Blog posts on critical thinking

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation
  1. Ideas come from anywhere (engineers, customers, managers, executives, external companies – that Google acquires)
  2. Share everything you can (very open culture)
  3. You’re Brilliant. We’re Hiring [Google Hiring]
  4. A license to pursue dreams (Google 20% time)
  5. Innovation not instant perfection (iteration – experiment quickly and often)
  6. Data is apolitical [Data Based Decision Making – this is true but as an operating principle requires people that really understand data. See: Data can’t lie.
  7. Creativity loves Constraints [process improvement and innovation]
  8. ...

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• Don’t Empower

  Using the term, "empower", implies that it one person empowers another person. This is not the correct view. Instead we each play a role within a system. Yes there are constraints on your actions based on the role you are playing. Does a security guard empower the CEO to enter the building?

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• Creating an Integrated Life Where Work Adds to Life

  ... I realize doing this to the extent he did is very difficult. But growing up with it I learned that the idea that you could design the whole life (including everything) to maximize life.  And that it may well be that extra effort at work rather than detracting from the rest of life enhances it. For me the key is to focus on maximizing the whole and within that realizing sometimes there are tradeoff (essentially a zero sum game) but there may well be times when you can design the system of your life to find win win solutions.

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• How to Lead From Any Level In the Organization

  Similar to helping other people grow their careers is the idea of helping other people to solve their problems. Again, this starts with a clear understanding of your sphere of influence. It determines what strategies you can pursue, and building your sphere of influence should be part of your decision making process.

  What it comes down to is proving yourself in this way—and doing so consistently. “It isn’t some secret sauce. Prove yourself to be valuable and you will gain influence. Help people solve their problems. They will be inclined to listen to your ideas. And helping people to solve their problems doesn't mean you are giving them the answer. It may mean you asking empowering questions.

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• Psychology Often Drives Decisions Rather Than Rational Thought

  I think that the primary thing to remember is that often people's actions and decisions are guided by psychology rather than thoughtful deliberation and choosing the most sensible option (given that person's desires).  What this means is you can't expect rational decision making to guide others decisions and actions.  You are often better understanding common psychology and how that impacts decision making.

    ...

  There are 2 reasons this is important: first you are likely making decisions this way and can improve your decision making by understanding how you are making decisions.  And second if you are trying to influence others understanding how they make decisions is important.

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• Don’t Empower

  I believe I learned this from Peter Scholtes, though maybe I am remembering it wrong or explaining it wrong (so give him the credit and if I mess it up it is my fault). I believe there is a problem with using the term empowered. Using the term implies that it one person empowers another person. This is not the correct view. Instead we each play a role within a system. Yes there are constraints on your actions based on the role you are playing. Does a security guard empower the CEO to enter the building?

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• Confusing Improving A Proxy Measure with Actually Improving the System

  The more experience you gain trying to improve, the better you become at improving. That journey is not easy, but it is very rewarding. I find keeping your sight on the long term is a great help. If you focus too much on the short term (which is very easy to do), it is easy to become so invested in achieving a short-term success that you seek to find numbers that let you claim victory. That is the death of efforts to improve.

  It is just so easy to find some numbers that can be used to declare victory no matter how badly things are really going. Instead, accept that there will be many short-term failures and short-term successes, but each of those are fairly minor data points on the long term journey to create an organization that continually improves day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.

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• Arbitrary Rules Don't Work

  You can’t just expect people to act in a way that seems arbitrary.

  ...

  It is not ok to expect people to think the way you want them to. You have to understand how people will react and create solutions based on that.

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• The Problem with Targets

  ... Brian Joiner provides another reason why targets are harmful: there are “3 ways to improve the figures: distort the data, distort the system and improve the system. Improving the system is the most difficult.” And so most often targets results in distortion of the data (faulty data) or distortion of the system (meet target by shifting resources and effort from other parts of the system). Both of those actions are harmful to the system.

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• Great Visual Instruction Example

  This does a great job of explaining what you need to know clearly. While this presentation for Azithromycin doesn’t prevent a mistake it sure makes it much more likely that the process can be completed successfully. We need more effort in creating such clear instructions.

  Visual clarity is more important than lots of words. Applying that concept is not as easy as it sounds but it is a very important idea for instructions to end use and instructions for processes in your organization.

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• Bigger Impact: 15 to 18 mpg or 50 to 100 mpg?

  ...

  It also illustrates that the way the data is presented makes a difference. You can also view 100 mpg as 1/100 gallon per mile, 2/100 gallons per mile, 5.6/100 gpm and 6.7 gpm. That way most everyone sees that the 6.7 to 5.6 gpm saves more fuel than 2 to 1 gpm does. Mathematics and scientific thinking are great – if you are willing to think you can learn to better understand the world we live in every day.

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• Communicating Change

  I believe the best way to communicate such changes is to explain how they tie into the long term vision of the organization. This requires that such a vision actually exists (which is often not the case). Then all strategies are communicated based on how they support and integrate with that vision. In addition that communication strategy incorporates an understanding about what weaknesses with past practices are addressed by this new strategy...

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• Stratification and Systemic Thinking

  This is a great example of a positive special cause. How would you identify this? First you would have to stratify the data. It also shows that sometimes looking at the who is important (the problem is just that we far too often look at who instead of the system so at times some get the idea that it is not ok to stratify data based on who – it is just be careful because we often do that when it is not the right approach and we can get fooled by random variation into thinking there is a cause...

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• Prediction Markets with Google Employees

  Google’s prediction markets are reasonably efficient, but did exhibit four specific biases: an overpricing of favorites, short aversion, optimism, and an underpricing of extreme outcomes.

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• Using Customer Feedback to Drive Continual Improvement

  That impact of creating systems that continually improve the value provided to customers is still very much under appreciated. The Deming Chain Reaction is such a powerful concept that allows us to create more value and reduce costs over the long term.

  ...

  Long term thinking with an appreciation for systems allows managers to focus on improving value over the long term while many of their competitors focus on reducing current costs no matter how much damage they do to their customers and the long term success of their business.

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