41–50 of 135 posts
I think it is great that this question is asked by the wsj. Unfortunately the article is behind a paywall. Can someone with access please summarize the article?
See Isaac Asimov's classic science fiction story about education, "Profession", featuring the "House for the Feeble Minded", http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html "For most of the first eighteen years of his life, George Platen had headed firmly in one direction, that of Registered Computer Programmer. There were those in his crowd who spoke wisely of Spationautics, Refrigeration Technology, Transportation Co…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't confuse critical thinking with disruptive behavior. I often think the current approach is dumb, but I also accept I don't know everything. So, I generally just toss an idea out there, give it 15-30 seconds of support and move on. People that dig in even if they are correct and I agree with them are much harder to work with. Further, doing something even if it's a poor solution is often better than continuing to…
Disruptive behaviour in school is often caused by boredom. In a professional setting, I guess it could also be for ego/political reasons. But if somebody is thinking along and asks genuinely good questions, it isn't usually for ego reasons - they want to learn. I think it's worth pursuing: either a) you find somebody knows why it was done a certain way, and it's good to spread that knowledge (and get to know other pe…
The problem with workplace politics is that there are usually two kinds of critical thinking: thinking that boils down to "we are doing OK, but we could do better if we did X" which is the type of critical thinking everyone loves, and then there's "we are doing something obviously wrong and we need to stop", which is literally critical thinking and is invariably risky (it's criticising people, often management).
Organisations always say they want independent and critical thinkers, but they hardly ever do. They want yes men who will cheerlead for the side. That's tough on people who genuinely care about an organisation or want to see it succeed because strange or dysfunctional behaviour (ignoring customer feedback for example) can easily occur in almost any workplace, and sometimes there's no positive or upbeat way to say "we should probably listen to our customers" or "maybe that process you just put in place is a waste of time", or whatever the problem of the day is.
The article, especially some of the examples, seems abusive to low-wage employees. How many of us would give a job description that said 'this is not a preparation for a slow motion contest' a second glance? The meat and potatoes of the article is mostly just complaints to be honest. A lack of candidates is always the go-to excuse for managers and executives when explaining poor productivity or vacancies. Job seekers…
I work for a >10,000 employee health care system as a physician. What I have seen is that the front line workers are considered disposable, and should be grateful for a job. The superstars ( always nice, compassionate, and excellent at their jobs) are not recognized by management and so when raises are given, everyone gets them, including the lazy ones. This disappoints the worker bees, and leads to incredible turnov…
The solution is probably to switch to a competitor that does set pay levels individually. In the event that there are none, perhaps take a leap and set up a competitor that does? If it's as big a problem as you say, presumably lots of talented physicians would beat a path to your door.
Strange - I usually associate "soft skills" more with leadership, people skills etc. And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly. The employees sorta need to pick them up from experience.
Indeed, quite odd to describe "soft skill" as critical thinking skills, ie cognitive skills. soft skill typically is social skill, the type of nebulous skill that while it may have value leaves huge room to interpretation.
Thank god the Wall Street Journal is encouraging critical thinking, and more importantly fostering the discussion by putting articles like this out for everybody to read /s On a more serious note, I don't believe this is true. In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. This was the case even if they were truly nice people who cared - i.e. not abrasiv…
Don't mistake being a contrarian with being a critical thinker.
Thank god the Wall Street Journal is encouraging critical thinking, and more importantly fostering the discussion by putting articles like this out for everybody to read /s On a more serious note, I don't believe this is true. In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. This was the case even if they were truly nice people who cared - i.e. not abrasiv…
Creativity and critical thinking. In subordinate position it gets you labelled a dreamer, a weirdo, or an idiot. In executive position, visionary, maverick, multidisciplinary thinker, etc. You can only truly creative in a position with autonomy, so you either climb the ladder or start your own thing.
The article, especially some of the examples, seems abusive to low-wage employees. How many of us would give a job description that said 'this is not a preparation for a slow motion contest' a second glance? The meat and potatoes of the article is mostly just complaints to be honest. A lack of candidates is always the go-to excuse for managers and executives when explaining poor productivity or vacancies. Job seekers…
I work for a >10,000 employee health care system as a physician. What I have seen is that the front line workers are considered disposable, and should be grateful for a job. The superstars ( always nice, compassionate, and excellent at their jobs) are not recognized by management and so when raises are given, everyone gets them, including the lazy ones. This disappoints the worker bees, and leads to incredible turnov…
What I'm more interested in, as a smart person, is that my work is recognized as valuable, given the resources it needs to succeed, encouraged, improved upon, aided.