Thinking Systems

This mistake of premature closure appears to be a consequence of the structure of our brains.  Why our brains are structured this way is up to anthropologists to speculate (more stories) -but the process of making a decision appears to be based on two things: Speed and energy conservation.  Researchers affiliated with the Society of Judgement and Decision Making map our thinking into two types: Experiential and Cogitative, also known as System 1 and System 2.

Experiential thinking is rapid, energy efficient and error prone (and makes minimal use of the pre-frontal lobe), whereas Cogitative thinking is slow, consumes large amounts of energy and is more likely to be reliable (and it makes extensive use of the pre-frontal lobe).  It is curious to reflect that our highly enlarged pre-fontal lobes are what make us so different from other animals, and yet we seem so reluctant to use them!

If ever there was a time to ensure that we must use Cogitative thinking, do research, use tools and structure, and ensure we were are correct, it is during the scope definition of a project - so much investment hinges on the scope specification!  So we need to positively encourage the team to hold off their urgency for action, take control of defining the scope, research the needs of the project among the extended stakeholder group, apply thinking tools such as issue decomposition and key questioning, and gain social acceptance for their findings.

— Philip Greenwood

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