Let me be honest… This post was inspired by my quest to better understand design thinking: what it is, how it is different, why it matters, and most importantly how is it going to save us all!? I don’t believe in silver bullets, and question deeply when a new buzzword starts floating around. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized my question is irrelevant — design thinking merely represents another way of looking at the world, and I should add it to my toolkit. Here is an old Zen story to hammer my point.

A wise farmer’s livelihood depended on his horse. But, one day his horse ran away. His neighbors said “Oh, how bad for you!”. The farmer responded,  ”What’s good… What’s bad… Who knows?” A few days later, his horse returned with a herd of wild horses. Of course, the neighbors were the first to congratulate his good fortune. Again the farmer responded, “What’s good… What’s bad… Who knows?” But then, the farmer’s only son broke his leg while taming one of the wild horses. And again, the farmer responded to his concerned neighbors with, “What’s good… What’s bad… Who knows?” When the army came through the village conscripting all the young men, neighbors congratulated the farmer that his only son was spared. And again, the farmer said, “What’s good… What’s bad… Who knows?”

What matters is that we live in a complex world, where everything is interconnected, in ways we don’t understand. And, we continuously need to look for ways to improve and expand our approach to problem solving, and add them to our toolkit for big picture thinking. From the context of technology and product management, this article will highlight a small subset of better thinking methodologies that I utilize often and would like to learn more about.

There is so much to ‘thinking’ that just thinking about it can be overwhelming — to see what I mean, spend some time browsing Wikipedia’s Portal:Thinking. Individually, each of these tools adds diversity and unique perspectives to my thinking; collectively they make me a better thinker. I look forward to hearing about your processes and insights on our journey towards better thinking. For a list of my favorite resources on becoming a better thinker, check out my bookshelf.

“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within our range of visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.” — Henry Thoreau

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