Facilitated Thinking Thinklets Toolkit

Thinklets Toolkit

Thinklets are cognition tools that enhance natural human thinking abilities. They function much like human consultants who provide intellectual guidance. Thinklets can be as simple as a power question, a small template with embedded facilitator questions, or a thinking technique.

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Find Thinklets By:

1. Instructions & Navigation

2. Critical Thinking Work Tasks - Consultants

3. Common Thinking Functions - Thinklets

4. Forty Basic Thinking Tasks – Question Sets

5. Alphabetical Order of Thinklets

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4. Forty Thinking Tasks - Questions

The #1 way to improve personal and team thinking effectiveness is by asking the right questions. The right questions give the mind the best chance of finding the right answers. Click on a thinking task you or your team is working on. Determine if any of questions are critical to ask.

Forty Basic Thinking Tasks

1	Describe Situation or Problem	Describe the current situation, problem or opportunity.
2	Assess Importance	Assemble an evaluation team to assess the criticalness of the situation.
3	Align with Objectives	Identify key factors that drive organizational or personal success.
4	Observe other Problems	Look beyond the current situation for other potential problems or opportunities.
5	Prioritize Problems	Select the most critical problem or opportunity to work on.
6	Problem Statement	Validate the real problem and write a problem statement.
7	Systems Think	Systems think the problem or situation in a broader context.
8	Transient Statement	Write a transient (change) statement on how the problem came about.
9	Purposes Determine	Determine reasons and purposes for solving this problem.
10	Goal Statement	Write a goal statement that clarifies the desired outcome.
11	Feasibility of Work	Determine the feasibility of the work effort to resolve the situation.
12	Build Team	Build a high performance work team.
13	Communication Process	Establish a project communication process.
14	Data Gathering Strategy	Develop a data gathering strategy.
15	Define Facts	Define the current situation or problem state.
16	Analyze Causes	Analyze causes and find a root cause.
17	Future Facts	Define future facts as they “should exist” in the goal state.
18	Obstacles	Identify obstacles that prevent reaching the goal state.
19	Solution Requirements	Define requirements for inclusion in any proposed idea/solution.
20	Idea Generation Strategy	Select an idea generation strategy.
21	Incubate	Prepare the mind for creativity.
22	Creative Ideas/Solutions	Generate lots of ideas and solutions.
23	Categorize & Synthesize	Narrow your choices by categorizing and synthesizing ideas.
24	Refine Pros & Cons	Refine ideas into practical solution alternatives.
25	Evaluation Criteria	Develop the evaluation criteria to judge solution alternatives
26	Decision Strategy	Choose a decision-making strategy.
27	Decide on Solution	Select the solution to implement.
28	Futures Statement	Write a future solution statement.
29	Timeliness to Implement	Decide if it is the right time to implement the solution.
30	Design Deliverables	Design the solution deliverables.
31	Change Management	Institute a change management process
32	Test Deliverables	Test the solution to uncover fata