Thinking like a Structured Visual Thinker!

Thinking like a Structured Visual Thinker! 

"The ill-structured, 'wicked' problems we face today require three particular mental skills which, when combined, can lead to insight." - Jordan Peterson 

These three skills are crucial to understand if we are to create a Structured Visual Thinking™ level of outcome. This means we must understand and combine the power of structured and logical thinking together with creativity delivering a free-flowing and valued experience. Let's avoid solving the wrong problem really well. This means overcoming the insight problem.

Not all insights are good, indeed the immediate jumping to an insight is high risk and an even bigger problem is that with many people once they have birthed it they will die to keep it alive. The term insight typically indicates the moment when a new, more effective formulation suddenly appears in one's mind enabling one to view the situation in a new light.

The Three Skills

1. Convergent Thinking: Analytic in nature moving linearly and logically toward a single solution. This includes the ability to give the correct answer to standard questions that do not require significant creativity, for instance in standardised tests for intelligence.
2. Divergent Thinking: Non-linear and moves associatively through a web of related ideas or images in search of patterns.Such thinking occurs in a spontaneous, free flowing manner whereby many ideas are generated in a random unorganised fashion, many possible solutions are explored in a short amount of time, and unexpected conclusions are drawn.
3. The Ability To Break The Frame: Leaps of imagination – not jumps to conclusion. Overcoming the 'functional fixedness' or 'context induced' set. This is what we refer to as impartiality but is in fact a deeply seated human condition which began when we were infants. Someone with a fixed view and even an insight can be very hard to change. Sadly the immediate insight is often wrong. 

The best example we have found to illustrate this point relates to the following. Picture this case of insightful thinking and deduction. Try it yourself. 

"An unemployed woman who did not have her driving license with her failed to stop at a railroad crossing, then ignored a one-way traffic sign and travelled three blocks in the wrong direction down the one way street. All this was observed by a nearby police officer, who was on duty, yet made no effort to arrest the woman. Why?"

Read on the answer is below.

Defining the indefinable.

Thinking and reasoning whilst processing against specific structures is hard. What is going on is also extremely difficult to define. We have made it into a codifiable act through the frameworks of Structured Visual Thinking™. We have done this over many years and it has become natural. We know that the three skills are vital to the 'thinking' act and central to problem solving and decisioning in the human mind.

What we don't know is how easily we can describe what this means physiologically nor how readily people can grasp all of the components in order for this to become second nature.

We apply our minds to an avalanche of data and the noise of implied knowledge that comes at us from all over by testing this material against proven architectures that we have designed over our lifetimes. These structures enable us to capture, sort and rank in rapid ways against deliberate measures. 

We then begin analysing against this more targeted data and against our desired outcomes. We do this by applying the Business Equation™  By the use of co-creative techniques we can then mitigate risk, force review then provoke the stimulation or revision/acceptance of better 
thinking. This removes the classic barriers of semantics, politics and ritualised paradigms.

Data arriving from external sources can feel very alien. 

It’s often unstructured, out of any context, arbitrary and silo based. It doesn’t always need to feel unloved, it can be our friend and it is often very valid – not to be ignored because it doesn’t fit our view. The point of all this though is that out of context its worthless, it wont be used and it can be used to damn not to fuel a positive outcome. 

The role is deeply exploring its DNA, where did it come from, why, where is it headed and how can we help it get there? I’m just as content when it gets thrown away as when I find its home as bad information is just that. The reality though is that its mostly useful. It simply needs a home or its more valuable in a place it didn’t think it was intended for.

Our frameworks are the measure and tool I use to help inform these decisions.

We are fascinated by insight. It's a creative moment for us when things that were previously unrelated now make sense, when people who were struggling to make sense see the flow or logic of a new piece of the jigsaw. They have overcome several earlier insights to arrive at a far better one. Hugely valuable when mistakes or errors are avoided by a change of thinking created by the frameworks and structures we can create out of the information pouring in. Behavioural change - whilst the toughest nut to crack - can often be instigated by that inspired moment when these clues get exposed in this way.

The observation then the physical identification of patterns – more and more important structures and frameworks in abstract (or ad hoc) conversation (and content) - a new art of the possible. In developing executable outcomes in complex businesses this certainly requires a type of mindset and an approach to thinking that few people have naturally. In Structured Visual Thinking™ it is at least 100 percent of the approach.

Our work is founded on 3 major planks. 

1. Structured Visual Thinking™  - Visualisation and logical reasoning ahead/beyond and in live co-created interventions.
2. Contextual Analysis™ – Involving Pattern recognition of a narrative, collaborative and relective nature.
3. Information Design applied consistently in the preparation of stimulus, in the facilitation of clients and on into the resultant development of all the outcomes.

These foundational elements are how we work, how we think and what we do. We are not using visualisation to over simplify or deflect - we use it to signify logic and meaning and connect purpose with decision. We are not using pattern recognition to dumb down or simplify anything - we are using it to identify risk and opportunity and engage with practical; actionable work. Removing those jumps to conclusion - those first few wrong insights. We are not using Information Design to perform cosmetic surgery on the problem – we are using it to empower and inform the widest possible audience.

The answer to the riddle – She was walking not driving. 

Posted via email from Just Thinking!