Get Your Critical Thinking Outsourced

What better than being able to leverage someone else’s knowledge and potential to your favor?

Not everyone is capable of thinking critically. In today’s unpredictable market conditions and volatile economy, everyone from top to bottom in organizations have the responsibility to keep assumptions, biases and emotions out of everyday business decisions. Complex flow of information at all levels increases the challenge of channeling this information in the right direction, let alone thinking critically. What aggravates the situation is the fact that candidates are constantly altering roles, usually without any guidance. There is so much happening simultaneously that it can get exceedingly overwhelming and most of the times becomes impossible for someone to be rational and think critically of any situation and take appropriate decisions. In such a situation, critical thinking has emerged as one of the most sought-for soft skills that are high on demand today.

Critical thinking is critical to the simplest of deadlocks in everyday decision making. Correct decision in a business context requires the ability to focus on the most relevant information, sifting facts from assumptions. Assumptions need to be questioned, potentials identified, and uncertainties analyzed; all of which will come handy in problem solving, decision making, organizational planning, risk management, etc. While the corporate world is actively seeking people who can base major decisions by leveraging these skills, reports suggest there is a major shortage of critical thinkers in the workforce today.

Companies today are investing extensively to build critical thinking skills in leaders and managers. Deepening globalization and speeding businesses however makes it difficult to keep pace with the rapidly emerging trends. In today’s face paced business scenario, there is hardly any time to cultivate the required critical thinking skills through training at the same pace as that of business evolution. One of the options for companies in the present context can be to outsource critical thinking to experts and trusted counselors help leaders make critical business decisions.

As of now, most part of outsourcing is mostly seen in areas of functional business needs and processes; but now as the business needs have expanded, companies do have the option of exploring intellectual potentials of a third party and using it to the advantage of your organization’s shortfalls.

One of the cases involving use of an outsider’s critical thinking that went on to become internationally prominent can be stated here. This case is of Walt Disney, who hired Michael Ovitz, Co-founder of Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to provide guidance and advise on problems relating to poor talent relationships and stagnant foreign growth, while Ovitz at the same time retained 55 per cent of his interest in CAA. The employment contract was concluded in 1995 after establishing assurance that Ovitz’ vision for Walt Disney was clear. However, in Walt Disney’s case the use of intellectual potential of an outsider was based on the lines of employment contract.

In the present context, while entire decision-making have not been completely outsourced, many companies are using critical thinking for organizational progression. For example, Royal Dutch bank seeks third party expertise and specialized knowledge for scenario building, which is central to the bank’s renowned strategic planning activities.

Outsourcing is a great way to leverage a third party intellectual capability for building and furthering your business goals. However, sharing with and giving an outsider the power to guide critical business decisions needs meticulous research, planning and execution; critical thinking therefore should only be outsourced to highly trusted persons who are legally bound by stringent commitment clauses.