Critical thinkers needed

By David Berry

02/09/2010

A recent edition of the New York Times' business section featured an article concerning changes in curriculum at some of the nation's top business schools. It discussed the shift from a purely functional approach of teaching marketing or finance to one of teaching students critical thinking. The dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto described this approach as acquainting students with "thinking through clashing priorities and potential options rather than hewing to any pre-planned strategy".

Students in Stanford's Critical Thinking courses explore difficult broad problems that require value-laden trade-offs. Those at the Yale School of Management pursue a core curriculum organized around organizational perspectives such as customers, investors and society instead of traditional disciplines such as marketing, finance, and production. The reason says the school's dean is "that there's no such thing as a marketing problem."

One area that has an overwhelming need for lessons in critical thinking is the environmental movement. Nowhere is it more evident that problems are pre-judged as being in this silo by one group and in another silo by a competing group. This was shown in a recent article in The Baltimore Sun that outlined the issues involved in new rules governing storm water runoff scheduled to take effect this spring.

The new rules impose much more stringent controls on runoff. Not surprisingly, developers protest, saying that the new rules are too costly and would slow much needed economic growth. In addition, developers argue the new rules would discourage "smart growth" by encouraging the development of now open lands, rather than the refurbishment of older properties. The issue is a poster child for value-laden trade-offs.

Both sides view it from their perspective, or discipline. Any time you make something a marketing problem or a regulatory issue, the result is fighting between that discipline and its competitors, such as finance in business or developers in environmental discussions. There appears to be no one using any semblance of critical thinking in assembling possible solutions to the issue. As a consequence it ends up in the Governor's office for resolution, and he has competing priorities -- growth and the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay.

Critical thinking would not view the issue as purely runoff versus growth, but would say those are two facets of a multilayered problem. Others might include the environmental as well as economic, the impact of refurbishing old developments, the long practice of allowing zoning decisions to be made at the local level with little state oversight, or the history we have had in eliminating shoreline buffers. The many facets of this problemneed to be viewed from all sides. Business schools define this process of exploring options as "assertive inquiry" in which neutral parties attempt to explore the assumptions and validity of everyone's argument.

One important skill in critical thinking is that the inquirer needs to be as free of bias or predisposition as possible. The skill is not in a given discipline, but in the ability, as the Times article suggested, to "query and look into an issue without moving toward biased or predetermined conclusions." That opens the process which leads to "unexpected discoveries of opportunity and potential innovation."

This process is not natural to most people. We tend to find careers in a certain discipline and develop very parochial viewpoints over time. Environmentalists say the regulatory approaches are always right while developers say these rules hamper growth critical to the overall economic environment of an area. The trouble is they both may be partially right.

We need more unbiased critical thinkers if we expect to succeed in solving problems such as the saving the Chesapeake Bay. We know the problems, we know the competing issues and we know the face value solutions, but we have far too few people capable, or responsible, for looking underneath all the layers, asking the right questions, and coming up with innovative, and practical new approaches.

Environmental organizations need to investigate sending people to colleges that offer classes in critical thinking and look into hiring graduates from these programs. No one would suggest that people skilled in this area would be cheap to hire and retain, but consulting organizations are always exploring new areas of business called practices. The use of such independent resources would be a good starting point for providing the layer of critical thinkers we need if we are to move beyond the inter-disciplinary squabbling that prevents real solutions from being implemented.