Conceptual Thinking Training
The Key to Innovative Decision-Making in Business Challenges
What is conceptual thinking?
Conceptual thinking is the practice of connecting abstract, disparate ideas to deepen understanding, generate new ideas, and draw conclusions based on past decisions. Conceptual thinkers can easily grasp abstract concepts, such as complex business processes or nonlinear activities in daily life.
They are able to connect different concepts to find innovative ideas and reflect on previous decisions to improve future outcomes. This skill is valuable for various reasons and is beneficial for people in different positions within a company.
Why is conceptual thinking important?
Conceptual thinking is important for better professional performance and results, as well as job satisfaction. Employees who practice conceptual thinking can often find and implement creative and innovative solutions to business challenges because they are able to connect abstract ideas. Conceptual thinkers often find deeper satisfaction and commitment to their professions and activities because they understand the value that the specific work they do brings to the company and clients.
Depending on our personality, conceptual thinking is more natural and easier for some people, requiring less focus and energy. For others, it’s a skill that requires energy investment to develop in order to be more successful.
Who uses conceptual thinking?
Conceptual thinking is often encouraged and applied among managers in companies, but every employee can benefit from developing conceptual thinking skills. Managers and other leaders must recognize the connections between
different functions and teams in order for the company to function as one successful system. However, all employees can improve their professional performance by practicing conceptual thinking, in order to enhance their abstract thinking and problem-solving skills.
People with highly developed conceptual thinking skills demonstrate:
- The ability to identify patterns, common themes, or connections that others do not notice.
- They gather hypothetical or abstract ideas to formulate new insights.
- They notice many patterns that indicate the existence of connections between different elements.
- They recognize unique or unusual perspectives.
- They imagine hypothetical situations to formulate new concepts.
- They use patterns to develop new ways of processing information.
- They observe and analyze data to create new methods, techniques, or processes.
- They see new possibilities by dissecting a situation and examining its elements and segments.
- They integrate problems and variables into a practical framework.
- They understand a situation or problem by identifying patterns or connections, in order to address key issues.
About the training
The “Conceptual Thinking” training is a one-day program (6 hours duration, excluding breaks) that helps participants develop this competency in a practical way, through the creation of experiences. The application of conceptual thinking is universal, regardless of the profession of the participants, and it is easily adapted to different contexts and situations.
The training program consists of models, tools, and exercises, through which participants gain knowledge, but also the way to apply the learned concepts in their work and life.
During the training, participants will cover the following topics:
- Conceptual vs. Practical thinking
- Talent vs. Skill in conceptual thinking – What can I develop and how much?
- Setting and questioning hypotheses of the topic/problem
- Root cause vs. Peripheral cause – analysis of needs and causes
- The “Did you see the gorilla?” effect – focusing on things that are in a different perspective
- Recognizing patterns and connections between elements of the topic/problem
- Obstacles to successful conceptual thinking:
- Confirmation bias – a psychological barrier to seeing alternatives
- Illusory confirmation – recognizing non-existent variables as one of the most common “mistakes” in conceptual thinking
- Single action bias – lack of conceptual thinking and focusing on the next activity
- Sunk cost fallacy – a psychological barrier to revising the created concept
- Ideation without limitations – how a “pure” creative process should look like
- Solving a given problem through conceptual thinking (exercise)
- Using tools in conceptual thinking (BMC, Visual Map, Swot, MindMap, 4 quadrants thinking, Reverse Engineering, Patterns of Success/Begin with the End in Mind, etc.)
- Inspiration for creating concepts by taking examples from other fields (exercise)
- Solving case studies from other fields (exercise)
- Going through a case study of your company and applying conceptual thinking (exercise)
- Suggestions for books and texts on conceptual thinking