The Blog:
Notes on Applied Thinking
I started this blog and companion website hoping for some good discussions about thinking, about the pitfalls and roadblocks to good thinking, and about the techniques we use to think better. It seems to me that one of the strongest tools we have for breakthrough thinking is to listen to the perspectives of other people. I hope you'll join in. MikeD
Categories:
Thinking in General
Thinking and Communications
Thinking and Education
Thinking and Marketing
Thinking and Business
The Most Recent Blog
Playtime is Over
My newspaper reports that we're taking playtime and recess away from young students and shifting that time to intense new reading programs. It’s all part of an effort to raise standardized test scores.
The idea is to start kids reading in kindergarten. Then when it counts -- that is, later when the standardized tests are given -- they’ll meet federal objectives. Let’s hope it works because the price is high.
Children need playtime to relate to knowledge. They won’t get that by doing reading speed drills. They need time to explore their own creativity. They’re losing that time in this frenzied drive for test results. Just as important, they need to learn teamwork and socialization skills. These skills are increasingly ignored as we single-mindedly prepare kids for The Tests.
Much of the support for early reading programs comes from parents. You can’t blame them for wanting their children to get a jumpstart on the success track; preparing for the right college and the right job begins early.
That track, today, seems less solid than ever. Reports tell us that US students are slipping behind students in other nations in important measurements, especially in college. At one time, we might have ignored some slipping. But now we’re living in a globalized world where US jobs are up for grabs.
Student accomplishment does matter; however, simply focusing on basic skills won’t produce the educations we need to compete. If Americans are going to be able to land premium salary jobs, they must possess premium value skills. In our world, that value is the ability to think well. The Three Rs (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic) and other basic learning aren’t enough; it’s what you can do with that knowledge that counts. And that takes thinking skills.
Here’s why we shouldn’t sacrifice play time for reading drills. Thinking skills often emerge first during play time, built on a foundation of the Three Cs. The Three Cs are curiosity, courage, and creativity. Curiosity starts our thinking; we then need courage to pursue those thoughts into creative expression.
Obviously, we need both the Three Rs and the Three Cs, but there is an important difference. The Three Rs can be taught, but we must learn the Three Cs from something inside us. We find that something by exploring our world, a process that best starts in young childhood -- in something as unstructured as playtime.
There is no easy answer: basic, rote learning is important. So is learning to think.
Trading the exploration of childhood for higher levels of rote learning won’t
give us the win that we’re seeking.
MikeD
Thinking in General
Stovetop Thinking
“Why write about thinking? Ideas are just things that bubble up from our acquired knowledge.”
I heard this comment about a year ago, and it has stuck in my mind ever since. Why, indeed, study and ponder something we get for free?
This person sees thinking as some sort of convection process. Conceived in a stew of knowledge, ideas are forced to the surface where we can savor them.
Actually, it’s not a bad explanation of one phase of thinking. But as you examine this stovetop model, you can see the points where thinking can make all the difference. You choose the pieces of knowledge that are the ingredients in your recipe. In the cooking process, a lot of ideas begin to burst out of the stew; you must choose among them. Then you must decide how to season those ideas and get them ready to be served to an uncertain future.
Of course, as the observer implied a year ago, none of this intervention is required. Those ideas will bubble to the surface without our help and we can simply grab the most convenient one for our needs.
Now what we must decide is whether careful thought can improve our cooking. I think so.
MikeD
Technorati Tags:
stovetop thinking, acquired knowledge
Battling Brain Fog
Why is it that athletes understand the importance of taking care of their bodies, but almost no one places the same importance on taking care of their brains?
The brain functions much like other parts of our bodies. Treat it well and it will work better. According to an article in the March 2008 issue of Consumer Reports on Health, a little stress can be a good thing, improving awareness and even increasing energy. Prolonged stress, however, pushes us in the opposite direction, sapping energy and producing “brain fog.”
In America’s workaholic-worshipping culture, it’s good to see publications suggest that a little more sleep and a lot less stress can allow us to be much more productive.
I’m not talking about the Henry Ford-style, commoditized worker. If a job is reduced to autopilot simplicity, maybe working twelve hours a day can be more productive than working eight.
But does anybody really believe that America can survive as a top-tier nation by
encouraging cheap labor business models? We need jobs that demand more of our
brains, not less. And people who want to work at demanding levels of comprehension
and creativity need all of their brain cells flashing. Brain fog is out of place.
MikeD
Passion and Reason
Passion poisons deliberate thought, at least that’s what we’ve been taught for the last two millennia. And most of us probably believe it. We see an angry person with a bright red face, shaking, sweating, unable to articulate a thought and rightly decide that we wouldn’t want this person to calculate our tax return. At least, until they calm down.
But excess amounts of detached reason works much like excess amounts of passion. Either can be highly distracting at extreme levels. At more moderate levels, however, reason and passion inform our perceptions and enable us to make the best possible judgments.
For incredibly interesting discussions of the reason-passion/mind-body interaction, you need to read Descartes’ Error by Antonio R. Damasio.
If you want a broader context, I don’t think you can do any better than Consilience,
the Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson. “…passion is inseverably
linked to reason. Emotion is not just a perturbation of reason but a vital
part of it.” (Edward O. Wilson).
MikeD
Considering Pre-Thinking
Our culture is only just beginning to view thinking as a skill worth learning. I certainly don’t want to steal any energy away from this central issue of our time. But it seems to me that we should also encourage attention to activities that precede conscious thinking, when the cognitive compounds begin to bubble and assemble. I’ll call it pre-thinking.
I’d guess that people who question the importance of conscious thinking probably give no attention at all to pre-thinking. If they did, they’d find that any of the pre-thinking activities make conscious thinking easier and more productive. Pre-thinking gives birth to thoughts the same way the primordial ooze on our new planet eventually yielded life.
Travel is an example of pre-thinking. Travel forces us to see other realities. Actually, anything that makes us curious is a pre-thinking activity. Anything that makes us want to make sense out of confusion is a pre-thinking activity.
For me, the most obvious example of pre-thinking is reading. Reading isn’t thinking, but reading pushes, badgers, and seduces us into thinking. Once we’re into a book, our minds start thinking: What do we think about the writer's ideas? How do the ideas relate to us?
In our busy lives, we have less and less time for the activities of pre-thinking.
In particular, I’ve read several articles lately about the death of readership in America.
Nobody has time for books. Sort of begs the question, what are we thinking?
MikeD
So Exactly How Free is Our Thinking?
At one time, I'd have said that Free Will is always ours unless we give it away. Even people who are imprisoned or enslaved, while they've lost much of their freedom of action, can still have their freedom of thought.
I still like that concept, and I still believe it with reservations. Now, however, I see Free Will as less of a birthright and more of a prize that we must earn. There are many good books on the topic, such as Daniel C. Dennett's Freedom Evolves. Anyone who ever described themselves as "open minded" should read something about the elusive and precious nature of Free Will. And be sure to read some of the writers who scoff at even the possibility of Free Will.
In case you thought that saying "the devil made me do it" was just a punchline,
you need to reconsider. There are a lot of different devils making the unaware
among us do all sorts of things. Even awareness of the challenges does not
ensure open minds and free decisions. But awareness and no small amount of
courage are the only tools we have. They, at least, enable us to hope that we
can exercise a bit of Free Will.
MikeD
Innovation and Creative Thinking
If you believe, as I once did, that thinking processes are universal in human beings, you might want to rethink. If you believe that logic and reason are the only bases for good decision-making, you should know that approximately half of the world’s population doesn’t agree with you.
“The research shows that there are indeed dramatic differences in the nature of Asian and European thought processes.” (The Geography of Thought, Richard E. Nisbett). This East-West argument is highly interesting and each side predictably claims to have a better way of thinking.
To me, however, the most profound result of this discussion is the liberation from
dogma. Here we are, believing that there is only one way to think and
suddenly we learn there are at least two ways to think, maybe more. For
innovation and creativity, this should be a great inducement to step out of the box, throw away the
rules, and take a fresh approach.
Mike
Thinking and Communications
The Power of Telepresence
Advertisers are delighted. Computer games are helping them reconnect with young males, a maverick audience that’s tough to communicate with. The trend is to use embedded product placements in the games. (The Coke you see someone drinking or the billboard for Listerine look like scenery or background in a game or movie, but advertisers pay to have these products "embedded"; that is, placed in the action.)
The challenge for advertisers is how to capture facile, demanding minds whose attention span has shrunk to the size of a blinking cursor. Advertising in popular computer games solves the problem.
For communicators, the larger question is why computer games are such a successful medium.
In computer games, the key to success is the ability to establish telepresence, which is the sense of actually being in the game world. Give people a sense of being transported into the game and then add the reality of “user control” of the medium. This is the main enticement that keeps gamers playing for hours.
All sorts of communicators should be paying attention. Telepresence along with user control are tools that can easily be applied in web sites and shared user sites. The dynamic nature of news, one certain application, makes it an ideal platform for these tools.
Beyond these applications, the question looms as to whether bursty,
user-interactive tools can be used with messages requiring reflection and deeper
thought. For minds that demand telepresence and control in their media, can game
tools be used to build bridges into thinking itself? The mind is, after all,
where the action is.
MikeD
Thinking and Education
Public education:
Just another burden?
One of the major themes in this website is that thinking is a learnable skill. Some of this learning comes from life experience, but experience has limitations. You’re learning anecdotally, with trial and error, some aspects of thinking. The question is, what are you missing?
Usually, what’s missing are breadth, structure, and a good general plan for effective thinking. The best way to get these powerful skills is in school, in a program aimed at teaching thinking.
Today, such thinking programs seem to be seriously threatened as we cope with the current tough economic times. Regardless of how long the economic downturn lasts, the effect on so-called non-basic programs, such as teaching thinking, threatens to be very long lasting.
A view is emerging that public education is a burden that a sensible culture would
minimize. In reality, of course, an educated population is a national resource.
The better that resource, the more we’ll see high quality jobs and a high
standard of living for Americans.
MikeD
Teaching Thinking
As a marketer, I know that teaching thinking needs some success stories. We as a nation and we as funders of efforts to teach thinking need validation. Answer the question, please: Does it work?
The most aggressive statement that I could find in the Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning (2005) was this: “…the history of efforts to teach thinking provides proofs for [achievement in key areas], at least to some extent.” Wow, that’s weak stuff to take to the market.
I know that academia shuns hyperbole and overstatement, appropriately. Still, I believe if solid evidence of success were abundant, the Cambridge Handbook would have reflected that.
That doesn't mean that success in teaching thinking isn't happening. It almost certainly means that it is typically unreported.
If you're seeing successful critical thinking education, I hope you'll tell
us about it on our blog.
MikeD
Challenges of Online Learning
I posted a blog recently on the usefulness of presence and user control in communication media. Presence is the sense of being inside the story rather than simply observing it. User control takes presence a step farther, enabling the user to affect the direction of the communication. Computer gaming, for example, uses these attributes to entice gamers and maintain their interest.
I suggested in the blog that communicators increasingly would look for ways to use the power of these same attributes in other types of communications. One of the fastest growing and most important examples is in online learning.
Online learning is effective in making participants feel that they are part of an interpersonal community (presence) and that their participation is important and can guide the discussion (user control). Students also seem more willing to make comments and overcome shyness in these online environments.
But online learning also comes with its own unique set of problems. The success of online learning, for example, can lead to its failure.
The interpersonal community feeling works to encourage participation and satisfaction. Yet, that same feeling of community often make students unwilling to challenge others’ views or to introduce provocative ideas.
One of the most difficult skills to learn and to teach is the ability to argue forcefully without interjecting personality. The idea, not the ego, is the thing. Developing that attitude has usually been accomplished only in person and with care. Responsible argumentation can work online, but not without awareness of the issue and a lot of practice.
Another, critical problem seems also related to the social environment. With online learning, discussions tend to be superficial. Evidence of deep, reflective thinking is typically absent in online discussions.
Deeper and more challenging discussions generally require a guide and leadership. When students and teacher are physically present in the same classroom, establishing leadership is easier.
Online teachers need to set the agenda and pull in the students. Student control of discussions can still be substantial, but focused on exploration and synthesis within the agenda.
Distance learning will continue to grow in importance, meeting needs that can’t be satisfied any other way. My guess is that presence and user control, with some creative refinements, will continue to be central to the success.
For some research and analysis done on this topic, I recommend an article by
Paula San Millan Maurino, “Online asynchronous threaded discussions: Good enough
to advance students through the proximal zone of Activity Theory?”, published in
TechTrends (Mar/Apr 2007).
MikeD
Critical of Critical Thinking
I've noticed a growing number of people trashing Critical Thinking. The main gripe seems to be that Critical Thinking is limited, that there is a lot more to applied thinking. I completely agree; Critical Thinking leaves vast areas untouched. However, it seems to me that the people who use this issue as a way to trash Critical Thinking simply aren't thinking very well.
Most people seem to like everything distilled, simplified, and digestible in nanoseconds. These are the same people who want to take a diet pill instead of exercising, eating wisely, and monitoring their total health.
Thinking is the Big Game; it's the game we have to play to succeed. In the Big Game there are infinite facets, directions, and gambits. There will never be a complete thinking system. There will always be other perspectives and solutions.
The great thing about Critical Thinking is that it has gotten thinking recognized as a necessary part of education. Memorizing test answers, we suddenly learn, does not provide an adequate education.
Another great thing about Critical Thinking is that it forces metacognition;
that is, it forces us to visualize and critique our own thinking.
But I, too, hope that Critical Thinking is the first - and not the only - mechanism
that we find to introduce thinking to a broader population.
MikeD
Thinking and Marketing
Reading the Consumer
Barry commented on my last blog:
Mike,
I read your June 18 blog. Interesting as far as it goes, but how are they going to nail the
moving target called the consumer? Any ideas?
Barry
My response:
Well, I’m glad you asked. I left two implicit questions in the blog. One is how are they going to nail the moving target consumer. The other is, if neither rational nor emotional thinking hold the answer to “marketing thinking,” what does?
I think that the key to the consumer is entailed in this curious blend of wanting everything online but also wanting experiences and sensations. What seems to be happening in this evolving culture is that people are becoming starved for relationships. The explosive growth of social networking shows this. I go online with Facebook and tell you all about me because I want ME to be important to you. So we all get our profiles out there and swap them around in an attempt to simulate relationships. What is texting? It’s communication (a component of relationship) taken to its most sterile extreme of terse, crypto-writing and a smiley face represented by a colon and a closed parenthesis to show emotion.
Consumers will remain a moving target. They’ll continue to look for virtual relationships, find them unsatisfactory, and move to the next virtual simulation that promises more. Isn’t this what reality TV is all about, simulating real experiences? Marketers are going to keep playing with these experiential and sensory virtualizations to connect with the consumer.
In this virtual vortex, none of these simulations will remain popular for a long time (more than a few years). So marketers will spread their bets and look for gimmicks that herald the next popular simulation of reality.
The trick here is to find some stability for selling products. Marketers will come up with messages and formats that are portable among media. Advertising games are the most successful example of this: a game you can play online that carries an advertising message. Guess what? Games are even more popular when multiple people play the same game in a simulation of relationships. In these situations, whole social structures begin to form with leaders, nice guys, mean guys, sycophants, etc.
And what is the answer to the rational versus emotional thinking? My bet is that the consumer will continue to shift toward emotional thinking and marketers, to remain connected, will follow along. There are some practical reasons for this. Short messages are the lingua vita of the day. It’s very difficult to write short messages (e.g., sound bytes, ads) that don’t depend on emotion-rich content to signify meaning. Also, popular experiential and sensory messages are emotional, not rational.
So, I think marketers must rely heavily on emotional thinking to anticipate consumers.
But both marketers and consumers will simulate reason for a little mental
stimulation and the appearance of sanity. Reason is good; our emotions say so.
MikeD
Positioning a Moving Target
The mind of western culture gets curiouser and curiouser. We seem to crave two entirely different existences. The most obvious existence is the online world. We play, interact, shop, and learn through a digital interface. How pervasive is it? At least one study indicates that most of us prefer to use text messages to break up a relationship, even when we’re sitting next to each other.
The other craving, paradoxically, is for experience. Marketers are learning that mass marketing messages have lost their punch. As consumers, we want to test, taste, and touch before we purchase. Simple product-awareness advertising doesn’t engage the senses.
Marketers often have to straddle these two worlds. Online retailing, for instance, continues to grow in popularity: consumers like the great variety of products, the easy accessibility of product information, and the prices found online. But for all the appeal of online, those same consumers like touching the product and taking it home immediately rather than waiting for snail mail delivery.
One solution may be to encourage online information access for feature or price comparisons while people are shopping in the store. But creativity goes both ways. Online retailers are trying to make online shopping more social and more fun, while adding sensory elements.
Of course, retailers and manufacturers have to find the consumers before they can sell to them. And where are the consumers? Today, they’re at social networking sites, not watching TV or checking their bulk e-mail.
The market reality is that consumers are changing faster than even their product
preferences. And the changes often defy either rational or emotional reasoning.
One thing seems certain, however. The consumer is a moving target and marketing
decisions must be predictive rather than reactive.
MikeD
Perceptions aren’t Reality
One of the most dangerous bits of nonsense in postmodern philosophy is that “perception is reality.” True, we see perceptions, not reality. But reality exists under the perceptions. When black holes were first hypothesized, we couldn’t see them, but we could see their influence in the cosmos. In a similar way, we see the influence of reality even though we can’t see it directly. Marketing offers examples of why this issue is so important.
Marketers spend much of their time managing perceptions, framing messages with calibrated precision for their clients. They try to understand the perceptions of their markets and create new perceptions to guide the markets.
All that is fine. If I’m selling you a horse, I may speak of her as if she were a cross between Pegasus and Black Beauty. You, in response, may openly speculate on whether you have ever seen worse conformation. We’re both selling competing perceptions in the hopes of finding a real basis for a sale.
That’s the point. Beneath our perceptions is the real horse. The existence of reality lets us find common ground. Without reality, we would find communication simply a shadowy blur of vague impressions.
Marketers are selling perceptions. But marketers should never forget that a real product
exists under the most finely woven veils of perception. They sell the perception, but
the product that the consumer takes home and uses is no perception. It’s a real
product. If the gap between perception and reality is great, the consumer will find
endless ways to repay the deception.
MikeD
Thinking and Business
The Key to Success
Business people love case studies. “Here’s how they did it” could be used as the subtitle for most of the books and magazine articles circulating around businesses and business schools.
But few people really find success in case-study obsession. Yes, the case study shows success, but the key to that success tends to be elusive, obscured by details. The knowledge and execution that define the case study are misleading.
What the case studies show are people who broke the mold. They didn’t imitate; imitation wouldn’t have made them successful and we won’t be successful by imitating them. A particular mold can be broken only once. Striking a broken mold merely produces a dull thud.
Reading case studies, often we mistakenly believe that the knowledge we receive can reproduce success. It can’t. The key to success is a product of our thinking skills. Knowledge gives us something to think about, but knowledge is never the question or the answer. Critical thinking skills produce those.
At one time, knowledge could make success. Today, in the Internet Age, knowledge is free and ubiquitous; therefore, it has little unique value. We’re drawn to knowledge the same way that we’re drawn to the back of a math book to find the answers. Yet, there is no power in knowing the answer. Power is in the critical thinking process that originates the answers.
The value of thinking is brought out in a recent article in Harvard Business Review. The article finds that top business leaders rely on integrative thinking for creative ideas. They use knowledge from multiple sources and then build a synthesized idea that reflects existing knowledge but is ultimately unique.
According to the article this process is the “hallmark of exceptional businesses and
the people who run them.” (Martin, Roger. How Successful Leaders Think, Harvard
Business Review; June 2007.)
MikeD
Think Fast, Think Well
Business in a rapidly changing, highly competitive world requires fast thinking. But fast thinking by itself creates a conflict.
The reason for thinking fast is that we need speed to stay relevant to fast-changing situations. The problem is that we usually base fast thinking (another name for intuition) on old knowledge and experiences. "It worked before; it'll work again."
If you simply grab a convenient intuition to make decisions or recommendations, your thinking will be a day late and, yes, a dollar short in the competitive race. You need to find ways to make fast thinking synonymous with new or at least current thinking.
In a fast-thinking environment, learn to process lots of real-time information. Great fast thinkers can’t rely on last year’s knowledge alone. When things are changing fast, your knowledge base better be keeping pace. Intuition comes from the personal knowledge base inside your brain. Good real-time information partners with intuition to enable fast thinking that is also relevant to the moment.
Another aspect of fast-thinking environments is surprise. The world is changing and not necessarily the way you anticipate. Good real-time knowledge helps you sense directions, but surprises still occur. In fact, the toughest competitors in business create surprises.
Intuition can be very effective in dealing with surprise. In a fast-thinking environment,
intuition typically initiates action followed by new intuition in a continuous cycle.
This serial intuition (driven by real-time input) is the best tool for quickly handling
surprises. You can even use it to help generate a few surprises of your own.
MikeD
The Business of Thinking
"The Business of Thinking" -- hummm. Titles are interesting because they're supposed to either explain everything up front, or suggest a promising direction. I kind of hope The Business of Thinking does both.
My premise is that thinking is the central business of us humans if we're going to progress and accomplish anything. I'd say that most people, including people who think very well, treat thinking as an automatic process. If you're born with a good brain, people believe you can think well. Otherwise, you can't.
Now what other serious activity do we treat so fatalistically? If you want to start a business, you study business. If you want to build a bridge, you study engineering. Reasonably, if you want to think well, you study thinking. Good thinkers are not born, they're built, either from good parenting, good schooling, hard work, or all of the above.
And good thinkers cannot treat their thinking apparatus like a black box. They
need to open the lid, check the apparatus out, and most importantly, see what
they can do to make the thinking apparatus work better. In other words, treat
thinking like your primary business. And why not? Everything we will accomplish
is the result of the quality of our thinking.
MikeD