From the Harvard Business Review:
Become a Company That Questions Everything

This useful short article asks how companies can foster the kind of environment where employees challenge long-established policies and inefficient processes.

“How can a company create an environment where people are more inclined to question?” the author asks. The answers, in brief:

• A culture of inquiry starts at the top — with leaders who question.
• Questioning should be rewarded (or at least, not punished).
• Give people the time and space to question deeply.
• Provide the tools to question well.

Of course, you can’t literally question everything. There isn’t time, and even trying would be pretty disruptive. So one key critical thinking skill lies in figuring out — and developing an instinct for — which things need to be questioned.

One of the skills taught in many critical thinking courses (and in my own textbook) is the use of diagrams to illustrate the components and logical “flow” of an argument.

The basic method I use is this:

Use a circle to represent your main point. Use squares to represent reasons supporting your point. And use arrows to show the flow of logic — to start at the reason you’re giving and to point at the conclusion it supports.

You can also read the diagram from the bottom-up. What’s your main point? What reasons are you offering to convince your audience?

You can of course take the reasoning a step further, and that can be reflected in your diagram. You can use additional squares to represent additional reasons, in the form of data or other evidence offered in support of your main reasons.

An example of the result might look like this:

You can again read the diagram from the bottom-up. What’s your main point? Next: Why? What reasons are you offering to convince your audience? Still not sure? What further reasons (data or other evidence) are you offering in support of each of your reasons?

As a simplified example of this, imagine the following chain of reasoning:

You: “We should promote Michael to regional sales manager. He’s clearly the best candidate.”
Why?
“He’s a natural salesman. He’s got the leadership skills. And he’s a loyal employee.”
Really?
“Yes. His excellence as a salesman is clear from his numbers: he’s been our #1 sales rep for each of the last 5 quarters. And his leadership skill is clear from the way he has taken Ahmed under his wing to train him and coach him to achieve better sales. And the fact that he works late almost every day is evidence of his loyalty.”

If we mapped out the steps in that argument, it would look just like the right-hand parts of the diagram above: a main point, supported by a reason, which is in turn supported by further a further reason or evidence.

Here’s an interesting piece from WSJ: “Why Some M.B.A.s Are Reading Plato”

The answer, in short, is critical thinking.

The philosophy department is invading the M.B.A. program—at least at a handful of schools where the legacy of the global financial crisis has sparked efforts to train business students to think beyond the bottom line. Courses like “Why Capitalism?” and “Thinking about Thinking,” and readings by Marx and Kant, give students a break from Excel spreadsheets and push them to ponder business in a broader context, schools say.

The courses also address a common complaint of employers, who say recent graduates are trained to solve single problems but often miss the big picture….

Here are a few articles I’ve found, mostly in the business media, about the role and importance of of critical thinking in business:

• How to Develop 5 Critical Thinking Types (Forbes.com)
• How to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills and Make Better Business Decisions (from Entrepreneur.com)
• Schools, Businesses Focus on Critical Thinking (Wall Street Journal)
• Critical thinking a necessary business skill (Chicago Post-Tribune)
• How Leaders Should Think Critically (Harvard Business Review)