I am asked almost every week about the concept of “Critical Thinking.”

Critical Thinking means something different to a lot of people and you only have to go to Google and type in and search for it to find out that in 1/3 of a second, you get more than 2 billion hits!

Let that sink in—more than 2 billion hits.

One of the things I have been working on over the past few weeks is a short and concise blog about developing Critical Thinking Skills in business professionals and this is the culmination of research and years of experience working with more than 10,000 leaders.

The Advantexe Critical Business Framework

Everything starts with the framework that defines the way we view it…

How to Develop the Skills

You’ve just taken a few moments to read the 8 points and if you are like most people, you are shaking your head and thinking, “Yes, that sounds good, I like it.”

And that is part of the problem of developing the skills. You don’t “get it” by just reading it; you only get it by doing it over and over again until you can use the framework meaninglessly in the flow of work.

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The question from one of our participants was very straightforward and something I thought would be easy to answer.

Yesterday while conducting a Business Leadership workshop for a global audience we had a module on “Stakeholder Mapping.” This is a core module in our content library and it is used to build skills and capabilities in a digital simulation workshop and then of course back on the job.

We were discussing one of the most basic tools of Stakeholder Mapping tools where you identify and segment key stakeholders by how important they are to the project, process, or change, and what is their level of support. This graphic provides the four quadrants of stakeholder mapping as each quadrant will inform you of what to do and how to do it.

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The business world is buzzing today with news that Apple has entered into a partnership with OpenAi to integrate OpenAi’s AI technologies into Apple’s core products. As one writer put it, “Siri is going to get really smart really quickly.”

Developing innovation internally or paying for it through investments and M&A externally has become one of the most popular learning points in Advantexe’s simulation-centric Business Acumen learning programs.

Inevitably, the learning conversation focuses on the positives, negatives, costs, and impact on the brand.

This week, I am delivering a Business Acumen program to a specialty materials client and my cohort is all based in Europe and Asia. While delivering a module on strategic thinking and planning, the question about outsourcing innovation came up so I promised the team I would turn it into a blog for learning purposes. Here goes…

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As with many of our blogs, we find deep inspiration and insights from the training sessions with great clients that we conduct on a daily basis around the world. Today, I had the chance to facilitate a Fundamentals of Business Leadership™ simulation workshop working with new and 1–3 year managers on how to be a great business leader. Business leadership is how you execute your business strategy and achieve financial results through people, so setting goals, giving feedback, coaching, resolving business conflicts, and leading change are pillars of success.

One of the simulation scenarios is about creating equity on your team when leading a diverse group of hybrid workers in different time zones. As we were going through the scenario, one of the participants disagreed with some of the core feedback saying that until you have established an environment of trust, nothing else matters. We purposely took a tangent and dug deep into her sentiments. What resulted was an amazing few moments of organic learning which I am sharing in this blog!

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I recognize that over the past five months, I have written several blogs about inflation from a business acumen perspective. And just when I thought the thirst for more learning was fading away, I spent a good 30 minutes today during a business acumen workshop for one of our clients discussing inflation from a very practical perspective and more importantly what they can do at their “everyday employee” level to address it and minimize the negative impacts on financial results.

Based on what I hear from our clients every day, inflation is a critical concept that every manager should understand as it affects every aspect of business operations. This blog presents a cleaned-up and concise overview of all the key learning points.

The critical knowledge that everyday managers need to know about inflation:

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