Strong thinking and strong ideas are great. We need people to defend them, champion them and feel passionate about them. But the strength of the argument, the power of the rhetoric and the infection of passion and energy must not substitute critical thinking. Strong, passionate, energizing, champions with strong critical thinking will develop the argument and expose it to us …somewhere close to this:
- This is what X does, this is what it doesn’t. This is what it solves, this is what it does not solve.
- This is why we need X, these are the benefits.
- This is the cost of doing or having X, this is the cost of not doing or having X.
- This is what is solid about it.
- These are the holes (small holes, bigger holes…) in the thinking behind.
- This much we know, this is what we don’t know.
- If it works, this is what we get, if it doesn’t’ this is what we will do.
- If we don’t do it now, when?
- These are the alternatives to X. We’ve looked at Y, and Z. We still must go for X.
- This is how we can make it work, successful. This is how we can screw up completely.
Strong advocates may not give you this in a complete form, as above. In that case, you need to complete the idea-grilling yourself.
Many people think that critical thinking is somehow innate, belonging to a particular type of brain and certainly IQ. This is of course possible. However, it is also true that it is highly social. Practicing the argumentation and proposal pre-decision making in similar ways as above, will be easily copied by others.
Create the habit of framing things with strong critical thinking and forget the problem of whether your people ‘have it or not’.
Create a little epidemic of the above 10.
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WATCH our free on demand webinars led by Dr Leandro Herrero and his team of organizational architects. Have your critical thinking brain, switched on.
Feed Forward Webinar Series [1]
WATCH our 5, free webinars as Dr Leandro Herrero and his team of organizational architects, debunk uncontested assumptions and uncover the alternatives, whilst considering why this is even more relevant today in the current exceptional environment.
Camino Book Launch Webinar [2]
Leandro Herrero discusses leadership themes from his new book and reflects on leadership as a continuously evolving praxis. ‘Nobody is ever a leader. Becoming one is the real quest’. He is joined by senior consultants from The Chalfont Project – Organization Architects [3] Anett Helling and Jayne Lewis, ACC.
A series of webinars with Dr Herrero and his team of Organization Architects exploring the future of organizational life. Explaining how the 3 Pillars of The Chalfont Project’s Organizational Architecture – smart organizational design, large scale behavioural and cultural change and collective leadership – work together to create a “Better Way” for organizations to flourish in the post-COVID world.
- On demand webinar now available – Organizational Design [4]
Register [4] now for our forthcoming live webinar of this series:
Build and enhance your collective leadership capabilities
17th June at 1730 BST/1830 CET
At The Chalfont Project, we prefer the use of the term ‘practicing leadership’ to ‘developing’ it to emphasise the real life essence of leadership. So much has been written that the world is full of recipes and techniques, examples and role models. The rich plethora of available answers obscures the need to have good questions. Reflection and introspection seem like logical ingredients for being a good leader, yet our business and organizational life treats them as luxuries that have no place in our ubiquitous ‘time famine’. Busy-ness has taken over business and leadership has been commoditised to a series of ‘how to’. Yet, there is hardly anything more precious in organizational life than the individual and collective leadership capabilities.
Join us on 17th June at 1730 BST/1830 CET
REGISTER HERE [4]