Abilities That Lead To The Mastery of Analytical Thinking
Analyzing information
The ability to examine information or a situation in detail in order to identify key or important elements, their strengths, and weaknesses and use these to compile a persuasive argument, make recommendations or solve a problem.
2. Breaking down problems
Big problems can usually be made easier by breaking them down into smaller problems. These smaller problems are often easier to solve than the original big one.
3. Gathering information
Ask appropriate questions of yourself and of others in order to gain the necessary insights that will enable you to make more effective decisions about the problems you are facing.
4. Identifying issues and problems
Developing your ability to recognize underlying issues or problems based on trends, associations and cause-effect relationships between datasets is a critical step towards solving the right problem.
5. Identifying root cause
Root cause analysis helps ensure you have identified the actual problem as opposed to just fixing the resulting symptoms. It also helps you avoid the temptation to single-out one issue in order to resolve the problem as fast as possible.
6. Organizing information
Once all relevant information has been collected successfully, it's important to organize and integrate all the pieces in a way that will provide you with insights and ideas that can be used to draw appropriate conclusions. This will lay the foundation for potential solutions to the problems you are working to solve.
