Creativity for Critical Thinkers

Creativity is the art of expanding possibility. It is ability to think “out of the box” while the rest of us barely realize that we are in the box. The term critical thinking points toward certain skills. Successful executives use critical thinking skills every day, to sift through incomplete and complex information, ask the right questions, recognize strong versus weak arguments, and to assimilate the information they need to make logical business decisions. Critical thinking is not just the province of executives. Employees at all levels make decisions that affect their level of productivity and the efficient use of resources.  The best thinkers can move quickly and appropriately through the different modes as required by a situation. We don’t need to be a transformational genius to practice meta thinking (thinking about thinking). If we can’t give a compelling version of our opponent’s argument we really have not thought through our own perspectives. Da Vinchi counseled that we should look anything through minimum of three perspectives :

·         Through our own perspective.

·         An alternative perspective.

·         Find a third alternative and view them all with an open mind.

Only then we can say that we have actually thought about something.Greatest genius who ever lived Leonardo Da Vinchi, who is supreme role model of creative thinking. He integrated scientific and artistic way of thinking. There are seven principles of thinking like him :

1.       Never ending curiosity
2.       Become an original thinker
3.       Thrive in the face of ambiguity
4.       Thinking using the whole brain
5.       Balance body and mind
6.       Be system thinker
7.      Sharpening of the senses  

Most importantly the principle lacking in the business world is using the whole mind. Most universities students learn a range of brilliant left hemisphere strategy, but they pretty much have their intuition beaten out of them.

Critical thinking skills cannot be developed overnight. Nonetheless, practicing these habits described here will improve one’s critical thinking ability. As individuals become more successful in using good critical thinking in their everyday decision making, their companies and their life will be more successful in meeting the challenges of continuously changing expectations of peoples.