3 Simple Habits to Improve Your
Critical Thinking
by
Helen Lee Bouygues
May 06, 2019
Daniel Day/Getty Images
Summary.
Too many business leaders are simply not reasoning through pressing issues, and it’s hurting
their organizations. The good news is that critical thinking is a learned behavior. There are three
simple things you can do to train yourself to become a more effective critical thinker: question
assumptions, reason through logic, and diversify your thought and perspectives. They may
sound obvious, but deliberately cultivating these three key habits of mind go a long way in
helping you become better at clear and robust reasoning.
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A few years ago, a CEO assured me that his company was the market
leader. “Clients will not leave for competitors,” he added. “It costs too
much for them to switch.” Within weeks, the manufacturing giant Procter
& Gamble elected not to renew its contract with the firm. The CEO was
shocked — but he shouldn’t have been.
For more than 20 years, I’ve helped struggling organizations. Sometimes
they reach out because they have been mismanaged. Sometimes they
have not stayed in front of changing technologies. In a few cases,
members of the senior team were simply negligent. But in my experience,
these organizational problems shared a root cause: A lack of critical
thinking.
Too many business leaders are simply not reasoning through pressing
issues, taking the time to evaluate a topic from all sides. Leaders often
jump to the first conclusion, whatever the evidence. Even worse, C-suite
leaders will just choose the evidence that supports their prior beliefs. A
lack of metacognition — or thinking about thinking — is also a major
driver, making people simply overconfident.
The good news is that critical thinking is a learned skill. To help people
get better at it, I recently started the nonprofit Reboot Foundation. Based
on my personal experience as well some of the work of our researchers,
I’ve pulled together three simple things that you can do to improve your
critical thinking skills:
1. Question assumptions
2. Reason through logic
3. Diversify thought
Now, you might be thinking, “I do that already.” And you probably do,
but just not as deliberately and thoroughly as you could. Cultivating
these three key habits of mind go a long way in helping you become
better at an increasingly desired skill in the job market.
Question assumptions
When I work to turn around an organization, I’ll typically start by
questioning the firm’s assumptions. I once visited dozens of stores of a
retail chain, posing as a shopper. I soon discovered that the company had
presumed that its customers had far more disposable income than they
really had. This erroneous belief made the company overprice its
clothing. They would have made millions more each year if they had sold
lower-priced shirts and pants.
Of course, it’s hard to question everything. Imagine going through your
day asking yourself: Is the sky really blue? What if the person next to me
isn’t my colleague but her twin sister? How do I really know that the
economy won’t implode tomorrow?
The first step in questioning assumptions, then, is figuring out when to
question assumptions. Turns out, a questioning approach is particularly
helpful when the stakes are high.
So if you are in a discussion about long-term company strategy upon
which years of effort and expense will be based, be sure to ask basic
questions about your beliefs: How do you know that business will
increase? What does the research say about your expectations about the
future of the market? Have you taken time to step into the figurative
shoes of your customers as a “secret shopper”?
Another way to question your assumptions is to consider alternatives.
You might ask: What if our clients changed? What if our suppliers went
out of business? These sorts of questions help you gain new and
important perspectives that help hone your thinking.
Reason through logic
Years ago, I took on the task of turning around the division of a large
lingerie company. The growth of one of its major product lines had been
declining for years. No one could figure out why.
It turned out that the company had made the reasoning mistake of over-
generalization, drawing a sweeping conclusion based on limited or
insufficient evidence. Namely, the company believed that all of their
international customers had similar preferences in lingerie. So it shipped
the same styles of brassieres to every store across Europe.
When my team started talking to staff and consumers, we realized that
customers in different countries reported very distinct tastes and
preferences. British women, for example, tended to buy lacy bras in
bright colors. Italian women preferred beige bras, with no lace. And
those in the United States led the world in sports bra purchases.
For this lingerie company, improving their reasoning helped the firm
dramatically improve its bottom line. The good news is that the formal
practice of logic dates back at least 2,000 years to Aristotle. Over those
two millennia, logic has demonstrated its merit by reaching sound
conclusions.
So at your organization, pay close attention to the “chain” of
logic constructed by a particular argument. Ask yourself: Is the argument
supported at every point by evidence? Do all the pieces of evidence build
on each other to produce a sound conclusion?
Being aware of common fallacies can also allow you to think more
logically. For instance, people often engage in what’s known as “post
hoc” thinking. In this fallacy, people believe that “because event Y
followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X.”
So, for instance, a manager may believe that their sales agents rack up
more sales in the spring because they’re fired up by the motivational
speeches offered at the annual sales conference in February — but until
that assumption is tested, there’s no way the manager can know if their
belief is correct.
Seek out diversity of thought and collaboration
For years, I was the only female partner on McKinsey’s transformation
team. And today, while I serve on more than a half-dozen corporate
boards, I am typically the only Asian and the only woman in the room
during meetings.
By virtue of my background and life experiences, I tend to see things
differently from the people around me. This has often played to my
advantage. But I’m not immune to groupthink, either. When I’m around
people similar to me for whatever reason — age, politics, religion— I try
to solicit different points of view. It makes me a better thinker.
It’s natural for people to group themselves together with people who
think or act like them. This happens especially readily online, where it’s
so easy to find a specific cultural niche. Social media algorithms can
narrow our perspectives further, serving up only news that fits our
individual beliefs.
This is a problem. If everyone in our social circles thinks as we do, we
become more rigid in our thinking, and less likely to change our beliefs
on the basis of new information. In fact, the more people listen to people
who share their views, research shows the more polarized their views
become.
It’s crucial to get outside your personal bubble. You can start small. If
you work in accounting, make friends with people in marketing. If you
always go to lunch with senior staff, go to a ball game with your junior
colleagues. Training yourself this way will help you escape your usual
thinking and gain richer insights.
In team settings, give people the chance to give their opinions
independently without the influence of the group. When I ask for advice,
for instance, I typically withhold my own preferences and ask team
members to email me their opinions in separate notes. This tactic helps
prevent people from engaging in groupthink.
While these simple tactics may sound easy or even obvious, they’re rare
in practice, particularly in the business world, and too many
organizations don’t take the time to engage in robust forms of reasoning.
But the important work of critical thinking pays off. While luck plays a
role — sometimes small, sometimes large — in a company’s successes,
the most important business victories are achieved through thinking
smart.
