Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Training

Welcome and Programme Overview

Introduction to the session, objectives, and housekeeping.

How Thinking Goes Wrong

Fast intuitive judgement and slow deliberate reasoning, and why the fast system is usually right and occasionally catastrophically wrong. The biases that show up most in working life: confirmation bias, anchoring, availability, sunk cost, overconfidence and hindsight. Demonstrated through short exercises where participants get the answer wrong before the bias is named, which is considerably more persuasive than being told about it.

Break

Framing the Problem

Why the framing determines the answer, and how to notice the frame you have been handed. Distinguishing symptom, problem and cause. Writing a problem statement that is specific about what is happening, where, since when and how much, and that does not contain a solution in disguise. Deciding what would count as solved. Participants reframe a problem from their own workplace and compare the before and after.

Evaluating Evidence and Arguments

Separating a claim from the evidence for it and the reasoning between them. Identifying assumptions, including the ones nobody stated. Correlation and causation, base rates, small samples and selective evidence. Judging source reliability, including the specific problem of confident output from an AI tool. Common argument failures in meetings: appeal to authority, appeal to precedent, false dichotomy and moving the goalposts.

Lunch

Root Cause Analysis

Working past the first answer. The 5 Whys done properly, including how to avoid the single-thread trap where the technique produces one tidy chain and misses the other three causes. Cause and effect analysis using a fishbone diagram across people, process, equipment, materials, environment and management. Distinguishing contributing factors from root causes, and testing a candidate cause by asking whether removing it would have prevented the outcome. Applied to a case.

Generating and Evaluating Options

Separating option generation from option evaluation, and why combining them kills the useful ideas first. Techniques for widening the option set beyond the two that were obvious. Evaluating against explicit criteria with weightings agreed before the options are scored. Considering the option of doing nothing, and the second-order consequences of each choice.

Break

Deciding Under Uncertainty, and Deciding as a Group

Reversible and irreversible decisions and how much analysis each deserves. Making the decision criteria and the assumptions explicit so the decision can be reviewed later on its reasoning rather than its outcome. Group failure modes: groupthink, deference to the most senior voice, anchoring on the first proposal, and diffusion of responsibility. Practical countermeasures including independent estimates before discussion, an assigned challenger, and a pre-mortem.

Live Problem Clinic

Teams apply the day's tools end to end to a real problem they brought with them, and present their framing, cause analysis and recommendation for challenge.

Wrap-Up and Q&A

Key takeaways, next steps, and close.