need to manage increasingly complex structures, and quickly become comfortable holding ambiguous concepts in their minds at the same time.
And let’s not forget, this is on the back of what we already felt was accelerated change!
Our approach to diversity and work life balance now significantly (and rightly) impact on our ability to recruit to talent, AI is here and changing how we work, and even the very purpose of our organisations is becoming more complex, moving away from solely being creators of shareholder value towards also being responsible employers and key contributors towards societal progression.
So which organisations will thrive?
Success and failure will hinge on taking the right decisions; and doing so quickly enough to capitalise on opportunity, and fully enough to anticipate the consequences.
The organisations which best equip their Staff and Leaders to think clearly and decisively will stand to make huge gains over their competitors.
Because, when you boil down the complex responsibilities across any sector, every leader is primarily there to think clearly, and to take the right decisions. Big decisions that are thought through over time as well as quick decisions taken in the moment.
In an increasingly fast changing world, this means often having to rethink things from first principles. So tomorrow’s leaders must thus share the right core values and virtues in the first place (to start their thinking from the right place) and they must be experts in critical thinking.
But interestingly, critical thinking is something we tend to think we do pretty well. It’s a bit like driving. In surveys, between 69% and 93% of people think they are better than average drivers, and the same goes for thinking. However, if behavioural Economics is anything to go by, we are not nearly so logical with our decision making as we would like to believe.
So how can we give ourselves a competitive edge?
Our ability to think logically is not a fixed, innate talent. We can actively develop and improve it through assessing and developing Critical Thinking skills. Critical Thinking is a crucial leadership asset which we’ve taken for granted over the last few years, assuming leaders will bring with them fully developed critical thinking skills honed to perfection by experience alone.
But this is simply not the case. And putting your leaders ahead of the competition will be an invaluable investment for future success. You could argue that Critical Thinking is the missing link in Leadership Development which will bridge the gap from fit for purpose yesterday, to fit to flourish in the new commercial paradigm of today.
So where to start?
Typically, promotion tends to be based mostly on performance in the last role, and less on suitability for the next. But critical thinking becomes more important the further up the ladder we climb, so it makes good commercial sense to assess critical thinking and thus readiness for the next role as a key part of our talent development process.
Assessing “Business Critical Thinking” (BCT) as part of readiness to move from Level 2 Leadership (Managing Others) to Level 3 (Managing Managers) Leadership is ideal. Assessing BCT its own right, will improve promotion of the right candidates to the right level and will give a multiple return on investment in its own right. However, this can be leveraged considerably further with appropriate training.
What’s more, a BCT Assessment will highlight blind spots and areas where individuals might be prone to making errors in their judgement, so we can target our training investment, to best develop each individual exactly where they will most benefit from it.
BCT Assessments
Assessments are online and in bite size chunks to suit your busy leaders’ schedules. Different levels of assessment exist to suit the different Leadership levels.
Call me on 07730 700258 if you would like to discuss how Critical Thinking can improve the performance of your Senior Team and your business.