Are You Ready for the Looming ThinkQuake?

Society is about to undergo a tectonic shift in how it thinks about thinking. What do you think about that? We think it's exciting.

By Thornton May

The typical time-starved, information-overloaded, regulation-complying, mission-obsessed, multitasking contemporary executive probably does not give much thought to how the organization thinks, or even how he or she thinks within the organization.

This is about to change. We are on the cusp of a revolution in enterprise-scale thinking, decision making and problem solving. A ThinkQuake looms on the horizon. Society is about to undergo a tectonic shift in how it thinks about thinking.

What’s driving this cognitive plate shifting?
RSS feeds, podcasts, blogs, old-media headlines and evening news programs are increasingly filled with images and instances of current-generation leaders being asked by dissatisfied next-generation voters, customers and shareholders the rhetorical question:“What were you thinking?”

Looking beneath the surface, those next-generation customers, sources of capital and policy makers are REALLY asking: “How were you thinking? Via what processes, using what data and assisted by what tools did you arrive at your course of action?”

ThinkQuake preparation No. 1: cognitive cartography
For a powerful exercise, try to draw a series of maps that depict how your organization thinks. Be aware not only of what your organization thinks. But also be granularly aware of how your organization thinks. How are decisions actually being made? Where are they made? Who’s making them? And what’s prompting the decisions?

Also, and more subtly, be aware of how your organization thinks about how it thinks. Do employees think they’re being led? Or do they think they’re scrambling through their days without much thought? Do they think they’re thinking, or do they think the organization’s managers and executives are doing most of the thinking for them?

Take some time and think about these things. Then, consider the following research: Behavior scholars frequently tell students that all humans are in mental motion. In this model, everyone is lumped into one of two camps. Camp One is populated by those fortunate souls – Pioneers – who have a vision of a place they want to go and are moving toward it. Camp Two – Refugees – are people who truly don’t like their current situations and are fleeing from them, often without direction. In both cases, there is movement, though motivated by different stimuli. These two camps are replicated in the work of researchers who study the ways humans think. These scholars similarly divide the world in two parts – the sciences of choice and the sciences of control.*

Sciences of choice – including economics, game theory, neoclassical utility theory and statistical decision theory – emphasize the freedom of choice and see individuals as rational choosers intent on maximizing their own values. Efficiency is seen as a central concept in these theories.

The sciences of control assume that individuals are plastic creatures, shaped and molded by their social environments. Adaptation is a central concept here. In recent years, the majority of the social sciences have tended to embrace this view, including behaviorist experimental psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology and political science.

ThinkQuake preparation No. 2: cognitive re-engineering
Many readers will remember the frenzy of process re-engineering projects initiated in 1990, which aimed to modify or eliminate non-value added activities from the workplace. We forecast a similar surge of cognitive re-engineering in organizations around the world, which will result in the deconstructing and rearranging of assumptions, rules of thumb, data sets, information sources and decision-making algorithms that support key processes.

Information management issues are just now exploding onto the socio/politicoradar screen. In the United States and around the world, the short-term legislative agenda will be heavily populated with information management-related bills. Many of these bills will become law. These budding changes and the associated societal awareness are emerging as a direct result of the fact that in a transparent and mondo-connected society, leaders are supposed to know things. And perhaps more importantly, they are supposed to do things about what they know. The persistence of known problems that remain unsolved is absolutely unacceptable to voters, consumers and sources of capital.

But how do leaders – within the organization and within the political landscape – know things? And how can they change the ways they think about the things they know? With information management.

A major driver of the looming Think-Quake is the existence and innovative use of information management tools for business intelligence and advanced analytics, which provide the ability to evaluate data and information in more detail than ever before. With these tools, organizations can not only rethink the ways they think, but they can also take control and rethink the ways they lead.

* Hunter Crowther-Heyck, Herbert A. Simon: The Bounds of Reason in Modern America (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2005).

Bio: Thornton May, Executive Director and Dean at the IT Leadership Academy, is one of the premier visionaries in the IT industry.