25 The Art of Good Thinking: The Key to Good Strategy [Introduction]
Welcome to The Art of Good Thinking
My name is Antony Peloso from Queensland University of Technology. This chapter is an important step in the ongoing enhancement of your abilities to structure your thinking in a way that helps you to make good decisions and communicate those decisions.
This work focuses on the foundational principles of critical thinking in everyday life. Good thinking is rigorous thinking. It is critical and creative at the same time. It will help you to develop skills in argument analysis and evaluation. It will also help you to use skills as you develop persuasive reasoning. This is based on critical, agile and creative thinking.
Your work often depends on these skills. You will feel more confident as you develop good strategies of logic and reasoning you can use in your work.
The book is designed as an immersive experience. Before you begin, take a few minutes to look at the learning journey map. It shows how the unit is organised and it will help you to plan your study routine and approach.
The art of good thinking, we help you to understand the concepts and techniques that underpin critical thinking and how they apply to pretty much everything you do as you go about your day. There is rigor and structure to effective logical arguments. However, you need to develop your own way to be persuasive. As the title of the unit says, there is an art to good thinking. There are process and principles, and specific skills that go with argument analysis and creation.
The art part comes I believe when you have a solid understanding of those processes and principles. The overall message for this unit is that we want you to be very confident of your abilities when you are structuring and communicating your ideas and reasoning.
When we think about ‘The Art of Good Thinking’ the first fact is that we all think all the time, even in our sleep. Thinking defines us and sometimes we can’t stop thinking even when we want to.
This work is about the way that we can structure our thinking in our context and get done what we need to do to be successful in our roles. While we love the idea of good thinking, in the Army and in professional life we usually apply and focus our ‘thinking’ capabilities towards something specific. Ultimately most of us need to make decisions and act on those decisions. The outcome of our thinking is those decisions, actions and their consequences.
The second thing we will get you to do is apply a specific structure that helps you to understand how to communicate and link purpose, justification and action. This serves two goals. It is a well-known influencing process with a natural logical structure. It also helps you to build in consideration of others. You need in many cases to take others on the good thinking journey with you. Sound structure and sequencing goes a long way to helping you make your argument clear for others to understand.
The work encourages you to explore real world situations and challenges that are meaningful to you. We want to help you learn new ways of doing things in your role and in your teams, as you help to create a better future for you and the Army.
Here is a little about the content. Logic and reasoning are based partly on fact and partly on the way you structure your argument. Facts still need to be presented in a coherent manner. Winning hearts and minds, as some say, is a combination of cognitive and emotive functioning. Hearts and minds are one thing. A call to action is also necessary if you want outcomes. These are the three components of attitude formation.
Humans also respond to sequence, which we can call past, present and future. Another way to say this is current state, ideal state and the steps necessary to move towards the future state. Putting forward arguments in your context also relies on the principles of ethical persuasion. This is an important part of your critical thinking in the Army.
Others are a crucial part of your critical thinking. You need to understand them and their points of view. You need to anticipate what might be their reactions and responses to your arguments. Along the way in this unit you get to practice and reflect on your learning.
We trust this will be a useful and enjoyable exploration of The art of Good Thinking.
