Thank god the Wall Street Journal is encouraging critical thinking, and more importantly fostering the discussion by putting articles like this out for everybody to read /s
On a more serious note, I don't believe this is true. In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. This was the case even if they were truly nice people who cared - i.e. not abrasive and argumentative, just different. This is often called "difficult", because most managers and HR can't be bothered to actually engage with that person. So isn't that people can't do it, just the lesson is "you're better off if you don't say it". Political correctness also doesn't help IMO.
> In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised.
Because while they get things done, they challenge the status quo.
When I've worked for large companies, the #1, #2, and #3 products of the company were management politics. Actually shipping anything was #4, maybe #5. Critical thinkers looked at that and went "we could do better", and got punished for it.
Don't confuse critical thinking with disruptive behavior. I often think the current approach is dumb, but I also accept I don't know everything. So, I generally just toss an idea out there, give it 15-30 seconds of support and move on.
People that dig in even if they are correct and I agree with them are much harder to work with. Further, doing something even if it's a poor solution is often better than continuing to look for the right solution.
The WSJ isn't encouraging critical thinking here - it's making self-described "critical thinkers" feel like they're important and valuable people, thus convincing them to read the WSJ.
I made a similar observation, critical thinking seems to be something undesired and it easily gets suppressed. However I truly believe it can work but it needs some sort of personal communication strategy. For example timing is critical. An obvious example is when shit hits the fan and coming up with reasons what could have been done better in the past. It's better to postpone that when things are fixed.
But when working with people that generally dislike critical input, one needs to combine this with other things. Like saying such criticism only 1:1 (never in meetings), staying cool and thinking out things before saying them. Sometimes it's better to not answer certain people instead of giving a half baked answer that can be used for attack ground.
As an employee, your primary goal should be to make your boss happy: and any changes or initiative will hurt your career. If you are young you might make mistake, but people are not stupid they learn from their mistakes.
So you have to go the point where your "boss" are customers / users of your product. Then critical thinkings works well.
> In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised.
In my experience, there is a specific experience threshold at which critical thinking switches from being an annoying trait of a young and garrulous employee to the most valuable asset a more senior person could have.
There seems to be a trend in management towards an unwarranted belief in the effectiveness and importance of superficial quantitative analysis, and two complementary myths that go along with the trend: a) any number you can assign to something is significant; b) anything you cannot assign a number to is not significant.
Anyone approaching recruiting with this mindset is neither using critical thinking, nor likely to hire people who can.
It's almost as if we have regressed in some ways to the "principles of scientific management" (Frederick Winslow Taylor) with our focus on quantitative over qualitative (and not balanced between the two).
This is not just a trend in management. Many, many people labor under the assumption that if you throw enough (or any, for that matter) math at something you must be doing science, and therefore it's inherently better than the alternative.
I mean, how many times have you heard "Well, sure, it's not exact, but it's better than what we have" in reference to some model that was made up from a pile of assumptions? No, no, no, it's not better than the alternative, it's exactly the same, that's the entire point! Just because you threw some statistics at it doesn't mean you're any better off than you were before.
There has been an uptick in user of discredited techniques to screen in recruitment, stuff like MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), lots of pseudo science without measuring validity.
It seems like HR have been told to find people with soft skills and so they manufacture something that will give a rating and then rank candidates by that.
The article, especially some of the examples, seems abusive to low-wage employees. How many of us would give a job description that said 'this is not a preparation for a slow motion contest' a second glance?
The meat and potatoes of the article is mostly just complaints to be honest. A lack of candidates is always the go-to excuse for managers and executives when explaining poor productivity or vacancies. Job seekers will gladly tell you that the pay stinks or that they just flat out don't want to work for a company.
Dig deeper and ask the managers and executives to show how they reward and retain employees with these skills.
I work for a >10,000 employee health care system as a physician. What I have seen is that the front line workers are considered disposable, and should be grateful for a job. The superstars ( always nice, compassionate, and excellent at their jobs) are not recognized by management and so when raises are given, everyone gets them, including the lazy ones. This disappoints the worker bees, and leads to incredible turnover and more frustration for us physicians. Unfortunately, a lot of the attributes of a great employee cannot be quantified on a spreadsheet so the MBAs running my organization have no clue how to compensate people. Instead, they just lump everyone in the same pile so the workers get frustrated bc they work twice as hard as the lazies, but make the same amount.
I've tried to talk to executives about this, but I think it's essentially to deaf ears - bottom line is the most important, so they can get their bonuses.
It leads to disenchantment and then, over many years, inability to get hardworking / intelligent people to enter front line professions.
Smart people will recognize that their hard work will never be acknowledged, so they switch careers. Others, who cannot get jobs elsewhere, or pivot, are stuck working there.
Not sure what the solution is, but it's just an observation.
"For most of the first eighteen years of his life, George Platen had headed firmly in one direction, that of Registered Computer Programmer. There were those in his crowd who spoke wisely of Spationautics, Refrigeration Technology, Transportation Control, and even Administration. But George held firm. He argued relative merits as vigorously as any of them, and why not? Education Day loomed ahead of them and was the great fact of their existence. It approached steadily, as fixed and certain as the calendar – the first day of November of the year following one’s eighteenth birthday. After that day, there were other topics of conversation."
I think this is a dangerous and fruitless line of reasoning. It halts the conversation. It makes it harder for management to be introspective. If you look at critical or creative thinking as an inherent skill [1] rather than as a measurable outcome of the right kind of environment and incentives, how can you create and improve a workplace in which your people think critically? [2]
I find that bad managers sometimes use the 'lacks critical thinking' criticism as an out for their own ineffectiveness. It's certainly not wrong for managers to delegate, to expect a high level of performance from their employees, to ask for creativity and mental agility in the face of a respectful amount of uncertainty. But when you combine vague goals and sparse planning with ego, bad managers wrongly attribute an employee's failure to correctly 'guess their will' to poor critical thinking skills.
It's natural for managers (myself included) to go into self-preservation mode when they've failed to give their employees enough direction, but the reality is that it's a relationship. There is, and there should be, push and pull. Sometimes the manager doesn't give enough direction or doesn't plan well. Sometimes the employee does some lazy thinking. Each needs to have enough humility and honesty to say, "I screwed up. How do we solve this and what can we do better in the future?"
If you want to make every decision from the top so that your employees never have to divine your will, you better be a planning savant. If you're a mortal like the rest of us, you need to figure out how to give your people just enough guidance to do their best work, and sometimes that means admitting you haven't given enough.
1. It may be inherent, but that's kind of beside the point. Wouldn't you want to keep the door open to improvement anyway?
2. Actually, the only way to do it is addressed in the article: search for 'critical thinkers,' whatever that means to you, in your hiring process.
This is purely anecdotal, but I've seen a shift in behaviour where even people with these soft skills appear less willing to take the risk of using them. Too much focus of "must look like I'm working hard", so rush things through without sense checking and that type of thing. Getting away with it often then means it becomes a way of working so the skills don't develop and people (one assumes) hope for the best in regards to getting caught!
Employers don't want critical thinking, they want compliance and results. They might say they want more soft skills, but what they mean is they want someone to solve their problems and make them look good.
Usually, that means a yes man. This kind of article is delusional naval gazing.
I work for a fortune 100 and critical thinking is highly valued on my team. One thing that I've observed is that expressing critical thinking without communication skill comes across as being argumentative. If you find yourself frequently arguing a point but no one is convinced, assuming you are actually correct on the issue, then you probably just have weak communication skills.
Another thing I've noticed is that no matter how compelling the argument it's also near impossible to get people to take action to change things that are deeply entrenched even if they agree with you.
It's interesting the title of the article assumes that critical thinking is a "soft skill". However I don't that's necessarily a great assumption. I think of soft skills as more along the lines of people skills, like communication, integrity, work ethic, etc. If you look at wikipedia article it cites several definitions, none of
which include critical thinking or "problem solving". They are all more long the lines of communication skills, cutesy, and work ethics.
There is also no breakdown of which industries were surveyed. It maybe the firms that hire lots of engineers or other professions that require solving new and different problem frequently were not well represented in the survey.
It just seems to me the premise of the article isn't that well thought out.
> And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly.
If you can think critically are you going to get past the HR filters and convince them you are the recruit willing to take a deal that will descend into just a little worse than unemployment? (So your empty shell of a life after they spit you out is devoid of any unused benefits.)
If you want to openly think critically in corporate employment, step 1 is becoming irreplaceable so they can't replace you when you become inconvenient at step 2.
An easier tactic, (employed by the best corporate game theorists that I've encountered) is following directions like a total Svejk, this leads employers to think you lack critical thinking skills. Then more resources are allocated and eventually you have a whole empire of minions.
Indeed, quite odd to describe "soft skill" as critical thinking skills, ie cognitive skills. soft skill typically is social skill, the type of nebulous skill that while it may have value leaves huge room to interpretation.
One of the classic examples was Joe Sutter[0]. He was the Boeing 747 program lead & engineer who sadly died a few days ago.
Boeing management was putting pressure to cut 1,000 engineers from the program. He knew that would cause the program to fail, and he really needed 1,000 more engineers. He thought he was going to get fired that day, but still said what he believed.
The 747 became one of the most successful airliners in history.
"The Collins English Dictionary defines the term "soft skills" as “desirable qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge: they include common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude.”"
I think economics is an important part of thinking critically. Does philanthropy do more good than bad? Does affirmative action always get the desired results? Does equality of opportunity lead to equality of outcome? What should be the role of government and how to fund it?
My views on a lot of subjects changed after getting just a rudimentary understanding of economics. While I cannot claim I am a very critical thinker, I am probably a more critical thinker after I learnt economics. And in my view, economics is more science than non-science, and you can grasp it better with more acquired knowledge.
Generally a firm can get workers if they are willing to locate in an area that the workers want to live, that they treat the workers well, and that they offer above market rates in salary.
But, even wealthy firms such as Apple and Google which both have huge profits have conspired to keep engineering and technical wage rates low. There was recently a settlement for the collusion. It had nothing to do with the amount of money the firms had or could spend for talent, just that they wanted to keep the costs down.
So, generally be suspect of these kinds of articles.
For my entire I've been listening to organisations purporting to represent employers slag of the education system for not being sufficiently vocationally-focused - for not just eternally chasing a narrow range of whatever skills will turn out good little technicians at no cost to employers - while denigrating anything outside that narrow focus as basket-weaving. And the political landscape in the English-speaking world has largely gone along with that.
I think it is great that this question is asked by the wsj. Unfortunately the article is behind a paywall. Can someone with access please summarize the article?
If we're relying on all critical thinking skills to come as an unstated side effect of teaching math and elementary science that is sometimes taught alongside creationism then the results are obviously going to be watery.
If on the other hand students were taught just a few formal fallacies and led to analyze just a few arguments and just touched on formal logic while in high school, the nation would be transformed (but I imagine the flyover states would yell bloody murder)
[+] [-] guitarbill|9 years ago|reply
On a more serious note, I don't believe this is true. In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. This was the case even if they were truly nice people who cared - i.e. not abrasive and argumentative, just different. This is often called "difficult", because most managers and HR can't be bothered to actually engage with that person. So isn't that people can't do it, just the lesson is "you're better off if you don't say it". Political correctness also doesn't help IMO.
I feel like one of my favorite Mitchell and Webb sketches, "Kill the poor", describes this quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg
[+] [-] dilemma|9 years ago|reply
In executive position, visionary, maverick, multidisciplinary thinker, etc.
You can only truly creative in a position with autonomy, so you either climb the ladder or start your own thing.
[+] [-] adekok|9 years ago|reply
Because while they get things done, they challenge the status quo.
When I've worked for large companies, the #1, #2, and #3 products of the company were management politics. Actually shipping anything was #4, maybe #5. Critical thinkers looked at that and went "we could do better", and got punished for it.
[+] [-] Retric|9 years ago|reply
People that dig in even if they are correct and I agree with them are much harder to work with. Further, doing something even if it's a poor solution is often better than continuing to look for the right solution.
[+] [-] empath75|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blablabla123|9 years ago|reply
But when working with people that generally dislike critical input, one needs to combine this with other things. Like saying such criticism only 1:1 (never in meetings), staying cool and thinking out things before saying them. Sometimes it's better to not answer certain people instead of giving a half baked answer that can be used for attack ground.
Yeah, life isn't easy but there are ways.
[+] [-] tlogan|9 years ago|reply
As an employee, your primary goal should be to make your boss happy: and any changes or initiative will hurt your career. If you are young you might make mistake, but people are not stupid they learn from their mistakes.
So you have to go the point where your "boss" are customers / users of your product. Then critical thinkings works well.
[+] [-] etangent|9 years ago|reply
In my experience, there is a specific experience threshold at which critical thinking switches from being an annoying trait of a young and garrulous employee to the most valuable asset a more senior person could have.
[+] [-] mannykannot|9 years ago|reply
Anyone approaching recruiting with this mindset is neither using critical thinking, nor likely to hire people who can.
[+] [-] sixdimensional|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel-levin|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
[+] [-] Cacti|9 years ago|reply
I mean, how many times have you heard "Well, sure, it's not exact, but it's better than what we have" in reference to some model that was made up from a pile of assumptions? No, no, no, it's not better than the alternative, it's exactly the same, that's the entire point! Just because you threw some statistics at it doesn't mean you're any better off than you were before.
[+] [-] dilemma|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angry_octet|9 years ago|reply
It seems like HR have been told to find people with soft skills and so they manufacture something that will give a rating and then rank candidates by that.
[+] [-] dgax|9 years ago|reply
The meat and potatoes of the article is mostly just complaints to be honest. A lack of candidates is always the go-to excuse for managers and executives when explaining poor productivity or vacancies. Job seekers will gladly tell you that the pay stinks or that they just flat out don't want to work for a company.
Dig deeper and ask the managers and executives to show how they reward and retain employees with these skills.
[+] [-] ReallyAnonymous|9 years ago|reply
I've tried to talk to executives about this, but I think it's essentially to deaf ears - bottom line is the most important, so they can get their bonuses.
It leads to disenchantment and then, over many years, inability to get hardworking / intelligent people to enter front line professions.
Smart people will recognize that their hard work will never be acknowledged, so they switch careers. Others, who cannot get jobs elsewhere, or pivot, are stuck working there.
Not sure what the solution is, but it's just an observation.
[+] [-] walterbell|9 years ago|reply
"For most of the first eighteen years of his life, George Platen had headed firmly in one direction, that of Registered Computer Programmer. There were those in his crowd who spoke wisely of Spationautics, Refrigeration Technology, Transportation Control, and even Administration. But George held firm. He argued relative merits as vigorously as any of them, and why not? Education Day loomed ahead of them and was the great fact of their existence. It approached steadily, as fixed and certain as the calendar – the first day of November of the year following one’s eighteenth birthday. After that day, there were other topics of conversation."
[+] [-] ftio|9 years ago|reply
I find that bad managers sometimes use the 'lacks critical thinking' criticism as an out for their own ineffectiveness. It's certainly not wrong for managers to delegate, to expect a high level of performance from their employees, to ask for creativity and mental agility in the face of a respectful amount of uncertainty. But when you combine vague goals and sparse planning with ego, bad managers wrongly attribute an employee's failure to correctly 'guess their will' to poor critical thinking skills.
It's natural for managers (myself included) to go into self-preservation mode when they've failed to give their employees enough direction, but the reality is that it's a relationship. There is, and there should be, push and pull. Sometimes the manager doesn't give enough direction or doesn't plan well. Sometimes the employee does some lazy thinking. Each needs to have enough humility and honesty to say, "I screwed up. How do we solve this and what can we do better in the future?"
If you want to make every decision from the top so that your employees never have to divine your will, you better be a planning savant. If you're a mortal like the rest of us, you need to figure out how to give your people just enough guidance to do their best work, and sometimes that means admitting you haven't given enough.
1. It may be inherent, but that's kind of beside the point. Wouldn't you want to keep the door open to improvement anyway?
2. Actually, the only way to do it is addressed in the article: search for 'critical thinkers,' whatever that means to you, in your hiring process.
[+] [-] nmstoker|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] programminggeek|9 years ago|reply
Usually, that means a yes man. This kind of article is delusional naval gazing.
[+] [-] KirinDave|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoshTko|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Glyptodon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcshicks|9 years ago|reply
There is also no breakdown of which industries were surveyed. It maybe the firms that hire lots of engineers or other professions that require solving new and different problem frequently were not well represented in the survey.
It just seems to me the premise of the article isn't that well thought out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_skills
[+] [-] Havoc|9 years ago|reply
And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly. The employees sorta need to pick them up from experience.
[+] [-] totalcrepe|9 years ago|reply
If you can think critically are you going to get past the HR filters and convince them you are the recruit willing to take a deal that will descend into just a little worse than unemployment? (So your empty shell of a life after they spit you out is devoid of any unused benefits.)
If you want to openly think critically in corporate employment, step 1 is becoming irreplaceable so they can't replace you when you become inconvenient at step 2.
An easier tactic, (employed by the best corporate game theorists that I've encountered) is following directions like a total Svejk, this leads employers to think you lack critical thinking skills. Then more resources are allocated and eventually you have a whole empire of minions.
[+] [-] Edmond|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KirinDave|9 years ago|reply
Why can't you teach them directly?
[+] [-] neurotech1|9 years ago|reply
Boeing management was putting pressure to cut 1,000 engineers from the program. He knew that would cause the program to fail, and he really needed 1,000 more engineers. He thought he was going to get fired that day, but still said what he believed.
The 747 became one of the most successful airliners in history.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sutter
[+] [-] Inthenameofmine|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thr0waway1239|9 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12426545
Definition from Wikipedia:
"The Collins English Dictionary defines the term "soft skills" as “desirable qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge: they include common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude.”"
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_skills
I think economics is an important part of thinking critically. Does philanthropy do more good than bad? Does affirmative action always get the desired results? Does equality of opportunity lead to equality of outcome? What should be the role of government and how to fund it?
My views on a lot of subjects changed after getting just a rudimentary understanding of economics. While I cannot claim I am a very critical thinker, I am probably a more critical thinker after I learnt economics. And in my view, economics is more science than non-science, and you can grasp it better with more acquired knowledge.
[+] [-] maehwasu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walshemj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidf18|9 years ago|reply
But, even wealthy firms such as Apple and Google which both have huge profits have conspired to keep engineering and technical wage rates low. There was recently a settlement for the collusion. It had nothing to do with the amount of money the firms had or could spend for talent, just that they wanted to keep the costs down.
So, generally be suspect of these kinds of articles.
[+] [-] rodgerd|9 years ago|reply
They have what they asked for. Whoops.
[+] [-] MichaelMoser123|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xpac|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ThomPete|9 years ago|reply
There are plenty of great critical thinkers out there. The real challenge is to figure out the next step.
Thats' what entrepreneurs do.
[+] [-] whybroke|9 years ago|reply
If on the other hand students were taught just a few formal fallacies and led to analyze just a few arguments and just touched on formal logic while in high school, the nation would be transformed (but I imagine the flyover states would yell bloody murder)