On Reflection …

by Patti Anklam

September 23, 2008 at 11:15 am · Filed under Reviews

I posted earlier a response to the issue of information overload and the apparent correlation to a decrease in reflective thinking. I was at the time looking at a still-unread collection of thoughts from HBR Working Knowledge on “Why Managers Don’t Think Deeply.” It appears that reflective thinking is on the decline not only for the always-connected, always messaging younger generation, but also for their elders, a generation of managers who have not been brought up with the distraction of social tools.

The seed article used GE CEO Jeffery Immelt’s declaration that he would protect and encourage managers to think deeply about innovation, going on to cite research by Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman that there are four things that get in the way of deep thinking:

• Reluctance to take risk
• Fear of disruption from thinking differently
• The potential psychological cost of having changed one’s mind resulting from such deep thinking
• Lack of information providing deep insights on which to base deep thinking.

Over the next nn weeks, 136 replies were posted to the Working Knowledge site. Several themes emerged:

• Lack of time
• Culture that rewards “doing” over “thinking” and that is focused on quarterly results rather than long-term strategy
• Failure of B-schools and corporations to teach methods for deep thinking
• The constraint of the operational, problem-solving role of managers versus the visionary, problem-finding role of leaders
• Inability to overcome the subconscious drivers that account for a large percentage of decisions
• Not enough diversity in one’s life
• Not enough time spent in exercising creativity in nonwork domains, not enough reading

But there were a few voice that suggested that perhaps the model — executives thinking deeply by themselves — might not be appropriate for the collaborative era of collective intelligence we are racing headlong into. What about tapping the wisdom of crowds? What about joint inquiries (a la World Cafe) across a diverse set of people in the organization? Perhaps we should learn to think deeply together, to challenge each others’ thinking as a way to get past stale notions and entrained ideas? Or to use (as one of the respondents suggested) narratives as a way to generate alternate histories?

This is my first post from KMWorld. While here in San Jose, I am also blogging on the KMWorld Blog. My second posting there is relevant to social tools and the future of work: how understanding complexity theory (specifically, Dave Snowden’s Cynefin model) helps us understand social tools and how to implement them.

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2 Comments »

A very interesting post, and particularly the last part about deep thinking vs collective intelligence

What I see in my practice, is that we are entering a period in which we need to make our individual and collective ways of working more effective (in particular for knowledge wrk). Being able to understand when a company needs “deep thinking” and when to combine individual deep thinking with the “wisdom of crowds”, and being able to organize to provide the environment in which deep thinking and wisdom of crowds can flourish are among the new capabilities that our companies need to develop.

Hi Patti,

I’ve attended Dave Snowden’s Sensemaker sessions - very valuable. I wish that the blight of thoughtlessness you identify was a rare disease existing in some remote part of our social landscape. It is not. I am encouraged, however, to find more and more nodes where people are learning how to combat the problem, complexity theory thinkers, mavericks, malcontents, and contrarians among them.

The balance will tip as short-term immediacy fails to meet the challenges of the day and more thoughtful and informed long-term strategic insight better prepares us for the unknown dynamics of the future.

Milton

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