Enhancing Analytical Thinking in the Workplaceby Bareena Irwin Tamang

Digital and AI technologies are transforming the world of work, requiring today’s workforce to constantly upskill or reskill to adapt to the ever-changing world of work. Moreover, the massive amount of data that every organization is producing is leading to growing data complexity, prompting companies to look for employees with analytical, creative, and critical thinking skills to better manage and use the glut of data to draw insights, unlock business value, and gain a competitive edge.

Consequently, the expectations of every role in an organization are high. While employees are expected to apply higher levels of cognitive skills, particularly analytical and creative thinking skills, leaders are expected to demonstrate more advanced critical thinking skills to assess people and situations and make sound decisions and judgments. This shift in skill demand is compelling employees to upskill or reskill to perform optimally and produce superior work-related outcomes, such as improved productivity and performance.

While the primary responsibility for upskilling or reskilling lies with the employees, organizations also have a role to play. They must provide access to learning opportunities and create an environment that fosters continuous learning and employee development. In this context, Learning and Development (L&D) professionals are not just facilitators but integral players in preparing employees for the future world of work. Their effective and innovative L&D initiatives and models are key to future-proofing employees’ skills.

This article offers two possible strategies that L&D professionals may wish to consider to enhance employees’ analytical thinking skills at the workplace, potentially paving the way for their career growth and success.

What Employers Want? Diverse Thinking Approaches: Analytical, Creative, and Critical

When organizations express their need for individuals who excel at solving complex problems, they are truly seeking employees who possess diverse thinking skills. These include analytical thinking, which involves breaking down complex issues into manageable parts; creative thinking, which allows for innovative solutions; and critical thinking, which enables sound judgment and decision-making. Emphasizing the importance of these diverse thinking approaches in the workplace not only underlines the value of different perspectives but also encourages employees to develop these skills.

Analytical thinking is the ability to systematically and logically break down complex problems or information into smaller, manageable parts to find solutions with a step-by-step approach. It involves evaluating data, identifying patterns, drawing conclusions, and making informed decisions. A person using analytical thinking can extract more information from a data set than someone not using analytical thinking skills. For instance, a sales analyst can dig into sales data and determine whether the sales dropping is just part of the usual ups and downs due to seasonality or a big problem for the organization to worry about. In other words, they can construct convincing arguments rooted in data and can even suggest additional details that might resolve the problem.

Creative thinking requires imagination and involves developing new ideas or several possible solutions from which a solution can be selected. A person with creative thinking can perform better when brainstorming, developing, and implementing ideas.

Critical thinking involves arriving at logical conclusions and making reasoned judgments in a well-thought-out manner. A person using critical thinking will make decisions based on evidence and data rather than gut feeling. Leaders with critical thinking skills demonstrate that their thinking is deliberate, purposeful, logical, and goal-directed. They often leverage this thinking to generate positive business outcomes.

Enhancing Analytical Thinking Skills in the Workplace: Two Key Strategies

Training programs deliver value, but there is always scope to strengthen and improve the value proposition aimed at developing participants’ analytical thinking skills. One way to do that is to engage employees in structured and unstructured problem-solving.

L&D professionals can consider facilitating learning programs through two distinct learning environments where one environment ensures a safe and risk-free atmosphere (such as business simulations or case studies to prepare participants for real-world experiences) and the other environment involves letting the participants work on live projects with guided, on-the-job support to make the learning more challenging with acceptable risk levels. One of the advantages of adopting these learning models is that both provide an interactive and collaborative learning experience requiring participants to apply what they have learned in safe and challenging environments.

Leverage Business Simulations

Business simulation can serve as a perfect way to train analytical thinking skills. For instance, introducing participants to realistic business case studies can help employees gain the required cognitive skills and prepare them to apply those skills in the real world.

These training events can be followed by objective and structured assessments that measure how well participants have understood the concepts (rather than adopting a traditional evaluation system that is based on typically informal and generic observations). Additionally, as part of the training evaluation, adequate processes can be included to document all the training experiences, acquired skills, and reflections of the trainer. Theoretically speaking, learners tend to remember and learn it better if they know it will be tested to confirm their understanding.

Offer Guided Skill Application Opportunities

Another effective strategy to encourage employees’ analytical thinking is to go beyond structured training assessments. This can be achieved by blending formal training with on-the-job support to enhance their analytical thinking skills.

Providing employees with safe and well-structured post-training assessments to reflect on their learning experiences is okay. However, when they are given opportunities to apply the concepts on real projects, along with on-the-job support aimed at helping them apply what they learned, they may be more likely to examine their own abilities, recognize their limits of knowledge, and seek additional help wherever required.

For example, let’s assume a set of employees in the Finance department underwent a master class training on Microsoft Excel. Providing these employees with safe and well-structured post-training assessments as part of the evaluation process may not be sufficient to help them sharpen their Excel skills. Instead, an effective way is to let them work on the live projects and apply those skills, but with adequate on-the-job support and guidance. Theoretically, this model elevates the task value (according to the expectancy-value theory), where employees are more likely to be motivated to engage in the learning process as they perceive the task or activity as having a high value.

Concluding thoughts

Like all other functions in an organization, L&D is continuously being exposed to changes in the workplace. Today, L&D professionals are not just trainers or training facilitators. They serve as learning advisors or consultants who guide their organizations to tailor learning initiatives that fit best rather than simply respond to training requests. As learning advisors, they influence talent decisions and business outcomes by leveraging their L&D expertise. However, the challenge is recognizing the importance of workplace changes and implementing suitable learning models within a budget-constrained setting usually characterized by limited resources.