Types of Thinking
Detail-Oriented Thinking
Detail-oriented thinking appeals to individuals that appreciate specificity; whether it is facts, detailed steps in a process, or correctly identifying information.
When making decisions, they attempt to accumulate as much information possible. They often re-check their work and appreciate nuance in patterns of information.
Practical
Practical thinkers are focused on generating ideas with a clear path to becoming reality.
Even from the start, practical thinkers focus on details and potential execution because they are focused more on what should be than what could be.
Biggest strength: Creating well-developed ideas with a high probability of successful implementation.
Potential weakness: Missing out on risky but potentially game-changing ideas that require outside-the-box development.
Strategic
Strategic thinkers assess an idea’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
They mold the clay of an idea into a plan with a high probability of seeing the light of day.
Biggest strength: Giving ideas the best chance of smart, successful implementation.
Potential weakness: Overthinking an idea to the point of not letting it breathe and develop organically.
Methodical
Methodical thinkers take ideas and turn them into the actual series of steps that will be required to achieve them.
They are well-organized, live in the details, and have systems and templates they can immediately apply to almost any situation.
Biggest strength: Devising a clear path to push an idea from development to implementation.
Potential weakness: Adapting to changes or unforeseen circumstances.
Objective
Objective thinkers focus on expectations and results. They think in experiments.
They want to know what the stated goals were, then what outcomes actually followed, and how they compare. They prefer hard quantitative analysis to the uncertainty of softer qualitative thinking.
Biggest strength: Generating clear data that assess success or failure and informs future choices.
Potential weaknesses: Missing out on large-scale lessons that don’t fit the specific scale of the data being analyzed.
Big Picture Thinking
Big picture thinkers are comfortable making decisions with less information, relying on experience and reasoning to fill in information gaps.
When evaluating ideas or actions, they look for a larger context and incorporate disparate concepts when creating a solution or decision.
Abstract
Abstract thinkers aren’t as focused on what should be as on what could be.
They won’t let uncertainty about how an idea might be implemented to deter them from opening your mind to think in big, bold, and new terms.
Biggest strength: Coming up with innovative ideas that actually change the paradigm.
Potential weakness: Consistently creating ideas that are too impractical to implement.
Conceptual
Conceptual thinkers turn ideas into high-level objectives that must be achieved for the idea to become a reality.
They don’t get lost in the weeds, understanding that circumstances can change and believing that the best answers often reveal themselves along the way.
Biggest strength: Implementing plans that can adapt effectively and possibly improve the idea in exciting, unexpected ways.
Potential weakness: Plans can stall or fail due to insufficient direction or inaction.
Creative
Creative thinkers believe new ideas deserve fresh thinking about the best way to implement them.
They believe old paradigms are interesting and informative, but more suggestion than certainty. They create new frameworks that give ideas their best chance of fully flourishing.
Biggest strength: Empowering unique ideas to achieve the full extent of their potential.
Potential weakness: Ignoring realities or lessons from the past that doom ideas to preventable failure.
Holistic
Holistic thinkers focus on the overall direction of the team or organization.
They recognize the potential for an idea or project to have unintended impacts, good and bad, and are committed to not losing the forest for the trees in assessing the results of any one event.
Biggest strength: Separating the signal from the noise to make better long-term decisions.
Potential weaknesses: Thwarting growth by misinterpreting results due to cognitive bias or insufficient rigor.
Methodology
Developing a personality quiz based on thinking is not easy.
Why?
Because our style of thinking depends on a number of factors including the situation we are in, our emotions, the environment, and many other elements.
So we focused on creating a taxonomy of terms to describe the type of thinking a person engages when working on a project. We felt this would allow us to incorporate both individual and team dynamics into a defined scenario.
In addition, inspired by the work of Mark Bonchek and Elisa Steele in the Harvard Business Review, we developed a matrix concept that compared degrees of detail to different stages in a hypothetical project.
Specifically, we defined the four stages of a project -- ideas, planning, execution, and evaluation -- and mapped thinking patterns between highly detailed to big-picture thinking.
The rationale for the matrix is based on the reality that the way we think can be different depending on the specific situation or function.
So while you may like to stay Big Picture when thinking about an idea, when it comes time to execute, your thinking may be more Detailed.
The challenge in developing a "thinking type" is how to balance the various responses to each stage into a comprehensive classification for an individual.
That is where the quiz comes to our aid.
By examining responses to individual questions using a point system, we developed a score that shows proclivities toward either a detailed or big picture approach.
The final element of the process is to identify your preference for a particular stage and use this selection plus your score to select your thinking type.
What is your opinion?
What is your opinion of the quiz and our classification? Does it do a good job of defining your thinking type?
Let us know in the THINKERS Workshop!
Jerod Morris
Chief Creative Thinker
Sean Jackson
Chief Strategic Thinker