Flawed Thinking Methods That Hold You Back [PODCAST S2 E2]

In season 2 of the Innovation Muse Podcast, we are focusing on the nuts and bolts of being a strategist. But in your journey to becoming one, you face many barriers from within. A critical barrier is your natural thinking style. There are many flaws in our natural thinking styles. This episode discussed the flawed thinking methods that hold you back.

What Is Thinking Really?

What do you do when you think? You focus your attention on a subject, search information around it, process the information, and make an evaluation. Whether you are thinking about the meaning of life or whether to go ahead with a project, this is what you do.

From a process perspective, you follow the above steps, but people differ in what they do within each of these steps. You may focus on something different from what your colleague does. You may search different information sources. You may also differ in how you search and how long you conduct a search. Beyond that, you may process information in a different way, giving some information pieces more weight than other. And as a result, you may evaluate a situation in a different way from someone else.

Different Thinking Styles

Although we may differ in our thinking styles, we also share some common ways of thinking across situations. These thinking styles are what we rely on when we think. For example, when you are searching for lost keys you stop that search when you find your keys. But when you are searching for information, does it make sense to stop your search after your find the first data point? But that is how we think a lot of times. As a result, we make mistakes.

Flawed Thinking Methods That Hold You Back

Over the last 40 years or so, behavioral decision research has shown that humans are prone to many thinking traps. These traps make us less strategic in our thinking. These traps make us flawed decision makers. As a result, these thinking styles are the biggest barriers for you to become a strategic thinker.

In this episode, we will understand some of these traps and in the next episode, we will learn how to overcome these traps.

Key Takeaways

In his episode, we focus on these thinking traps and how they make your thinking flawed. At the end of this episode, you will take away the following three things

1. Some jaw dropping examples of decision mistakes companies make
2. We are wired in a way that makes us fall into decision traps and act less strategically than we want to.
3. Examples of many decision traps that make you less strategic in your thinking.

How to Listen?

This audio is now available as a part of a complete online strategy program called Becoming a Strategist. You can listen to it in the course here