‘The Unseen Part of a Business’

It is very easy to admire businesses or companies that are flouring and making profits, but behind every successful outcome of every business lies some critical thinking and analysis. I will consider my lesson from the art of critical thinking in this post.

Critical thinking is the disciplined art of ensuring that you use the best thinking you are capable of in any set of circumstances, which entails asking yourself questions such as, what is going on in this situation? Am I deceiving myself when I believe that…? What are the likely consequences of failing to…? If I want to do A, what is the best way to prepare for it? How can I be more successful in doing B? Is this my biggest problem, or do I need to focus my attention somewhere else?

This art is important to everyone irrespective of the size of your business. Mama Nkechi an Akara woman along the road needs to know why people are no longer coming to patronize her, what has happened? Mr Tade a company manager needs to know why there was a low outcome even when they had the most sales, and so on.

Successfully responding to such questions is the daily work of thinking. The Lagos Business School Analysis of business Problem(ABP) had made me look at the unseen part of every business owner or establishment, the act of critical thinking. To maximise the quality of your thinking, you need to learn to become an effective critic of it. This has been what I might have overlooked in the past. The act of critical thinking enables a manager to analyse the possible outcomes of every decision s/he makes, therefore, there is a need for intellectual work.

There have been some suggestive possible ways in which the mind can be disciplined to think in a higher level of quality and function better.

Four basic recommendations will help to practice the art of skilled thinking. To wit:

1. Clarifying your thinking: Always try to summarize your thought with a specific meaning. State one point at a time, elaborate on what you mean.

2. Sticking to the point: Always stick to what is important and things that help it figure out what it needs to figure out.

3. Asking questions of clarification: Whenever you don’t understand something, as a question of clarification.

4. Being reasonable: Always be willing to change your thought and listen to better thinking. Don’t always feel you are right and don’t think with emotions suspend your beliefs to fully hear the views of those with which you disagree.

It is noteworthy, that these are not the only ways of learning the art of critical thinking, but these are the ones I chose to outline in this post.

In conclusion, even though I am still learning, lol, I have learnt that the best thinkers are those who understand the development of thinking as a process occurring throughout many years of practice, and as a manager, it is important to note that improvements in this act of critical thinking will help navigate the better path of a business.