Critical and Strategic Thinking in Practice

Life and business are getting faster and more complex every day. The faster pace ramps up the pressure to act quickly but this complexity needs careful, strategic, conceptual thinking, which takes time.

On this four-week course featuring content from BigThink, you’ll learn from some of the brightest minds in conceptual thinking such as Alan Alda, Charles Duhigg, Leonard Mlodinow, and Nancy Duarte, to name a few.

You’ll discover the conceptual thinking framework and learn practical skills for how to apply it to problems and communicate your analysis in order to problem-solve efficiently and effectively.

A common mistake companies make when tackling complex problems is failing to do the pre-work. This can waste time, energy, and money because either the team isn’t right or the goals are poorly defined.

This course will guide you through strategies for looking at the problem space with clarity, then assembling a team with the right balance of talents to think creatively and reach consensus.

We have hardwired tendencies to think within our “comfort zones” which can often cause us to miss opportunities and perspectives that might lead to more creative solutions.

On this course, you’ll learn practical strategies for considering all stakeholders, seeing the problem through different eyes, evaluating potential risks, and connecting unlikely dots for inspiration.

No matter how brilliant your idea might be, communication can mean the difference between success and failure.

You’ll learn how to transform your idea into a reality by improving your communication skills to get buy-in from other stakeholders and decision-makers.

• Approaching complex problems with well-established strategies.
• Defining productive and well-defined goals.
• Thinking about solutions from various perspectives, evaluating risks.
• Communicating the reasoning behind a solution to get wider buy-in and lead to success.