Critical Thinking: Be the Master of Your Device

According to Moore’s Law, the cost of technological capability decreases at an exponential rate, to the point where a supercomputer campus from the 1970s is less powerful than a modern smartphone. For examples of Moore’s Law in motion, consider the evolution from the Motorola DynaTac 8000X -- one of the first “brick” mobile phones -- to the fullness of Apple’s ecosystem, to Samsung’s amazing new robotic personal assistant.

The Impact of Technological Progress

Technology has made life pretty comfortable, even charitable -- we’re connected like never before -- but can our own mental stamina keep pace with the intelligence of our devices? Numerous writers have described how our technology is making us lazy thinkers. We spend more time than we realize navigating through a tsunami of information. To save time, we use cognitive tricks to prejudge content. The only surefire way for a story to grab our attention is for it to be written in hyperbole, sometimes resulting in facts taking a backseat to drama.

A business is a tool to promote one’s endeavor for change. As business leaders, we must strategize for the long haul while staying profitable in the short term. Given the impact of technological change on market’s tastes and preferences, a business’ rise can come as quickly as its fall. So how does a company thrive for the long term?

Critical Thinking Is the Essential Skill

Critical thinking is sustainable thinking. It offers us a chance to work together with technological change rather than always trying to catch up with it. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Matt Plummer, Founder and CEO of an online productivity platform called Zarvana, observes that critical thinking is among the most desired skills by employers. However, the majority of employers think college graduates lack adequate critical thinking skills.

In his book, Thinking: Fast and Slow, Nobel-prize-winning economist, Daniel Kahneman, the father of Behavioral Economics, provides a variety of ways to teach yourself how to spot your own biases. Kahneman recommends writing your business’ obituary to spot weaknesses you might not otherwise see. If we train ourselves to pause to synthesize information, we may not only better position ourselves and our companies, but more actively participate in the communities we intend to serve.

Take Time to Synthesize and Reflect

Face value means very little, and business leaders must look for both supporting evidence and dissenting opinion. Today, truth has become more elusive. We want a quick and dirty version of complicated and multi-layered problems. Business leaders need to be their own devil’s advocate. Leaders must hold themselves to higher standards of research and analysis, as Facebook discovered in their efforts to deter the spread of false information.

The decisions we make are not immune from our own life experiences. Failures, successes, biases, and culture will affect how we initially judge a situation. Take the time to reframe a problem and search for a different way to an answer. Think about, for instance, how Warren Buffet’s “haircut days” became his time set aside for reflection rather than reaction.

Read

Reading allows us to revisit the pressure points of thought throughout history and apply the relevant lessons we find to the problems we face today. Business has clearly learned to quantify what we value; therefore, leaders can better understand the environments around them as long as they are in tune with society’s communiqués.

Reading forces a broader view as you must embrace the narrator’s mindset without being able to interrupt. In a video from Quartz, Microsoft founder Bill Gates promotes at least one hour of scheduled active reading a day.

Be Empathetic

Despite our progressive rhetoric, we closely adhere to the “us-versus-them” dialogue. Human thought has ironically become more reactive with the growing outlets for diverse opinions, groups, and beliefs.

Empathy, however, includes rather than excludes, and will prolong a company’s survival through cultivating a sustainable culture. An example of empathy in business is Patagonia, a Beneficial Corporation, or B-Corp, chartered to serve a charitable purpose beyond profit. Another example of working with technological change instead of catching up to it is investment funds giant BlackRock, taking a bold stand on climate change.

Survive and Prosper

Enhanced critical thinking skills combined with continuous customer feedback loops allow enlightened business leaders to leverage technological change, using it to find and conquer new markets.

Patrick O’Keefe is a passionate cultural translator whose background in foreign language and literature as well as international business strategy has cultivated a systems-oriented and hybrid mindset. As a freelance consultant with Brand Federation, Patrick offers critical thought and a beyond-the-numbers perspective.