Logical Thinking Process
THE ULTIMATE PAYOFF
by H. William Dettmer & Jeff 'SKI' Kinsey
Critical thinking is a means of assessing and evaluating the cause-and-effect relationships in complex systems. The interdependency among components of systems makes it extremely difficult to accurately evaluate the true causes behind the observed effects.
A logical thinking methodology facilitates the sorting out and representation of the relationships between the system's components and the cause-and-effect that influences them. This enables an analyst to evaluate the validity of the evidence of causation and determine whether the assumed cause is, in fact the real cause.
Without a means to apply critical thinking to specific situations, people can only resort to unstructured intuition - "gut feelings." The problem with intuition is that without a means to structure cause and effect, it's difficult for people to differentiate correlation from cause and effect.
Correlation is the occurrence of two phenomena in close time proximity. Cause and effect is the relationship between two phenomena in which one can be demonstrably verified as the cause and the other the effect. The problem arises when correlation is assumed to be cause and effect, when in reality it is not.
When decisions concerning changes in policy, allocations of resources, or financial commitments are made without a complete understanding of the cause and effect operating in a particular system - in other words, based on correlation, rather than cause and effect - the risk of undesirable outcomes dramatically increases.
How can such situations be identified? During or after the fact, it's relatively easy to determine that they did happen. Did it take longer or require additional actions or decisions to achieve the desired result? If so, the true causality was probably not identified and the wrong actions or policies initiated.
"Doing the right thing the first time, with confidence, carries with it a key benefit to the organization: better cost-effectiveness of the resources applied."
In summary, the tools and methods of the "Logical Thinking Process" allow one to evaluate the potential for success before taking action! These tools are relatively quickly learned to a level of optimum effectiveness. How much money can you save (or avoid committing to ineffective activities) in just ninety (90) days?
To learn more, visit SKI's web site: www.applyingcommonsense.com/jonah