Critical Thinking Skills and activities for Project Managers
Weaving critical thinking into your projects
Brought to You by Dave Litten
CRITICAL THINKING IS A CORE SKILL OF SUCCESSFUL PROJECT MANAGERS
Think back to how project management is applied. Activities, methods, processes, procedures and techniques only go so far...
Think about planning, monitoring and control.
Think about estimating and identifying risk respnses
Think about project strategies and approaches
Think about project controls
Think about delivery approaches
ALL of the above, and more, depend 100% upon Critical Thinking.
Think You Can Do WITH Critical Thinking?
Critical Thinking Skills and activities for Project Managers
Critical thinking is for everyone yet few are able or willing to do it. Critical thinking is a set of transferable skills that can be learned for one thing yet equally useful for any other. Critical thinking cuts across all academic disciplines and is applicable in all spheres of human activity - particularly project management where it becomes a toolbox for driving both career and project success.
So what are the key activities, abilities and attributes of a critical thinker?
Analytical skills
Like any one skilled in debate, critical thinkers demand properly constructed arguments that presents reasons and more sound conclusions
Tolerance
Critical thinkers delight in hearing diversion views and enjoy a real debate
Confidence
This is key since critical thinkers must be confident and able to examine views made by others, often those in authority
Curiosity
This is the essential ingredient for ideas and insights
Truth seeking
The critical thinkers are looking for objective truth even if it turns out to undermine their own previously held convictions and long cherished beliefs and even if this goes against their own self interest
"There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a gang of facts"
You need to learn how to identify other peoples arguments and conclusions and go on to interpret and produce your argument more effectively. This means you will want to read between the lines, see behind services and identify false assumptions.
To be successful as a project manager it is vital that you apply critical thinking within the planning, monitoring, and control of your projects
The Soft Stuff Matters
Critical thinking skills is the backbone to Critical Decision-making, which in and of itself, leads to successful change management and project delivery success.
But don´t take my word for it…just listen to The Project Management Institute (PMI), and their Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK) 6th Edition now includes The Talent Triangle:
Check out the “technical, strategic and business management bits above…these cannot be learned by rote alone.
See, Critical Thinking Skills is about a range of skills and understandings – the kind of open-mindedness that allows you to make creative leaps and gain insights.
Get this...
Demand over the next 10 years for project managers is growing faster than demand for workers in other occupations. Organizations, however, face risks from this talent gap.
This talent gap analysis shows that project managers are important contributors to productivity. Talent shortages in the profession can potentially create risks of nearly $208 billion in GDP over the next 10-year period up to 2028
The latest PMI-commissioned talent gap analysis has found outstanding opportunities in jobs and career growth for project managers.
From the present day up to 2028, the project management skills and jobs are expected to grow by 33 percent, or nearly 22 million new jobs.
By 2027, employers will need nearly 88 million individuals in project management-oriented roles
If you need to become a Project Management Professional (PMP), then click below
What has this to do with Critical Thinking Skills and activities for Project Managers?
To answer this, we need to look again at the life-skills of critical thinking…
Critical thinking Questions - The Assertibility Question (AQ)
This weeds out wobbly views having shaky evidence from sensible theories that are worth serious consideration.
To use AQ you ask what evidence allows you to assert that the claim is true.
This will include questions such as:
Every day we are bombarded by problems and situations needing to be evaluated and solved.
The challenge is to view these from different perspectives and all too often we make decisions only based on previous similar situations or experiences.
This can lead to cloudy decision-making since we are often affected by emotional thinking, poorly prioritized facts and external influences that may not be relevant.
Then compare and contrast this with critical thinking which builds a rational and open minded process built upon information and empirical evidence.
Critical Thinking Skills Definition:
“ an intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information that has been gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication”
Critical thinking provides the skills to judge and evaluate situations that is based on understanding the related data. It is analyzed to build a clear understanding of the problem, a proper solution identified, and then to take actions based on that solution.
The power of the critical thinking process is that it prevents our minds from jumping directly to conclusions, and instead, leads the mind through a set of logical steps to widen the range of perspectives, to accept the findings, sidestep personal biases, and consider reasonable possibilities.
Critical Thinking - The 6 Basic Steps
To determine what are the critical thinking questions, here are the six basic steps:
Step 1. Knowledge
Here, we need a clear vision, starting with identifying the argument or the problem that needs to be resolved. Open questioning is used to acquire a deep understanding about the problem or situation.
This involves the use of open ended questioning to discuss and explore the main reasons or root causes. A clear understanding must be obtained of what the problem is and why do we need to solve it.
Step 2. Comprehension
You need to fully understand the situation along with the facts that align and support it. The way in which you collect such facts will depend upon the research methods used, and this in turn will depend upon the problem, the type of data and information available, and any constraints.
Step 3. Application
This is the next practical step following comprehension, and builds to fully understand the different facts and resources needed to solve the problem. Mind maps are helpful here to analyze the situation while building a strong relationship between it and the core problem while resolving the best way to move forward.
Step 4. Analyze
This step builds on the information and linkages identified from the main problem, and analysis to close to identify the strong and weak points plus the challenges faced one identifying a solution to the problem.
The main causes are prioritized to determine how they can be applied, and one of the most often used tools here to analyze the problem and those circumstances that surround it, is the cause and effect diagram, which isolates the problem from its root causes and identifies such causes so that they can be categorized on their type an impact on the problem.
Step 5. Synthesis
Once the problem has been fully analyzed and the related data has been considered, a decision needs to be taken how the problem can be solved along with the initial set of actions required.
If there are several identified solutions, then each should be evaluated and prioritized to identify the best solution approach. It is here that SWOT analysis can be helpful in identifying the solutions strength, weakness, opportunity, and threats.
SWOT Analysis
If they are to interpret and use the SWOT analysis, the project can form the strategy based on the following factors:
Step 6. Take Action
The final step is to build a problem valuation that can be put into action, as the final result of critical thinking should be transferred into actionable steps. Within a project, a plan of action should be implemented to ensure that the solution is adopted and implemented as planned.
Summary
The critical thinking method is used to replace the emotions and biases when dealing with a situation or a problem. The advantage of using critical thinking is its contribution to widening perspectives about situations and providing a broader range of action choices to ensure that the decided resolution is implemented and integrated between all the involved individuals and organizations.
Critical Thing Tools
The Cause and Effect Diagram
The cause and effect diagram is helpful when exploring problems and their solution:
How to solve problems using the cause and effect diagram
The cause and effect diagram is also known as the Ishikawa diagram or fishbone diagram.
For its successful use, a clear problem definition is first needed so that the proper solution can be targeted.
Additionally, the root causes behind the problem must also be carefully analysed.
The Ishikawa diagram has two main sections, causes on the left hand side, and effect on the right-hand side.
Possible problem causes are thought through by creating branches from the line that links cause and effect. This type of diagram has a focus on solving problems rather than exploring ideas which is normally the case when applying critical thinking skills.
The headings used to brainstorm the various problem causes, can vary from industry to industry, and as an example here are typical cause headings for three industries:
There are four steps to create the Fishbone diagram:
- 1Identify the problems. The defects, or problem, results from one or several causes, for these reasons the problem must be clearly identified so that potential related causes can be investigated
- 2A straight horizontal line should be drawn as a link between cause and effect, so that general causes such as the three cause models mentioned above can be drawn as branches from this main line
- 3Once the main general categories have been added, all possible causes for the problem can now be investigated and organized under the general categories
- 4The final step is to investigate and discuss each possible cause and organize them in priority and influence order
Critical Thinking and Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is a tool to help understand ideas and collaboration. Those who use Mind mapping for critical thinking can improve their productivity by 25%.
It is also used to support the project management process and can easily be integrated when performing project management planning.
I include here an excellent example (not my own) showing how the use of diagrams and colors help convey easily identified and remembered relationships. As stated at the center of this diagram, this is an example of brainstorming the various elements of time management:
Critical Thinking - Real World Example
Here at Projex Academy, we have the market leader in online streaming training the world´s project management community. Our Flagship training course is for the PRINCE2 Methodology.
First, I generated a Mind map on the structure and application of the PRINCE2 Methodology, then I performed root cause analysis to determine customer-demand potential training spin-offs.
This resulted in created TWO new products - BOTH of which are UNIQUE to the project management training industry. They are:
Both have been selling like hot cakes since their launch a few months back - click on their images below to find out more...THANK YOU Critical Thinking!
