A Workplace Game-Changer: Critical Thinking

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy—an old proverb that implies work and fun cannot coincide with one another...but what if they could?

When considering the idea of gamification in the workplace, there is a lot that must

be unpacked before one can fully understand how it impacts learning and proficiency within a given field. In this four-part blog series, I am going to walk through everything you need to know about this relatively new process:

1. The meaning of critical thinking and its value in the workplace

2. What gamification is as well as how it has evolved over time

3. How gamification has been used in the workplace and how it can be improved

4. How 2md plans to use gamification as a means of helping individuals understand Architecture-Based Analysis (ABA)

Each installment of the series will revolve around one of the above concepts and will utilize a combination of academic journals, popular sources, and personal experiences. My hope is that by the end of the last post, you will have a thorough understanding of gamification and how it can be used as a learning technique both in the workplace and beyond.

If I haven't bored you to death, that means you're just as fascinated by this topic as I am. Let's begin, shall we?

Academic Resources

I will kick things off today with some interesting facts I stumbled upon while examining a few online journals. For example, there was a report written by Ashley Finley from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) titled How College Contributes to Workforce Success that explored a closely related topic.

While reading through the findings, I found some numbers that surprised me:

• The sample group was made up of 496 individuals in charge of hiring and promotions here in the US (this report uses the general term "employer", so I will do the same).

• 6 out of 10 employers believe that recent college graduates have the necessary skills for success in their companies.

  • Likely because of this, 1 in 3 employers don't have confidence in higher education (this blew my mind!).

• Lastly, a direct quote by Lynn Pasquerella states, "…the new survey found evidence of greater recognition of the value of civic skill building and community engagement among younger and more highly educated employers".

  • My takeaway from this is that the newer generations of college graduates who are becoming employers value a more liberal or creative educational background.

This report was full of interesting information, so if you want to learn more be sure to check it out using the link provided above!

Another source I found that proved to be helpful is titled Dimensions of Critical Thinking in Workplace Management & Personal Development: A Conceptual Analysis written by Mitashree Tripathy. This enlightening article also stresses the importance of critical thinking in the workplace as well as the current lack of this skill among new hires. According to Tripathy, "Critical thinking provides definite and controlled means as an advisable guide before taking any actions". The way I understand it, this essentially states that critical thought helps us to thoroughly evaluate all of the factors involved in a certain endeavor before we go through with it. This is important because if we do not consider as many elements as possible when undertaking a certain venture (business or otherwise), we will likely overlook essential aspects of the project.

Additionally, Tripathy mentions that critical thinking "has become a pivotal and key element for the workplace success as it enables employees to view situations from diverse angles and offers response from multiple surfaces". When considering how the workplace only continues to evolve and diversify, this skill becomes ever more essential as time goes on.

Lastly, I pulled some more information from an article entitled Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work published by McKinsey & Company that outlines 3 fundamental criteria with which an individual's skills should align:

1. One should provide more value to an organization than what an automated system or machine can accomplish.

2. One should possess the ability to function in a digital environment.

3. One should be able to continually adapt to workplace changes and new ways of thinking.

While I am sure more criteria could be considered, I like the way this article breaks things down in a way that is easy to comprehend. The way I understand it, much of one's value in the workplace comes from adaptability and thinking outside the box. These traits directly coincide with some of those that make up the critical thinking skill.

Popular Sources

Now that we have breached the surface of why critical thinking in the workplace is important through the use of academic resources, let's switch gears and dive into a few of the popular sources I found that discuss this topic.

One of the most popular articles I ran into is called Critical Thinking in the Workplace published by Argumentful. This report provides several helpful examples that define critical thinking and outline how it is all about asking "why?" rather than taking something at face-value.

For example, imagine you are driving on the highway when all of a sudden your car breaks down and you are forced to come to a stop. One option would be to call a tow service and drop your car off with a mechanic to get it fixed, choosing to pay whatever is charged before asking any questions. However, a critical thinker would likely look into the issue to see if they could understand what happened and whether it can easily be fixed without the hassle of a tow truck and hefty bill. Perhaps the issue is more extensive than you thought and it has to be taken in anyway...or maybe it's a simple problem that you can fix yourself after a quick YouTube video.

From the same article, I pulled two quotes that effectively simplify what critical thinking is and how it is important in the workplace:

1. "[Critical thinking] involves questioning assumptions, identifying biases, and considering alternative perspectives in order to arrive at a well-informed conclusion".

2. "In the workplace, critical thinking is essential for making sound decisions, solving complex problems, and adapting to changing circumstances".

The second and final popular source for this post actually comes from Indeed.com and is titled 6 Main Types of Critical Thinking Skills (With Examples) written by Jamie Birt.

As the title suggests, this article breaks critical thinking down into six main skills as well as providing examples to help you fully understand their meaning. I analyzed the skill descriptions and summarized them for you based on how I perceived their meanings, so make sure to visit the article if you'd like to draw your own conclusions!

The six skills mentioned are as follows:

1. Analytical Thinking- gathering, interpreting, and evaluating data.

2. Good Communication- effectively sharing your knowledge as well as having others feel they can share with you.

3. Creative Thinking- finding unique informational patterns and making connections between data that appears to be unrelated.

4. Open-Mindedness- making sure you acknowledge other people's past experiences so that you can utilize their bias and diversify your strategy.

5. Ability to Solve Problems- using your knowledge to mend a situation rather than simply accepting the issue as it is.

6. Asking Thoughtful Questions-insightful inquiries are essential in any situation when trying to draw conclusions. The article describes 4 examples of thoughtful questions, however I won't go into them in this post for the sake of time (another reason to check out the article!).

There could be a multitude of other skills involved depending on how much you explore the topic, however I think this article does a great job of summing up the main structure of critical thinking itself.

Personal Experience

I know this post got a bit lengthy, so if you haven't fallen asleep yet I'll go ahead and finish things off by describing my own experience when it comes to critical thinking.

A few years ago, I received a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas majoring in anthropology—a field that is essentially built on the foundation of critical thought. In fact, a good majority of my classes revolved around this very topic. It is for this reason I could go on for hours about how I was taught and what I have learned, but I enjoy your company so wont put you through that. I will, however, provide examples of how I utilized this skill through describing two of the major projects I had to complete for my classes.

The first project revolved around conducting field work and the goal of the assignment was to complete an interview with an immigrant or child of an immigrant of African or Hispanic descent. I actually got pretty lucky with this project, as my boyfriend's mom was born and raised in Kenya (my boyfriend lived there for the first nine years of his life but was born here in the United States).

During the interview, I had to use critical thinking as I could not read from a set script, but rather had to listen to what the interviewee said and keep things from getting too far off track. I asked both my boyfriend and his mother a variety of questions for this project in a multigenerational interview that revolved around their history and the challenges they faced when moving to the US. For most of the process, my job was simply to use their stories and explanations to form new questions that helped to dive deeper into their individual experiences. I then wrote my own field notes and ultimately used them to create a comprehensive paper on the subject.

The second major project I will discuss used critical thinking in a completely different way. For this assignment, the goal was to create some kind of solution to an issue of our choice, so long as it revolved around the Inuit. I chose to focus my research on ways to help decrease the rates of suicide in Greenland among Inuit people, as this problem is extremely common there in comparison to the rest of the globe.

My idea was to create an app that would be able to provide free therapy to those in need while keeping their identity secret so they felt safer speaking about what they may be going through. The app itself was never actually developed, however I did have to go through all of the steps involved in it's creation for the sake of my project. As you can imagine, critical thinking plays a major role here as well when considering what is necessary for app development (budget, visual appeal, advertisement, etc.), as well as accounting for the bias of the Inuit people. This ensures the solution is as effective as possible. To succeed with this project, it was essential for me look into every factor that may effect the outcome; if I overlooked certain key details, then the theoretical app would inevitably fail or perhaps never take off at all.

I know this is a lot of information, so let me sum things up by providing you with the main takeaway of this post: critical thinking is an essential skill when approaching any new solution, and it becomes more relevant by the day. When considering your approach to a specific project, make sure you consider how to fully explore all of the factors involved, as well as keeping an open mind and allowing yourself to think outside the box. Sometimes, it is good to sweat the small stuff—little problems can pile up into a major issue quicker than you may think!

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