How to develop critical thinking?

Employees in a startup, especially the early ones, struggle. One of the key reasons is the lack of critical thinking. Critical thinking, like any other skill, can develop and hone this attribute well. Like how we hone and stretch our body in a gym, our mind needs to be tested and pushed with deliberate thinking.

Three simple things that you can do to improve your critical thinking skills:

• Question assumptions: Every decision we take is based on assumptions. When the stakes on the findings are high, revisiting the assumptions is a good practice. For matters related to long-term strategy, we must test our assumptions thoroughly. The right questions might save years of effort and expense for the company. Consider every alternative decision and assumption and work through the scenarios to better judge. For example, if we decide on a customer persona, we must consider other possible personas and why they aren’t a better persona than the one we have chosen.

• Reason through logic: Carefully follow the sub-arguments and downstream thoughts for every argument. Are we making the right inference at every step of the idea? Do we have proper reasoning to make a sound conclusion? Understanding these reasonings would stretch our thinking limits and add a dash of criticality to our thinking.

• Diversify thought: Get different perspectives and points of view. An engineer can develop a different perspective by understanding the marketer's opinion. We need to spend more time with people who disagree with us. Networking, meeting people, reading what they are writing and sharing with the world expands our horizons of thinking. It’s more important to listen to others to develop critical thinking.

Reference: 3 Simple Habits to improve your critical thinking, Harvard Business Review, May 2019