Core Ingredient to Innovation - Critical Thinking

​The uncertain times we are living in made one thing clear: we need to innovate! In order to stay successful in our businesses we need to find new ways to create value to our customers, our operations face new challenges we need to address, and our employees require environments that keep them healthy, nimble and engaged. Small improvements will not suffice - in many areas we need to go back to the drawing board.

How can I, as a leader, deal with this accelerated necessity for change? How am I able to control innovation across all corners of our organisation? Let me pose another question: why do I need to control innovation from the centre? Successful, lasting solution might be better identified and implemented at the front - they will be achieved faster and create more value. Then the question is: how can I enable and facilitate innovation at the front?

Many people talk about innovation and how to achieve this. Though, there is one trait that is often overlooked and I see it as a essential foundation for innovation and a successful business: Critical Thinking - the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. This will allow the organisation to identify where we can create value, to deeper understand the challenges, and to make better decision to explore the future.

Bruce Eckfeldt, in this Inc article Want to Improve Your Leadership Skills? Focus on Critical Thinking, introduces five levers to drive critical thinking. In my words:

1. Be Curious - try to dig deeper and probe for more insights; this will lead to more and better data.
2. Signal vs Noise - sharpening the skills to recognise patterns will help us to separate facts from interferences.
3. Focus Topic - at the start, identify the key thing you want to consider; this initial principle or assumption acts as a guiding stick through the experimentation.
4. Imagination of the Ecosystem - based on the signals and assumptions create models that make your quest tangible and allow validation.
5. Learning First - throughout the experimentation and innovation process, keep learning as the most important result to achieve.

These five elements give us leaders ideas on the mindsets and skills we want to develop in our people. Based on critical thinking, we will be able to delegate control to make decision, to experiment, to find solutions. Are you courageous enough?

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