Critical Thinking, Problem Solving & Decision Making

1. Introduction to Decision Making

• What's a Decision?
• High Quality vs. Low Quality Decisions
• Becoming a Better Decision-Maker

2. Barriers to Brilliant Decisions

• Instinctive Decision-Making
• Barriers to Sound Reasoning
• Outlook vs. Reality

3. Critical Thinking

• What Is Critical Thinking?
• Structures of Thinking
• Thinking with Standards
• Sophistry and Intellectual Ethics

4. Problem Analysis Guidelines

• Opening the Mind
• 10 Best Practice Guidelines
• Structuring Techniques
• Putting It All Together

5. The Decision

• Who Decides?
• Who Should Decide?
• Take Home Message

•  Natural barriers to sound reasoning
•  Bias and assumptions in problem analysis
•  Thought processes and reasoning
•  Analytical techniques for comparing alternative solutions
•  Structure, standards, and ethics of critical thinking
•  Problem analysis best practices

Hands-On Exercises

• Evaluate the strategic thinking of others
• Assess the reasoning of others
• Problem solving by starting with restatement of the issues
• Problem solving from a number of different perspectives
• Identify decision-making factors
• Creativity and the decision-making process
• Structure the analytical process with a matrix
• Evaluate decision options using probabilities
• Compare options using paired ranking

This course provides an introduction to structured decision making. It is intended for any professional who is new to formal problem analysis, including: department managers, directors, supervisors, project managers, IT project managers, project coordinators, project analysts, project leaders, senior project managers, team leaders, product managers, program managers, associate project managers, stakeholders, team members, and all others responsible for resource allocations.