Critical thinking is categorized in a group of skills called “soft skills”. Soft skills are pretty much a set of skills that cover all aspects of work life. If you look at almost any job posting you will see many soft skills listed. Including communications, leadership, teamwork, problem-solving (critical thinking), creativity, and many more. They are essential to building a set of skills that employers want. These are often thought of as natural abilities or something that cannot be taught. I do not believe that is true. Some aspects can be hard to learn but, in general, you can increase your ability in them with practice.

I would like to cover critical thinking, as you may have noticed by the title (you may need to use some critical thinking skills for this). This skill is critical to succeeding in pretty much everything. From home life to work life it will help you solve many problems that you will face. There is actually quite a bit of structured critical thinking strategies that may help. Such as the Ladder of Inference, Starbursting, and even the Scientific Method. These all provide a step by step method to aid in the critical thinking process. However, each has their own problems they are good at solving.

The Ladder of Inference

Introduce by Chris Argyris (MindTools, n.d.), the Ladder of Inference is system best suited solving a problem with a large number of variables. Such as a quality issue at work, or unsatisfied customers.

(The Systems Thinker, n.d.)

1. Available Data: First you must compile all the available data you can. Perhaps write it down in a list, this should be fact-based not opinion based.
2. Select Data: Nobody can pay attention to all data, so you must select the important data that is available. Then you can throw out the data you find as unimportant.
3. Paraphrase Data: Summarize each data source in your own words, this helps to include the data in your thoughts and allow you to connect them to each other.
4. Name What is Happening: This step allows you to identify exactly what you are trying to decipher. With a clear definition, it is easy to devise a solution.
5. Explain/Evaluate What is Happening: Now this is where you figure out the underlying problem and what helped to create this problem.
6. Decide What to Do: Now you can devise a solution, given the data and the underlying problem, how might you solve it?
7. Reflexive loops: You are not always done with one iteration; multiple iterations can help you dig deeper into a problem and see things you did not see before.

Starbursting

Starbursting is a brainstorming technique, but it is one that can be useful in developing solutions to problems. It excels at problems that may not have a definite answer. Such as advertisement solutions, or (dare I say it) blog post ideas.

First, you start with a six-pointed star, each of which asks one of the five w’s (+ how). Who, what, where, when, why, how?

For each point of the star, you then ask a question in the most generalized way possible and continue by breaking down those questions by more questions, and so on. The goal of this system is to break down a problem into its most basic questions and answers. After you are finished asking questions, your goal is to answer each question at the end of the line.

The Scientific Method

Most of you will be familiar with this method from school. It is a technique suited for problems that should have a definite and well-defined answer as well as a defined question. Most suited for analysis and experimentation.

1. Ask a Question: You must first clearly define the question you are trying to answer.
2. Research: Find out as much as you can about the topic at hand, make sure to keep track of your resources so you can cite them later.
3. Hypothesis: Pretty much an educated guess, try to explain what you expect to happen. Usually, it is in terms of cause and effect, or a relationship, or even a null hypothesis(makes no difference if a certain input is changed).
4. Experiment: Figure out a way to test your hypothesis. You should have an independent and dependent variable. You control the independent variable but keep the dependent variable the same. An experiment may have more than one of each, but it is advisable to keep them to a minimum.
5. Analysis: Answer the question “What happened?” Record any observations and then analyze what it means. Make sure not to throw out any data points, even if you think they are bad, they may be showing you something that you did not think would have happened. Once you have the data you can then mathematically analyze the data.
6. Conclusion: Was your hypothesis correct? As an added benefit you can ask why it was or was not correct. Now, an important step that is not numbered is to repeat; the next experiment may give you a different result.

Conclusion

Each of these methods can work for almost any situation however it is important to pick the right tool for the job. Just like you would not use a drill as a hammer (although I have done this before…don’t judge). Not only will it help in their efficiency, but it will help make the answer you derive better. As I said this skill can be practiced and improved despite what many say. If you work on it and use some of these methods on a consistent basis, you will get better. Also, don’t think you have to follow these by the T. Although each step is important, it is a guideline meant to steer you in the right direction. Many times, you will end up doing all the steps without even thinking about it.

References

The Systems Thinker (n.d.) The Ladder of Inference. Retrieved from https://thesystemsthinker.com/the-ladder-of-inference/

MindTools. (n.d.). The Ladder of Inference: How to Avoid Jumping to Conclusions. Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_91.htm

Lisa Jo Rudy. (2016). Starbursting: How to use Brainstorming Questions to Evaluate Ideas. Retrieved from https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/starbursting-how-to-use-brainstorming-questions-to-evaluate-ideas–cms-26952