Critical Thinking & Managerial Decision Making Reflection

MANAGEMENT
Critical Thinking & Managerial Decision
Making
Reflection

Introduction
Critical thinking and Decision making is one of the most important modules
I studied at the university. It is also one of the modules which can be easily
replicated in personal life when we have a decision to make. From the
moment we get up in the morning till the time we are tucked in our bed, we
all have decisions to make, which goes onto define our personality as well as
our career graph in our jobs/Business. We are encountered with decisions
like what to eat, what to wear, what is the timeline we should associate to a
particular problem, when is the right time to follow up with a customers and
many more. The 9 week learning has given me a lot of clarity as to what has
to be my decision making process.
The objective of this reflective essay is to primarily summarize, critically
review and reinforce the key concepts and theories learnt in the module of
critical thinking & decision making. Towards the end, the assignment will
also focus on the new insights I gained about myself through the extensive
learning of this unit and accordingly propose a plan for self development.

Topic 1- Automatic Vs Critical Thinking
In the first week itself I was introduced to the concept of Critical thinking,
statement, argument, argumentation, understanding of premises and
conclusion and critical thinking defined by Kallet. Being honest to myself, I
had just heard these words before but never actually understood the true
essence or meaning of the same. For instance I learnt that Critical thinking
is an extremely purposeful method one uses to accelerate the thoughts
behind everyday thinking (Quinn, 2018). It basically helps ones decision
making and problem solving skills. Next I learnt that argument and
argumentation is simply communicating about critical thinking to others
(Croskerry, 2018). I also learnt that arguments are necessarily not the
disagreement, but simply put its just putting across a set of reasons to show
that the conclusion is correct or valid. Arguments consist of a conclusion
and a premise to give gravitas to the context of the topic. This made me
understand that critical thinking helps us to make better and informed
decision making (Yao et. al., 2018).
This made me understand the difference between automatic and critical
thinking and I realized that all this while I was using automatic learning,
which was one of the reasons my decisions were not as effective(Allen,
Connor & De Castro,2017) . Now, after the learning, I invest more time on
clarifying the situation at hand, based on which I create a conclusion in my
head and then take decision. For instance, while taking a week off from my
studies, I realized that if I take break, I would lose on my week’s learning,
which would further have bad impact on my grades. Thus, I cancelled my
leave and attended all the classes during the week.
Topic 2-10 Points of Clarity

The second week of Learning was mostly focused on Conceptual foundation-
The scientific knowledge comparison between Kuhn Versus Popper,
understanding formal logic structures, understanding deductive logical
reasoning and the ten points behind achieving clarity(Grant & Smith, 2018).
The topic which left the most impact on me was the Ten tools of clarity, the
reason being that I never used to think clearly about the situation and
jumped the guns right away to the conclusions (Rutherfrod, 2019). Let me
explain you below how the ten points of Clarity viz; Emptying your bucket,
inspection, understanding the why, so what, whats the need, anticipatory
thinking, what else , the ingredient diagram, vision and thinking coach I
applied in my real life to obtain more clarity on a decision I was about to
make(Correia, 2018). While deciding on the job I would want to pursue, I
was having second thought about going back to my earlier job in e-
commerce as a digital marketer. I left the job on a negative mode, but I was
good at the job, so I emptied my bucket and left all the negativity behind
and got some clarity to begin with. I then inspected why I was feeling
negative about going back to my earlier job, it was primarily because I
never stood for what was right, this way my manager kept putting me in the
bad light. It then made me realize that me not speaking up was the root
cause of the problem. I moved forward to the “So what” section to identify
the relevancy and got to the point that I have all the skills which would
fulfill my need to earn money. In order to obtain clarity I further gave a
thought as to what else I could do, I thought that I could work in advertising
as a marketer and use my knowledge to good use. The ingredient diagram
further helped me to bring a transition between clarity of thoughts and
conclusion attached to it. It was the 9th step of Vision which made me decide
that leveraging on the skill sets I already have would make me have a far
enriching career. Thus, it was the ten steps of clarity which helped me make
a critical decision on the future course of career planning(Butter, Pentoney
& Bong, 2017).