Art of Practical Thinking

“I am faced daily in my own work with a constant succession of practical problems having to do, in one or another way, with thinking. When we interview applicants for jobs we try to gain some reasonably accurate idea of the kind of thinking they may be capable of. When we place people in positions of any responsibility we try to do certain things to improve the efficiency of their thinking on the job. In the general range of our daily business problems we try to see to it that the solutions are based on good thinking. But the trouble is that good thinking doesn’t grow on trees nor do good thinkers. We have no real difficulty finding people of good character to fill jobs. Not much more difficulty is involved in finding people who combine with good character an adequate amount of relevant business experience and an acceptably pleasant personality. The real hitch is in finding people who know how to use their minds. We have the most extraordinary trouble — and so I have no doubt, does every other company — in finding people who know that, faced with a problem to be solved, they have to do certain things, in a certain order, to solve the problem. Even such simple rules as finding out whether you have enough information, and whether the information is dependable, seem to be honored more in the breach than the observance. The rule that to solve a problem properly you must first state what the problem is does not always seem noticeably to influence the thinking of business people. It is quite clear too that many of the people who are trying to succeed in business do not know that the rules exist. They work their fingers to the nub trying to achieve certain rich effects from which they hope to reap rich rewards — and they invest all this time and all this energy and effort in a game where they hourly break rules whose names they don’t even know.”— Author’s Introduction to the Book
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Contents
PART I. THE ACT OF THINKING
1. Why Should One Learn About Thinking
2. What Is Thinking?
3. Some Attention Given to the History of Thinking
4. WHAT Can One Think About?
PART II. THE ART OF THINKING
5. The Instruments of Thinking
6. General Rules for Better Thinking
7. Special Rules for the Choice and Use of the Instruments
PART III. THE END OF THINKING
8. Application of Thinking to Administrative Problems
9. Application of Thinking to Publicity and Public Relations
10. Application of Thinking to Financial Statistics
11. Application of Thinking to Management
12. Application of Thinking to Merchandising
13. The End of Thinking