Systematic Thinking Toward Business Success

Businesses will need to hire employees who can think critically if they want to remain competitive and efficient. Hiring someone with a college degree is not enough. Curious, logical, and strong problem-solvers will have to be new hires. According to industry studies, when assessing job candidates, tactical and System Thinking is the capability most needed by businesses around the world.

System Thinking, problem-solving, decision making, strategic planning, and risk management have also been listed by the U.S. Department of Labor as a core workforce capability. Employers expect that recruits have more than knowledge of textbooks and technical skills and agree that System Thinking is crucial for job performance and career flexibility. It was also discovered that System Thinking was deemed to be the most important attribute that would help their businesses grow, more than creativity, or improved IT.

Job environments are rapidly shifting into new job positions pressuring workers. Employees will no longer be able to rely on others to make key decisions and will be forced to make them easily and alone. Good decisions include concentrating on the most relevant information, asking the right questions, and making the right conclusions that too few workers have these skills. In a study of Human Resource Managers (SHRM), it was discovered that a full 70 percent of high school workers lost System Thinking skills.

In other recent studies, during the first two years of college, forty-five percent of college graduates made no noticeable improvement in the development of System Thinking or reasoning skills. Thirty-six percent did not show any major gains in System Thinking skills after four years. When these students leave college and enter the workforce, they will not be prepared to meet the working world’s challenges.

If managers say System Thinking skills are highly valued, candidates exhibiting these skills will be in demand and rare to find. The skills of System Thinking will become invaluable. Certain types of jobs and work environments change, flexibility and adaptability will become crucial to meeting real-world conditions and something that will need to be screened for in interviews by human resources professionals and recruiters. It will also become important to develop the System Thinking skill sets of your existing employees.

One approach for professionals with human resources is to use preliminary hiring thinking assessments. Individuals who score well on these tests display good analytical skills, judgment, decision-making, and performance overall. They often demonstrate the ability to assess the value of the given data, are innovative, have better job skills, and often move up in your company. There are some evaluations for managerial or professional candidates evaluating hard skills. Research also demonstrates that higher-level management positions require System Thinking skills and the ability to quickly learn and accurately process information. Organizations that include both System Thinking and personality testing in hiring practices will have a greater overall candidate perspective than organizations that use personality or System Thinking evaluations alone.

Through incorporating probing strategies, it is possible to help workers become tactical thinkers and higher-order thinkers. Better interviewing allows the learner to more efficiently interpret and synthesize data. The method can become automated by repetition with the ultimate goal of transferring information in new situations and scenarios. Some classes teach students not great thinkers or questioners to be good listeners. Passive thinking does not automatically improve cognitive skills or behavioral changes. It will be more successful in participating actively in the learning process and will deliver more long-term outcomes.

Knowledge gained and interpreted by thinking of the higher-order is stored longer than conventional memorization. Knowledge is easier to transfer and implement, resulting in a better solution to problems. Then the questioning becomes a vital part of the process of teaching and learning. Perfecting the questioning art begins with determining what is known and allows the instructor or mentor to develop new ideas and understandings. It is possible to use probing methods to promote students ‘ ability to think. Create relevant questions. Focus on the technique you use. Encourage interactive discussion and promote engagement.

Open-ended questions usually lead the student to more effectively analyze and evaluate. A skilled questioner’s most important elements are to ask short and concise questions, rephrasing, and drawing additional answers from the answers of the student. There is also a need for training to learn every skill. Offer your group the opportunity to practice the ideas, talents, behaviors, and behavioral changes that come from your questions, and choose appropriate experiences that enable them to learn.

Find a scenario that draws on what they already learn when dreaming about circumstances to add a new employee or mentee. It can be as easy as reading a rule, giving an example of a situation in real life, pointing something out on a table or in person. Then model an issue that shows the correct process of thinking. Propose a dilemma that can be overcome by working together or talking through the situation. Also, for exploratory questions, use your inquiry strategy. What would do if that happened?

Explain what happened to me? What strategies have worked or have not worked at all? What are we going to do? Perhaps there’s a discussion. What’s going to happen next? Finally, provide some form of input and create a chance of self-assessment. Use this feedback to build on your next lesson and never forget creative thinking to be rewarded. If they don’t feel it is valued, the learners won’t want to repeat their behavior.

You will know that when the problem is visualized and can be described and explained, there is higher-order thinking. The learner will also be able to differentiate between relevant and non-relevant information and will search for reasons why something is happening or the root cause. They will rationalize or explain why a solution is going to work and see different angles or sides of a problem.

Try to draw on challenges in the real world. This not only lets the student use the data in the correct reference frame, but it also allows you to solve problems in your company or business in the real world. Encourage your learner to think about the strategies you are introducing, as this will reinforce that this is a valuable process to implement when solving problems over and over again.

If recruiters and managers begin to look for employees with these skills and use the art of questioning for existing employees, System Thinking will become invaluable to the future success of your organization. There is a competitive advantage for businesses that can recruit and grow System Thinkers. With these capabilities, too few workers are employed, with few finding chances in the workforce to improve them.