Making Smarter Decisions

Kevin Hoffberg of Decision Quality has a nice presentation:Making Smart Decisions

I particularly like his straightforward process for making a difficult decision:

bCisive Online and bCisive desktop are flexible enough to apply these steps.  Give it a try!

How your computer can help you think

Here's a nice video tutorial from Thomas Teepe about using mind-mapping software for problem-solving:


His technique of using a "mentor map" which captures abstract process to help build a more concrete "work map" is nice, and neatly addresses the problem of "starting with a blank screen".

Building your own "mentor map" is a great way of organizing the processes that one finds personally useful, and the overall process looks like it should be easy to learn.

Note that whereas in mind-mapping tools one must be use multiple windows, all of Austhink's products support multiple maps per workspace.

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When we add user-editable template support to bCisive Online, we should also consider including a starter "mentor map", as an out-of-the-box template.

My favorite box

My favorite box is the plain box.  It has three great uses:

• Brainstorming
• Categorizing
• When no other box will do

Brainstorming
In bCisive (Online and desktop) and Rationale you can get an empty box by just double-clicking on the workspace.  This is great for brain-storming -- just getting ideas onto the workspace:

Brainstorming for this article

The next step is to bang them together into a basic structure:

Same ideas, with an initial organization

And then assign the boxes a type, and elaborate:

Same ideas, elaborated

Categorizing

Sometimes you have lots of related ideas, questions, whatever, and it is helpful to introduce categories to break things down.  The plain box can help.  For example: What was one option can easily become a elaborated into a number of variations.

The plain boxes group related options

Throwing in an plain box can be visually effective in giving a break from all the strong graphics.  This act of categorizing (also called abstracting) works well whether you are working top down or bottom up.  Top down you start with the original idea and then break down into several variations.  Bottom up, you start with a long list of ideas, and then cluster them when you notice which ones are related.

When no other box will do

Sometimes I get bogged down because I don't have the exact right box type for a particular idea.  In bCisive Online I can just change a heading (e.g. relabel a "Pro" as a "Reason"), but sometimes none of the images seem appropriate.

When no image fits, just use no image!  The plain box saves the day again.

Video: Plan and write a great essay with Rationale

Along with free-form mapping to encourage the development of critical thinking skills, Rationale includes a nifty Essay Planner to help students learn how to plan and produce clear, well-written essays.

We've produced a 3-minute video showing the Essay Planner in action: (To watch it at full size, click Play and then click the title or the YouTube logo)



If you'd like to try it for yourself, download a free Rationale trial.

Customized methodologies

Visual thinking is probably most effective when using a suitable methodology as an aid to construction and communication. Simply said

Visual methodology = visual language + rules of thumb

For example, bCisive Online comes with the following set of boxes, which together making up its out-of-the-box visual language:

This set descends from the non-visual Issue-based information systems (IBIS) methodology, and is suitable for activities including Dialogue mapping when working in a group or facilitating a meeting, and Issue mapping when working solo.

A map using the default visual language

An example of another visual language / methodology is the set of boxes and templates that we designed for use with bSelling, based loosely on the non-visual Solution Selling methodology (and simplified a good deal):

This set is designed to help a salesperson understand the needs (pain points) of a prospective client, the cause of the pain, who else is affected, and what capabilities would help address each pain.  Here's an example of how visual thinking using this visual language can help lay out a picture of the prospect:

Diagnosing Customer pain with the bSelling visual language (click to enlarge)

So different visual languages work better for different purposes.

Rationale is mainly built around a visual language for argument mapping;  bCisive has several; with bCisive Online we plan to offer the possibility of organization-tailored visual languages plus templates.

But I'm not a visual thinker!

Some people protest that they're not visual thinkers and shy away from visual thinking approaches.

My off-the-cuff reply is that most people -- even avowed non-visual thinkers -- tend to consult a street directory when trying to figure out how to get from A to B:

A page from a street directory

The general point is that a visual approach may be the far-and-away the best tool for the job, even if you are not -- or don't consider yourself to be -- primarily a visual thinker.

Visual thinkers love visual tools and techniques, but visual tools and techniques aren't just for visual thinkers.

Top down or bottom up?

Top-down and bottom-up thinking are complimentary. Let's see why:

The alternatives (all images produced in bCisive Online)

Both top-down and bottom-up thinking cut across the critical / creative thinking divide:

Critical thinking

• Structuring and categorizing (mainly bottom-up)
• Hypothesis testing (top-down)
• Argument mapping (top-down and bottom-up aspects)

Creative thinking

• Brainstorming (bottom-up)
• Mind-mapping (top-down)
• Dialogue and issue mapping (top-down)
  

Let's look at what's good about each in visual form:

Some merits of working top-down

Some merits of working bottom-up

A combined approach

The pertinent "higher level" thinking skill is knowing which tool -- top-down or bottom-up? -- to use for which job.

As with all techniques, practising the skills is important -- first learn the rules of the game, follow them until they become internalized, then understand the limits of the rules and where to break 'em -- and then you can enjoy the benefits of these complimentary approaches.

Critical thinking or Creative thinking?

No! It should be critical thinking and creative thinking.

Some definitions, from Tim Hurson's book Think Better:

• Creative Thinking: generative, nonjudgmental and expansive. When you are thinking creatively, you are generating lists of new ideas.
• Critical Thinking: analytical, judgmental and selective. When you are thinking critically, you are making choices.

Experts in both styles of thinking will prefer more nuanced definitions, but these are good enough for my purposes.

Although individuals often excel at one ("she's very creative") or the other ("he has a mind like a steel trap"), the two modes are clearly complimentary. Sometimes they are embodied largely into different roles. For example:

• Writer (creative), editor (critical): But writers are critical of their own work
• Architect and client: Here who is being creative and who critical will be fluid depending on the phase of planning or construction
• Judge (critical), lawyer (both): The lawyer must generate many attacks and defenses (creative), but must select those that appear to best conform to the body of Law and make sense of the Facts to stand a chance (critical)
  

Techniques (and tools) for mind-mapping had their genesis as creative techniques, at which they excel.

Rationale and bCisive (desktop and online) have their roots in techniques of critical thinking, but lend themselves to both creative and critical visual thinking, by providing convenient facilities for

• Putting your ideas in boxes (creative)
• Uncovering and representing relationships (creative and/or critical)
• Categorizing (mainly critical)
• Making judgments and choices (critical)

Not only are these tools aids to both kinds of individual thinking, they lend themselves to teamwork around planning, strategizing and trouble-shooting, and subsequent visual communication.

They are strong all-round tools for both critical and creative thinking. And most people need both.

bCisive and Rationale vs The Whiteboard

Manual tools are not good enough for real visual thinking.

The conventional whiteboard is big and tactile, but has only two operations:

• Draw
• Erase

You can do visual thinking on a whiteboard, but rearrangement -- which is crucial if you are trying to solve a problem or gain insight, rather than simply present -- is only possible with constant rubbing out and rewriting, which is prohibitively difficult.

In practice, the difficulty in rearrangement deters the participants from undertaking the crucial activity of rearranging, or limits them to doing it in their heads, where no-one else can see and participate.

Even if you try to make use of the whiteboard for serious visual thinking, eventually you tend to end up with something rather messy:

Visual thinking on a whiteboard

So if you know what you want to write, a whiteboard is great, but it is of limited use in exploring ideas by playing with the arrangement.

bCisive (desktop and Online) and Rationale let you move around boxes at will, without the constant rubbing out and rewriting.

Butchers paper is even worse than a whiteboard (you can't rub out), and sticky notes allow rearrangement, but tend to be too small for group use and are poor at showing relationships (the lines connecting the boxes).

So while manual tools are flexible and have several advantages -- cheap, flexible, tactile, easy to get started (at first) -- they are cumbersome when it comes to the rearrangement needed to uncover structure and relationship.

Why visual thinking?

Visual thinking -- especially boxes and arrows -- allows people to organize and communicate their ideas more effectively than almost any other means.

Visual thinking helps to take the implicit and make it explicit.

Compared to linear text, visual thinking helps by easily revealing structure and relationship.

There are many different types of visual thinking:

Some types of visual thinking (click to enlarge)

In future posts I'll look at how different tools (both software and physical) are better adapted to different types of visual thinking.