Don’t Think about Thinking Types
In music school, my teacher (shout out to Dr. Michael Galloway) repeatedly said, "You're a musician who just happens to play the trumpet." My early musical life revolved around my trumpet. I carried it everywhere, practiced a TON, and skipped lunch and study halls to play. I WAS a trumpet player, or so I thought. While I credit Dr. Galloway for the lesson, I only understood what it meant years after graduating. When I met my future wife, she helped me discover other instruments. At first, I saw them as LESSER instruments than the trumpet. But at some point, Dr. G's thinking became a new mental model for me. If I weren't a musician first, I couldn't make music on other instruments. At that moment, I realized the magic of NOT thinking that a specific instrument defined my musical abilities. I am a musician first. That means that to improve my skills, becoming a better musician trumped becoming a better trumpet player.
Don’t Think about Thinking Types: A mental model for improving thinking skills
This musical lesson applies to improving thinking skills. Have you ever thought, "I need to improve my strategic thinking" or, "If I were a better creative thinker, I'd be a better fit for leadership"? In 2010, I started a journey to become a Systems Thinker. I could hear Dr. Galloway's message repeated as I worked with Dr.s Derek and Laura Cabrera of the Cabrera Lab. Learning to think allows us to build creative, innovative, strategic, computational, and pro-social ideas. These idea "types" are rooted in our ability to think. So, we don't think creatively or strategically; the products of our thoughts (our ideas) have traits that align them with our needs in creative or strategic situations. And those situations aren't so distinctive, but that's a topic for another post. To improve our ability to create ideas to meet any need, we must strengthen our thinking, period, without labels.
In the future, we'll explore how NOT thinking about thinking types impacts organizational roles, teams, and culture. We'll look at how learning experience design shifts by knowing how thinking impacts behavioral changes. And we'll dive into specifics on growing thinking skills.
Until then, I'd love to hear how this shift in thinking about thinking as NOT a type of thinking can impact you, your work, and your organization. Let the conversation begin.