Discussion responses

Critical Thinking Trade-offs are an inevitable component of problem solving and decision making and bad trade-offs sometimes manifest later; however this does not mean that a bad decision was made at the time. Situations change and environments progress or develop so what may have been a good trade-off or the best trade-off earlier may appear to be wrong later.
2. Pain can take many guises including ‘ monetary’ pain. We only have to look at the stock exchange for example to find many people experiencing pain – loss of money. Many times this pain is caused by rush decisions and decisions of panic; falling share prices cause many to think irrationally and not consider the odds. Doing nothing in such circumstances is often the best solution to the problem.
3. People who are unaware of the systematic methods of decision making, have not developed their critical thinking skills and thus prone to making wrong decisions. People who usually make decisions based on critical analysis have cultivated their critical decision making skills and have more chance of making a correct snap decision if needed. No effective and efficient leader who has honed their decision making skills will rely on repeated snap decisions however because the risks are too high.
4. In order to extract the root cause of any problem I ask myself why it has arisen; the answer to this question will usually lead to another, and then another. I realize that in most instances problems may be attributable to a number of causal links and that the first or most obvious cause is generally not the right one. Sometimes when working in this way to realize the negative cause and effect configurations I find there is more than one root cause to a particular problem.
5. Effective decision makers and problem solvers are people who impart their knowledge with humility – the two go hand-in-hand. A leader who respects the needs, feeling and opinions of others gain respect and commitment from others, and the leader who seeks, acknowledges and considers the input of others in their decision making and problem solving tasks are more likely to acquire the whole picture rather than a one-eyed self opinionated viewpoint.