How to Think

By Larrywomack.com

When You Close Your Eyes

When you close your eyes, your mind automatically opens. It is in the darkness of the mind where true illumination occurs. Winston Churchill said, “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” Why are you thinking about a fat man smoking a cigar instead of reading this? The mind can do strange and wondrous things.

Time is suspended in the mind. The mind is a universe without borders. It is existence without form. The mind is the single source of all realities.

Close your eyes and move a thought about in your mind. Amazing that you can create the illusion of form, structure, and movement by concentrating on a thought and moving it around inside your mind.

Move the thought to your forehead, just above the bridge of your nose. Move it to the back of your head. Now, move it to the left. The other left, stupid! Were you right the first time?

Move the thought to your forehead, to the back, and up to the front again. Think about the present—you sitting there with your eyes closed, moving ideas around in your head. Feels silly, doesn’t it?

Keep your eyes closed and think about the past . . . small remembrances come to mind? Think about the present and you probably see the setting in which you are now reading.

Think about the future and I’ll bet you see an empty canvas. The good news is that you can paint whatever you want on that canvas and even choose sounds to complement the images you create.

The past is a library of sinces. The present tense. The future perfect . . . and it’s what you make it.

The Mind

The mind is our most active organ. It is always active, either consciously or subconsciously. We use it for reflection, reference, idea generation, and amusement. Thomas Jefferson said, “All of man’s thoughts are remembering, reasoning, or imagining.” It is by combining our memory, reason, and imagination that we solve complex problems, address important challenges, or create new opportunities for others and for ourselves.

The mind or brain works best with constant stimulation and use, regular and challenging input. The fertile mind that knows what to think and how to think about it has become the greatest natural resource of all.

Knowing What to Think

Each morning my screensaver greets me with this reminder: “An uneducated opinion is a dangerous resource, especially if it’s your own.” Holding opinions on matters of which one is ignorant is folly. Sharing ignorant opinions with others is shameful. Acting on ignorant opinions is hazardous. Thinking about the right things rightly begins with acquiring the appropriate knowledge. We live in a world where experience is no longer the best teacher because most of the significant opportunities and challenges available to us are things that have never been done before. Achieving and sustaining success in any endeavor requires a commitment to lifelong learning.

Thinking rightly, using the mind to solve a problem, address a challenge, or create an opportunity, is not simply the recall of knowledge. It is also using the knowledge that one has to determine the knowledge that one needs to achieve a goal or objective.

Collecting one’s thoughts is a way many people identify thinking. Keep in mind, however, that if the source of the collection does not contain the appropriate data, the thoughts collected will not provide the best answers, solutions, or ideas. That is why it is as important to use a defined thinking process as it is to have the right knowledge. By using one or more of six basic thinking processes, the thinker is as aware of what he or she needs to know as what he or she already knows.

The six basic methods of thinking are separated into two categories¾ conventional thinking and unconventional thinking.

Conventional Thinking:

Traditional method: using memory and reason to identify an answer or solution.
Critical method: Using a rational (scientific) process driven by a desired outcome to address challenges.
System method: Using a process to develop answers, opportunities, and plans that considers the diverse effects of contemplated actions in each element of the whole.

Unconventional Thinking

Creative method: Using an open mind to create something new in an entirely new context.
Intuitive method: Using educated feelings to arrive at a conclusion without evidence of examination.
Fuzzy method: Using a continuum of thought that recognizes an infinite spectrum of options, instead of just a few, when developing solutions or concepts.

CONVENTIONAL THINKING

Traditional Method

Most people rely on memory and reason to conjure an answer to a need. That is the traditional way to think about something¾through linear, deductive reasoning. For simple problems and routine opportunities, the traditional method of thinking works just fine.

Solving Problems

A problem is a question to be answered or a situation that presents a difficulty:

The sink is clogged and your shaving water will not go down the drain. You’ve got a problem. Think back! Last time you shaved, did the water flow smoothly? Or, do you remember it being a bit slow? Through remembering your past experiences, you come to a rational way to best solve the current problem.

If this is the first time you’ve experienced this problem, you might:

Run hot water to see if the obstruction will move or dissolve.
Raise the stopper and wiggle your finger in the hole to try to release the obstruction.
Look under the sink to determine if there is a trap valve that could be used to remove the obstruction.
Find the liquid drain opener and pour it in.

If this is a continuation of a formerly recognized problem, you might:

Perform all or some of the above as you did last time.
Look for a pipe wrench.
Call the plumber.
Put a note on the mirror to alert the next person that the sink is clogged.

All of those actions are born from experience and reason and represent the traditional method that each of us uses daily to solve simple problems.

In the workplace, however, some problems and challenges often require a more intentional method of traditional thinking; one that uses a defined process to organize and value knowledge and experience in a way that will complement reason and judgment.

Here is a method for addressing more complex problems:

Define the problem. It is best to write it down.
Think of three possible causes of the problem.
Get to the root of it and always consider yourself as a possible cause.
Generate a number of alternative solutions.
Decide on the optimum solution and implement it.

That process is equally effective when used by individuals or small groups. Solutions usually fall into one of these categories:

Decision/Action: If all that is required is a decision, make a decision and go with it.
Expert Help: If the knowledge for the solution lies outside the organization, bring in a professional to address it.
Team/Committee: When a problem exists across disciplines, bring in representatives of the affected areas and use the collective knowledge to address it.
Ignore it: Many issues that are called problems are no more than idiosyncrasies of individuals. Just ignore the so-called problem and it usually just fades away.

Critical Method

Ron Evans, management consultant and author of Heads, You Win! How the Best Companies Think (Simon & Schuster), says a disease is sweeping through the American workforce; a pervasive, degenerative condition that he calls “thinking-deficiency disorder.”

The thinking-deficiency disorder defined by Evans is the result of:

Individuals relying merely on personal experience and opinion to drive decisionmaking.
No common process for making decisions.
A lack of concern or awareness of the potential impact a decision might have elsewhere.
Allowing individuals to make decisions without assurance they have sufficient knowledge to make good ones.

Most truly effective workplace decisions result when those with the appropriate knowledge are assigned to think about and solve the problem or address the challenge at hand. In the workplace, leaders should think about the future and make the decisions that impact it. Managers and employees should focus on making decisions that address present issues. When the late Quality guru Edward Deming observed leaders involved in the routine affairs of their companies, he accused them of tampering.

Rational Process

Critical thinking is a rational process that provides a context from which to make good decisions. That context is outcome. Determine the desired result (outcome) of the decision before attempting to arrive at it. Critical thinking focuses on preparation rather than on solution. Once the desired outcome has been established, knowledge must be gathered from a variety of sources and interpreted for relevance and value.

Remember when you were in school and were required to write a paper? You first established a thesis or direction you wanted to support. Next you collected information from a variety of sources. As you read the material, you looked for evidence that supported your thesis and used that evidence to build your case. By drawing your conclusions from the evidence, and not your opinion, you were using critical thinking.

The same process works effectively in making business decisions. The critical thinking process has five basic steps:

Determine a desired outcome.
Collect pertinent information from a variety of informed sources.
Validate the information collected.
Determine that the information is useful to address the challenge.
Develop a solution, idea, or answer based on a rational, non-judgmental interpretation of the information collected.

The critical thinking method relies heavily on gathering and using pertinent information, instead of relying solely on experience, memory, and reason.

System Method

A system is a group of interacting elements that form a complex whole. There are ecosystems, weapons systems, communication systems, production systems, management systems, and the list goes on. Humans are the most complex system of all because of all the subsystems required to function properly.

The system method of thinking requires considering the diverse effects of any contemplated action on all related elements, not just the obvious ones.

Any force applied anywhere within a system impacts the entire system. If someone in a company changes prices without consulting or informing other departments, the company’s entire system goes out of balance.

Ancient Game

GO, invented over 4000 years ago in Tibet or China, is a game played on a 16″ X 19″ board marked by 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines. On the intersections of these lines are placed white or black stones. Each stone earns its right to stay on the board as long as it can breathe through one of the lifelines extending from the point on which it rests. It may also breathe vertically or horizontally through any adjacent stone of the same color.

Players take turns staking out territory and the game is won when no further moves are possible. The winner is the player who captures the most stones and has used the greatest number of stones in establishing territories.

Only by seeing the whole picture, with all of its potential, can a player make the moves with the greatest possible impact and meaning.

Looking Ahead

System thinking is looking ahead for the implications of each move, instead of just at the immediate effects of them. In a business setting, system thinking requires an openness that is rare in egotistical and self-serving individuals. One such person on a team will destroy systemic thinking for all. Successful system thinking gives careful attention to:

Common missions and goals.
Fair sharing of risks and rewards.
Trust among the participants
Acceptance and use of an agreed-upon process for visioning, thinking, planning, and acting.

When applying system thinking in a personal situation like dieting, for example, the wellbeing of all components of the body and mind (system) must be considered. Fad diets don’t work because they are not systemically conceived and address only one or two aspects of the entire human system.

The goal with any system is balance. Plans to change or improve a system must be drawn from a picture of how the entire system will function once the improvements or changes are in place.

UNCONVENTIONAL THINKING

No company or individual ever became outrageously successful by just solving problems or systemically addressing opportunities and challenges. Big successes require taking risks by looking at, thinking about, and acting on things unconventionally. The most common methods for thinking differently or unconventionally are creative thinking and intuitive thinking.

We often equate the process of creative thinking with inventors, writers, musicians, and artists. Record and TV/movie producers come to mind when looking for examples of intuitive thinkers. They most often go with their gut when deciding on a new entertainment production. A third type of unconventional thinking is fuzzy thinking. Spawned by quantum physics and named by physicist/thinker Bart Kosko, fuzzy thinking is an abstract method for finding new ways and ideas to address issues.

Creative Method

Creative thinking has never been confined to the poets, artists, and inventors, though their creations usually have a universal appeal. The result of effective creative thinking is something new in an entirely new context.

For example, the Post-it Note was the product of a scientific failure. The scientist was trying to develop a new adhesive. The creative act was in realizing the value of an adhesive that wouldn’t adhere and finding a use for it in a totally new context.

Computers are very good at shuffling objects within a context, but they cannot discover new contexts. Humans have this capability because we can and do think out of context¾sometimes whether we want to or not. It is that vagary of thought that drives creative thinking. We see things we do not see, hear things we do not hear, and sense things we do not feel. Humans have access to content that extends beyond experiences.

There are three stages of creative thinking, but creativity seldom progresses through these stages in a strict and orderly fashion. Creativity is the fruit born from the tangled vine of conscious and subconscious thought.

The first stage is preparation—gathering information. Stage two is the major stage—germination and communication of the creative idea. The third stage is manifestation--giving the idea form and context.

Creative thinking requires an open mind. Thinking about seemingly unrelated matters also adds value. For example, reading about an unrelated subject will often provide a new context for an old thought. You must also let your ideas germinate; the subconscious processing of ideas creates more possibilities than does conscious thinking.

Creative thinking usually begins with a thought that races across the mind. This flash sets the preparation stage¾gathering information¾in motion. The thinker then consciously and subconsciously searches through the databases of the mind for useful information. Stage two—germination and communication¾includes reflection on the emerging ideas and seeking information outside the mind to validate and enhance the ideas. Stage three —manifestation¾ gives the ideas life, form, and a context.

This process is effective for both individuals and groups. The preparation phase is often referred to as brainstorming in a group setting.

Standing At the Edge

Whenever we come to the edge, we have reached a new frontier. We know instinctively that the present holds the inevitability of change. Though change is not always a welcomed state, when we stand on the edge we feel the anxiety and reality of its inevitability. Even if we choose to go back, we are different for having stood at the edge. We are forever changed.

Thinkers, tinkerers, artists, and other risk takers live and work on the edges of their cultures. They know that change—new ideas, gadgets, expressions, and chemistries—springs forth from the ambiguity, the randomness, and the chaos found at the circumference of their worlds or just beyond it. If working at the edge empowers the poet, the artist, and the scientist, why not the business leader?

But business leaders tend to stay in the comfort zone, in the middle of the organization, and not venture out to the edge. When a leader does find himself or herself at the edge, he or she has probably been driven there by special circumstance. It is those leaders, though, who intentionally go the edge of the industry or business who achieve high accomplishment.

When leading from the center, one can only design futures from current activities and the ruins of the past. And there’s not much future in the past, especially in these fast-changing times. It is impossible for a leader to know or experience the fullness and richness of a company or culture, or to see the future, if he or she operates only from the middle of it.

Möbius Strip:

A continuous one-sided surface that can be formed from a rectangular strip by rotating one end 180° and attaching it to the other end; named after a German mathematician.

In the center, the mind moves along a Möbius strip of events over and over again without awareness of the possibilities that lie elsewhere. All ideas, observations, decisions, and judgments are drawn solely from the past and the present. And covering the same ground again and again creates a false sense of adequacy that can grow until it knows no bounds.

Beyond the Comfort Zone

The Buddha pointed out long ago that we are what we think. “Every civilization, whether it is spiritual, scientific, or material,” said the Buddha, “is merely an externalization of consciousness.”

Organizations, like civilizations, are to some degree what they perceive themselves to be. If the only image of an organization is that which can be seen from the center, then that image becomes the sole source of thinking, planning, and acting. Effective leaders see their organizations from both the center and from the edge. Accomplishment and activity occur in the center. Vision is found at the edge. An appropriate mix of accomplishments, activity, and vision drives business success.

Walks to the Edge

Several things happen when business leaders go to the edge: The future becomes clearer and less foreboding, and there is also a totally different picture of the present. From the edge, the familiar from a new angle. Looking back to the center, the organization may look round, instead of linear. Where the organization was once seen as a machine, it may appear to be a cog in a bigger machine. Where it was seen as a single system, it may now be viewed as a process in a larger system. Standing at the edge, broadens the horizon of thought and expand the opportunities of creativity, innovation, and accomplishment.

If a leader does not give value to the whole of the system by including frequent walks to the edge, strategies will be drawn solely from experience and accomplishments will suffer. The artist and scientist search for new ideas and innovative concepts at the edges of their worlds. Business leaders must do the same. For art to inspire, science to enrich, and business to prosper, appropriate honor must be given to past accomplishments and current work, but continued success is visioned only from the edge.

Intuitive Thinking

The one rule for successful intuitive thinking is: I’ll do it if it feels right. Feeling right is a product of intuition. Feeling right about a subject must not be confused with feeling good about it. One can feel good about something without feeling right about it. Feeling right and proceeding forward means having a willingness to take the consequences of your actions because of the rightness of them. Intuition is the ability to gain knowledge or insight without evidence of examination. The key phrase is “without evidence of examination.” We are the sum of our experiences. Intuitive thinking calls on those experiences. We are also in some strange way more than our experiences.

Though intuitive thinking is grounded in experience, it is more often expressed as a feeling. Experience obviously adds confidence to decision making, but quite often our intuition leads us away from experience towards that which we do not know. Intuitive thinking draws heavily on “that which we do not know.” In setting a company’s vision, modeling “ideal” systems, and searching for innovations, the successful leader calls on experience, but ultimately relies on feeling in deciding the best course of action.

Intuitive thinkers use non-traditional sources for inspiration; it’s closing your eyes to look at the “big picture,” instead of focusing on the facts as they now appear.

They throw convention to the wind, they look to the future for new ideas and strategies, process their thoughts through their experiences and through their subconscious, and then turn to their feelings for the right action. They subscribe to Einstein’s idea that “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

Fuzzy Thinking

Fuzzy thinking examines the infinite spectrum of options for creating or redesigning a system, instead of just looking at the one or two most obvious. Allow yourself to think in shades of gray, instead of only in black and white. Let your thoughts glide through one idea into another, never knowing where one ends and another begins—learning as you go.

Out of the interweaving of innumerable ideas, interests, and intentions¾be they compatible or opposed—something eventually emerges that has been neither planned nor intended by a single action. Multi-dimensional thinking provides the texture of surprise to the development of new ideas, contexts, and systems.

The Japanese have been at the forefront of trying to make machines that think fuzzily, like people. The idea is to provide brain-like systems to machines that will allow them to learn as they perform. Fuzzy thinking has more to do with sensing than with calculation. For example, the Japanese have designed a washing machine that uses load sensors to measure the size and texture of the wash load and uses light pulsing sensors to measure dirt in the wash water. Each few seconds fuzzy thinking turns these measures into patterns of water agitation for different lengths of time; the same process with the same results as an Egyptian woman washing her clothes in the River Nile¾observing, learning, and adapting the process as she goes.

Whereas the pragmatist says a thing is A or not A, fuzzy thinking recognizes the ambiguities of all things. A can be a fuzzy A and still not be not A. Everything is a matter of degree. There is perhaps an infinite spectrum of options instead of just two extremes; a difficult concept to grasp for many who lead business.

Bart Kosko, a faculty member of the physics department at the University of California, is a philosopher-scientist who is a leading theorist in the field of fuzzy thinking. He holds up his hand, palm out, and asks his class, “What is this?” “Your hand,” they respond. “What is this?” he says, pointing to his wrist. “Your wrist!” they declare. “Will someone please come forward and show me where my hand ends and my wrist begins?” No one volunteers.

Solutions, answers, and challenges abound. To capture and create the greatest of them requires fuzzy systems thinking; thinking outside the box, inside the box, about the box, and without the box.

Fuzzy thinking has its genesis in quantum physics, the new science that along with the computer and the ability to manipulate DNA, is changing life as we have known it. Here is an example of a new thought generated by quantum physics:

Where Do You Want To Go Today?

The highway to the next millennium is invisible, built by people of imminent intellectual and technical capacity. Its thoroughfares, expressways, and byways are constructed of complex mathematical theories, silicon, and electrical impulses. We mortals traverse the highway with our computers¾not knowing or caring how it works.

Where most of us look for order, reason, resolution, and reality, the constructors of the millennium highway search for new materials, ideas, and theories that break convention and open passageways to new horizons and different terrain.

Erwin Schrödinger a renowned quantum theorist, gives us a glimpse into the mind of those far thinkers with his imaginary cat. Schrödinger’s cat lives in a box with a fiendish device, triggered by the random decay of a radioactive sample that determines whether the cat is fed food or poison.

In our world one switch or the other would be triggered and the cat would eat either good food and live, or eat the poison and die. But Schrödinger’s cat is a quantum cat. In the quantum world all possibilities, even contradictory ones, exist together. Schrödinger ‘s cat is fed both food and poison simultaneously. Consequently he is both alive and dead at the same time.

Of course we never see alive/dead cats. If we open the box to look at him, we will see that the cat is either alive or dead. But it is our looking that has saved or lost the cat. The observer is always part of what he or she observes. Observation changes things.

In the world of the highway builders to the next millennium, both/and is always present. Their world is far beyond our everyday world of common sense. But we have become dependent on their world for our successes and even for our survival.

The story of Schrödinger’s cat is the story of new ways of looking at ourselves, of understanding the mind and its capacity, and our place in the larger scheme of things. It may even be the story of how we must change our view of common sense and how to choose the roads we take to the next millennium.

Deciding where you want to go in the next millennium requires more than examining reality, as you know it. It requires creating new realities and a new definition of common sense.

About Thinking

When attempting to solve a problem, address a challenge, or create an opportunity, one must use the right process as well as work with the right information. Conventional thinking, using both the traditional method and the critical method, works best for solving problems. System thinking is useful when there are a lot of issues to be considered or when the resolution of one problem might create more or bigger problems. But remember, most successful people and organizations did not become successful from solving their problems. Eminently successful endeavors evolve from anticipation potential problems and the creation of an environment where few can occur.

Unconventional thinking is required when defining and addressing a big challenge or creating an opportunity. Usually the grandest schemes are derived from a combination of system, creative, intuitive, and fuzzy thinking methods.

To learn more about traditional thinking, read:

Are Your Lights On?(Dorset House, 1990)

by Donald C. Gause & Gerald M. Weinberg

To learn more about critical thinking, read:

Heads, You Win! How the Best Companies Think (Simon & Schuster, 1995) by Ron Evans:

To learn more about system thinking, read:

Reengineering the Corporation (Harper Business, 1993)

by Michael Hammer & James Champy

To learn more about creative thinking, read:

The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light (St. Martins Press, 1988)

by William Irwin Thompson

To learn more about intuitive thinking, read:

Berry Gordy, Jr.: Mr. Motown (Doubleday, 1999)   by Susan Zannas

To learn more about fuzzy thinking, read:

Fuzzy Thinking (Hyperon, 1996)

by Bart Kosco

To learn more about quantum physics, read:

A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books, 1988)

by Stephen Hawking