The ability to think critically has become a lost art
Team update: A lot has happened since this blog - all great things! We’re now in the United States and our new product launched in November 2021, helping teams in fast-growing organizations find and hire their best-fit junior and mid-level talent in Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Customer Success. Try it here for free. This means some of our articles before this date may have product shots that look a little different. That’s all from us, enjoy the blog.
At Hatch, we look for individuals with enduring skills and attributes for an evolving world. In this series, we're exploring these carefully selected traits, why we care about them and why we think their important for the changing world of work.
The term “fake news” gets bandied about regularly as social media drives the dissemination of information based on popularity rather than accuracy. And we’re quick to have a laugh at the expense of whoever has fallen victim to believing A Raw Goat Milk Cleanse will Eradicate your Parasites or that the Pope endorsed Donald Trump.
But stewing below the surface are more harmful byproducts of the public’s inability to discern fact from fiction; from the spread of misinformation impacting political elections to bots posting tweets denying climate change
. Lazy journalism has always been an issue and now with social media, it has turned into an epidemic given the intensity of its global reach.
The concept of fake news is just one example of when an individual’s critical thinking skills can serve them well in the age of information overload. It has never been more important to filter through the noise and examine information objectively and honestly when making important decisions. That's when you can prove your ability to think critically.
But the issue with critical thinking is no-one is thinking critically about it.
They teach it at university, right?
There’s an assumption that universities are teaching critical thinking skills. But the reality is, there isn’t a universally agreed-upon way of teaching critical thinking and only a few people that are clear about what “critical thinking” actually is.
At Hatch, we define critical thinking as the aptitude to analyse and solve difficult problems as the basis for thinking agility and high-quality work. If the next generation is to survive and thrive amidst a rapidly changing world, then they must be able to sift through an abundance of information, take in what is relevant and make use of it to respond to complex problems and ideas.
What does an average university student’s day involve? For many, it consists of taking notes, memorising facts and maybe having that knowledge tested by filling in circles on multiple-choice tests. These parameters leave little room for students to pick up the mental tools needed to consider different bits of information and synthesize to choose an effective action. A curriculum of standardised tests leaves no space or time for exercises in critical thinking.
Critical thinking isn’t important, it’s essential
Students of today are our business leaders of the future and we must teach them to be disposed to being critical. And it isn’t just for young people; if you consider yourself a lifelong learner, you should always be testing your assumptions. Without critical thinking, we will let history repeat the mistakes of previous generations of leaders.
You don’t have to look hard to find evidence of business leaders who are not taking the time to reason and consider an issue from different perspectives. Take Adam Neumann as an example; WeWork’s co-founder and evangelist. Having built a multi-billion dollar organisation, it all fell to pieces when he let his ambition get ahead of his ability to run a profitable business. For Neumann, it was much easier to choose evidence that supported his existing beliefs, rather than think critically to ascertain the actual reality of the situation.
It is cases like WeWork which propel the need for critical thinking forward, alongside several other ‘enterprise skills’. These skills enable young people to be enterprising and navigate the challenges of the complex world they will inherit according to a report from the Foundation for Young Australians. Over the past three years, the proportion of jobs that demand critical thinking as a skill has increased by 158% as employers value workers who can generate out-of-the-box ideas and solutions. A report from McKinsey Global Institute echoes this sentiment, predicting a dramatic increase in demand for more employee hours dedicated to critical thinking.
As technology breaks out of it silos, soft skills like critical thinking are in-demand to evaluate and explore new ways we can apply technology. It is also a means for preventing real-life social problems that come with the complexity of a hyper-connected world. Businesses need employees who will question what they do and how they do it. Relying on ‘tried and proven’ methods is more comfortable, but operating on auto-pilot won’t keep pace with the rate of change in the evolving world of work.
So, how do we developing critical thinking as a skill?
If there is no common framework in schools or universities honing critical thinking, how can we independently cultivate it as a habit of the mind?
Start by asking “how” and “why” questions. We need to go beyond questions where can find the answers through a quick web search. This is what lulls us into a false sense of security based on superficial knowledge. By going beyond the bare facts, it causes us to think about a subject.
Can you then find evidence to defend how you know this? It helps if you question any assumptions to make sure your pieces of evidence build on each other to produce a reasonable conclusion.
Now consider it from a different perspective. No-one is immune to groupthink, so you should seek out diversity of thought and collaborate with people that have a different point of view. Think back to the problem of “fake news”; it is spread so voraciously through social media algorithms that only serve us content that fits our individual world views.
Finally, keep repeating this process. Critical thinking isn’t an innate gift that you can’t develop; repetition will make it second nature to you.
