Critical Thinking
and Structured Writing Course
Edward De’Bono says, ‘Analysis,
judgement and argument are not enough. Critical destruction has never produced
a better one. It is creativity that produces the better hypotheses. Exlectics seek to lead out or
pull-out of the situation, what is of value –no matter on which side it is to
be found. With exlectics emphasis would be on ‘designing forward’ rather than
on judgement at each stage. It is a revealing fact that even today, no
McKinsey’ report goes out without being structured through the ‘Pyramid
Principle’ of Barbara Minto.
MECE way! - The Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principal book talks about MECE and
other models.
Minto worked with McKinsey as a Consultant and was the first woman
employee sponsored by McKinsey for Harvard Education! All McKinsey reports
invariable follow the Pyramid Principle and MECE concepts!
A central tenet of analytical problem solving is your considering
all the possible solutions to your problem exactly once; that is, your approach
must be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (sometimes written as
“mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive”)—or MECE (pronounced “me see”).
MECE thinking is very popular with strategy consultancies,
including the McKinsey, Bain, and BCG of the world. In fact the case interview
that these companies filter their applicants which is designed to test whether
you can think in a MECE-way. It is understandable: MECE thinking is both
efficient and elegant; so let’s look at what it means and how you become an
effective MECE thinker.
Mutually exclusive (ME)
means “no overlaps.”
Two sets of elements are mutually exclusive when they don’t
intersect: you cannot have an element belonging to both sets at the same time.
When you are mutually exclusive in your approach, you consider
each potential solution only once, hereby ensuring that you do not duplicate
efforts. (In the tile roof of the image above, that means that you don’t have
several tiles stacked up to cover the same spot.)
Mutually exclusive thinking forces you to consider the details,
seeing the individual tree as opposed to the forest. It helps you ensure that
each element is different than the others.
So if your key question is “How can I go from New York City to
London?” and you reply by first dividing means of transportation between
“flying” and “travelling by sea”, you are organizing the possible solutions to
your problem in a mutually exclusive way (since if you’re flying you are not
travelling by sea at the same time).
Collectively exhaustive
(CE) means “no gap”
Groups of solutions are collectively exhaustive when, in between
them, they include all the possible answers to your problem.
When your analysis is collectively exhaustive, it includes all
possible solutions at least once. (In the tile roof of the image above, that
means that you’ve covered the entire area, with one or several layers of tiles,
leaving no gaps.)
Collectively exhaustive thinking helps you ensure that you do not
forget possible solutions; that is, you must be innovative, viewing the forest
as opposed to its individual trees.
Thinking in a collectively exhaustive fashion when you’re
considering ways of going from NYC to London means that by considering air- and
sea-transportation, you have found a complete set of answers to your problem (since
there are no land connections between the US and the UK, so you cannot travel
by land, and teletransportation still doesn’t exist).
Being MECE will drastically
improve your thinking.
MECE thinking is perhaps the most important concept in analytical problem
solving. The concept is simple to understand but it can be challenging to apply
in some fields. That’s because we’re usually better at either considering
minute details or the big picture but not both, let alone at the same time.
Becoming a strong MECE thinker takes training and you should make it a habit to
think in MECE ways.
Making it a habit means that, each time you are confronting a new
problem, you need to actively look for a MECE way to break it down in its root
causes and/or solve it. All your issues trees have to be MECE.
In day-to-day life, you can also train yourself to be better at
thinking in a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive way: each time
you’re looking at a series of items, ask yourself if they are MECE. Whenever
you see or hear a list of things—listening to the latest tirade of your
favourite politician or the verbose argument of a close friend—ask yourself if
it is indeed MECE. Become obsessive about it. If you start waking up in the
middle of the night yelling “This is not MECE!”, then you’re on the right
track…
Thinking course by Edward DeBono-
The quickest and the most reliable way to be rewarded for
intelligence is to prove someone else wrong. Such a strategy gives you an
immediate result and also establishes your superiority. Being constructive is
much less rewarding. It may take years to show that a new idea works. Further
more you have to depend on the listener liking your idea. So it is obvious that
being
critical and destructive is much more appealing use of intelligence.
This is made even worse by the absurd western notion that
‘critical thinking’ is enough. Analysis, judgement and argument are
not enough. Critical destruction has never produced a better one. It is
creativity that produces the better hypothesis. Perception is how we look at the
world.
Professor David Perkins at
Harvard has shown that almost all the errors of thinking are errors of
perception.
In real life logical errors are quite rare. Yet we persist in
believing that thinking is all a matter of avoiding logical errors.
If your perception is limited then flawless logic will give you an
incorrect answer.
Perception works as a
‘self-organising information system.’
The tool method is much easier and more effective than other
methods of teaching.
Teaching people to avoid mistake is very limited. You could avoid
all mistakes in driving by leaving the car in the garage.
The
PMI tool-
Exhorting people to take a balanced view is not very effective.
P stands for Plus or
the good points
M stands for Minus or
the bad points
I stands for
Interesting or the interesting points.
PMI is an attention directing tool.
PMI is the first of CORT
lessons. CORT stands for Cognitive Research Trust.
The PMI sets the mood of objectivity and scanning. The ‘I’
encourages the deliberate habit of exploring the matter outside the judgement
framework. Another aspect of ‘I’ is to see if the idea leads to another idea. I
trains the mind to react to the interest inherent in a idea and not just to
judgement things about the idea. A thinker should be able to
say: ‘I do not like your idea but there are these interesting aspects to it..’.
As a habit of mind the PMI is specifically designed to force us to
scan in those situations where otherwise, we should deem scanning unnecessary.
The PMI is useful because
it is more oblique than direct disagreement or confrontation.
The
APC tool-
A stands for
Alternatives
P stands for
Possibilities
C stands for Choices
Contentment with an adequate solution or approach is the biggest
block there is to any search for a better alternative.
Proof may be no more than lack of imagination.
Through APC anything can be simplified or made more effective or
productive.
1. Do an APC (review style) on the packaging of chocolate bars
2. Do an APC on the design of a telephone
I am told that there is an old Jewish saying which states that if
there are two courses of action, you should always take the third.
Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the father of radar, had a saying, you
get an idea today, you get a better idea tomorrow, and you get the best idea
never.
There is a need of practical cut-offs and deadlines and the
freezing of designs.
But is you never generate alternatives you never have a choice.
Generating alternatives opens up possibilities.
We need it even more because the patterning nature of the mind
seeks certainty-not alternatives.
What is the main purpose of thinking? The main purpose of thinking
is to abolish thinking.
--Lumpers are those people who tend to group thinking together by
focusing on common features.
--Splitters are those people who tend to separate thinking out by
focusing on points of difference.
Edward
De Bono first brought the term Lateral Thinking during an interview in 1967.
Lateral thinking is both an attitude of mind and also a number of
defined methods.
The attitude of mind involves the willingness to try to look at
things in different ways. It involves the appreciation that any way of looking
at things is only one amongst many possible ways.
General
use of lateral thinking-
The
three methods: ‘stepping stone’, ‘escape’ and ‘random stimulation’.
Stepping
stone method-for its movement value instead of its judgement value.
Escape
method-willing
to improve them or escape from them.
Random
simulation method- we open ourselves to influences other than those we directly look
for.
Two other tools, CAF
(consider all factors) and C&S
(consequences and sequel). These tools were
designed to counter the tendency for thinking to be ego-centric and very
short-term.
In doing CAF, emphasis is on ‘what has been left out?’ and ‘what
ought to be considered?’
Thinking is almost always short-term because the attraction or
repulsion of a course of action is immediate.
Dense
reading and dense listening-
Very few people are good listeners. A good listener listens slowly
to what is being said. He does not jump ahead nor does he rush to judge nor
does he sit there formulating his reply. He focuses directly on what is being
said. He listens to more than being said. He extracts the maximum information
from what hears by looking in between the words used and wondering why
something has been expressed in a particular
way. Dense reading is like
dense listening. Dense reading involves a lot of thinking.
Questions-
Questions fall into two categories-Shooting question (SQ) in
which we know what we are aiming to get, yes or no, etc. Fishing
question (FQ) we dangle the bait in the
water and wait for what we can get.
Exlectics seek to lead out or pull-out of the situation, what is of value
–no matter on which side it is to be found. With exlectics emphasis would be on
‘designing forward’ rather than on judgement at each stage.
EBS stands for, examine
both sides.
ADI stands for Agreement,
Disagreement and Irrelevance.
OPV stands for, other
people’s views.
FI-FO- in-formation-in, in- formation-out—
There should be as much
consciousness of the information that is not available as there is of the
information that is available.
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