The Thinker’s Workshop™

This course is designed to help overcome the most common cause of flawed, incomplete analysis: the failure to fully consider alternatives. The class begins with an intriguing presentation of why the human mind satisfices – why it favors the first plausible alternative entertained – while resisting almost any attempt to structure a problem or decision; why we often begin our analysis with the conclusion before even understanding the problem; and why analysis without structuring is like building without a blueprint.

During the remainder of the class, the instructors explain and demonstrate several proven analytic structuring techniques. Lots of class time is devoted to practice because we want to make sure that learners get a feel for how the techniques work and see first hand the effectiveness of the techniques at overcoming our mental obstacles.

Benefits
Participants who attend the Thinker's Workshop discover common impediments to effective decision making and problem solving, practice specific techniques to overcome these impediments, and gain a new perspective on the decision making and problem solving process. Diligent application of these techniques will improve the decision-making and problem solving skills of individuals as well as teams.

Audience
Executives, managers, analysts, engineers, and others needing or wanting to improve their ability to solve problems or make decisions.

Typical 3-day Course Agenda:

Day One

• Mental Obstacles and Analytic Concepts
• Problem Restatement
• Devil's Advocacy
• Causal Flow Diagramming
• Time-lines and Chronologies
• Combined Problems

Day Two

• Pros-Cons-Fixes
• Scenario Tree
• Probability Tree
• Utility Tree
• Utility Matrix

Day Three

• Advanced Utility Analysis
• Hypothesis Testing/Analysis of Competing Hypotheses
• Weighted Ranking
• Application to Trainees' Problems

For more information on The Thinker's Workshop^TM, contact Analytic Advantage, Inc. at (800) 661-3921.