Critical Thinking Applications

Critical Thinking Applications

University of Phoenix

According to Elder and Paul, critical thinking is "the art of thinking about thinking while thinking in order to make thinking better" (Introduction, 2006). Critical thinking is a necessary tool for making sound, reasonable, and rational decisions.

In personal and professional circumstances, a person must make decisions every day. Making those decisions based on faulty thinking, false assumptions, perceptions, or anything other than factual evidence and logical reasoning, will usually result in negative consequences.

In order for thinking to be considered critical, it must be taken apart, looked at, questioned and tested for quality, and then made better (Elder & Paul, 2002). Every aspect of an idea must be tested and questioned to make sure that it can stand up to scrutiny. All too often when a person has an idea questioned, the person will go on the defensive rather than recognizing the legitimacy of the question. If an idea cannot stand up to scrutiny, there is a very good chance that it is not a good idea. This is especially true in the business world where good ideas make money, and bad ideas lose money and cost jobs.

Critical thinking requires tough questions. According to Burrell and Safi, "questions define variables, state factors, outline tasks, clarify issues, and express problems" (2007). Every idea that is brought forth must be questioned in order to determine whether it is valid or not. When questions are asked, the weaknesses of the idea become apparent and can be improved upon. If people are afraid to ask questions, or if it is assumed that the idea is sound without investigation, there is a much higher probability that there will be problems when trying to execute the idea.

Like any skill, critical thinking must be practiced if it is to become a normal part of decision making. The military and certain other industries have been using simulators to test personnel and sharpen their critical thinking skills (Freifield, 2007). By constantly practicing with difficult situations, critical thinking will become easier over time as a natural way of making decisions. Like any skill, if it is not practiced regularly, it will atrophy and become harder to implement.

Critical thinking takes hard work (Elder & Paul, 2006). This simple truth is a reason why many people have such a hard time thinking critically. It is much easier to mimic the viewpoints of others than it is to come to personal conclusions based on fact. It is far simpler to use perceptions and assumptions in place of evidence when making decisions than it is to take the time to investigate all angles of an issue in order to make sure that all of the avenues have been explored. A person who is intellectually lazy will give up when mental exertion is required, and as a result will be incapable of critical thinking (Paul & Elder, 2006, Chapter 1).

I have personally seen the positive results of critical thinking in my professional career. As a product manager for a company that manufactures GPS guidance systems, I am involved in the annual planning meetings. During these meetings, all of the product managers and the marketing executives get together to formulate short term plans for the coming year, and long term plans for the next three years.

In the past, these meetings were very poorly organized. Each product manager was only interested in the product line that they were responsible for, and nobody would participate in the discussions about products that they were not directly involved with. This led to each product manager holding back negative information, and only focusing on ideas that they were personally interested in. Very few questions were asked, and the projects that were sanctioned based on these meetings were often unsuccessful.

Last year, the marketing vice president changed the way that the meetings were to be conducted. Every person in the room was expected to participate, whether involved with the products being discussed or not. This quickly led to a much deeper discussion