Critical thinking and business

Contrary to what some may think, business really doesn't want employees who can think critically, if that critical thinking causes them to question company policies, procedures and direction. That is not acceptable at all. What they want is an employee who can implement policy that comes down from above, implement it efficiently. Critical thinking limited to implementing policy. What they really want is an employee who wants the answer, which management supplies, who then will implement that answer. No muss, no fuss. And that is what schools tend to supply, students who have been supplied the answers and who then apply those answers to certain factual situations. The perfect employee. But this makes critical thinking a skill, one that is learned and applied to certain areas only. Critical thinking, if approached correctly, cannot be limited in this way. People who think critically are not answer dependent, that is answers that someone else provides. They think independently and they question policy until it makes sense to them and will say so when it doesn't, (unless they come to a calculation that their job is more important and that it might be threatened by doing something like that.) In other words they have the tenor of mind that makes and influences policy not that accepts it as the truth they must implement. To put it plainly, critical thinking, as conceived and taught here, makes for good high level leaders. Critical thinking as a skill limited to implementation, makes for good lower level managers and employees.

I have had some people say that their company is the exception to this rule. It may be. But I would first like to know if the company management really allows the worker to think critically or are they jsut saying that that is what they want even though in practice the facts say something different but the employee has accepted the hype as a working creed. I won't say that categorically all companies act this way. There are some notable exceptions. But more companies do than don't.

So what is to be done about it? A lot can be done but it requries some shifting in focus. I would like to tak about it but will probably save it for the other blog, Prometheus' Brain.

"So, you seem to have a lot on your chest. Are there other things that are really bothering you?" Yes, there are. How about this: Brainstorming doesn't work. And this: Benchmarking rests on an assumption that has not been proven. And there are others. We may get to them here.