The Logical Thinking Process - A Game Changer

On Magnus Carlsen, chess, blindfolding, and the value of visual logical analysis

The Logical Thinking Process is a set of five tools that lead you from defining the goal of your organization or project to mapping the way toward the future. What distinguishes the Logical Thinking Process from most problem-solving and strategy formulation methodologies is its focus on rigorous cause-effect analysis, based on sufficiency and necessity logic, at all stages of the analysis. This is where the alternatives are usually lacking, probably one of the main reasons such a large number of strategy projects eventually fail.

But why would someone want to learn how to think logically? We are all able to do so, are we not? In fact, that is mostly true. Most of us can draw correct conclusions from the facts presented to us, identify the fallacy in a simple, wrong, if-then statement, or build a sound deduction from valid assumptions.

However, most of us can do this only to a certain extent, that is, as long as the situation is not too complicated. But in reality, situations very often are.

I recently watched a documentary about Magnus Carlsen, the world champion of chess. Carlsen is a true wonder child. He became grand master of chess when he was thirteen, and at twenty-three, he was world champion. As most of us know chess is a strategic game that relies on logic. The player has to build a strategy and evaluate the possible reactions from the opponent, not only in the next move but many moves ahead. The possibilities soon become so many that most of us give up trying to predict them. This is why chess is so damn hard to become good at.

The most memorable scene from the movie is when Carlsen played against a bunch of highly skilled chess players at Harvard Law School and won them all. Winning them all was of course an achievement most of us could only dream of. But during the event Carlsen was actually blindfolded. Not only did he have to memorize each position accurately. He also had to formulate in his head his own strategy towards each of his opponents without even having the visual reference of the chess table. What Carlsen was in fact doing was to run in his head several different, highly complicated simulations, systems of if-then statements with probabilities attached to each of those. And due to his experience, one may assume he can often see in an instant where the game is heading without spending time on rigorous analysis. But if an average person tried to predict 10 moves in a chess game nothing much would come out of that.

But now let‘s assume they had more time and a simple framework to construct the sequence of possible moves, a tree of cause and effect they could use to visualize the prediction. This would be a game-changer, would it not? With the help of the logical tree structure more or less anyone should be able to predict the 10 moves and in fact the quality of their prediction would probably not be inferior to the quality of Carlsen‘s prediction.

So, what does this tell us? It tells us that even if none of us can predict a sequence of moves in our heads like Carlsen does, there is in fact no difference in the ability to understand and formulate the logic as such. It just takes us longer and we need the right tools to do it. For chess is not a mystical game. It is a logical game and therefore, with enough time on their hands, anyone who can think logically can understand the flow of logic in a game of chess.

Now let‘s think about strategy. Not the strategy of the chessboard, not military strategy, but business strategy. In business, just like in chess, the goal is to win. To outperform the competition. In order to get there, we must build a strategy that takes us to the goal. We must decide our actions and predict the actions and reactions of the competitors. And this we must do many moves ahead just like in a game of chess.

The potential moves are fewer, certainly. But instead we have other complications in business that we don‘t have in chess. In chess it is just the players and their strategies. In business we also have the market, we have government, we have an external environment we don‘t control and that can change in unpredictable ways.

And furthermore: On the chessboard we can move the pieces around as we like. The knight will stay where I put it. But the knights, pawns and rooks in our companies are not this easy to deal with. If the human knight puts up passive resistance instead of playing his part in the strategic move, depending on his participation, it may come to nothing. If the pawns rebel, we may have to find a different way forward. In other words, corporate strategy must take into account not only a highly unpredictable external environment, but also the internal environment driven by the apparent chaos of politics, hidden agendas and tacit relationships.

So, if clear logical visualization can enable us to understand the strategy of a chess grandmaster ten moves ahead, what then when it comes to formulating a coherent and logically tight strategy for a company, dealing with an unpredictable external and internal environment? Or analyzing a complex situation to figure out root causes and formulating solutions? In such cases it is a real breakthrough to have a tight framework, based on sound reasoning and rigid testing of hypothesis, to help us build visual, easy-to-understand strategies and analyses.

The Logical Thinking Process is just such a framework. It leads us from the definition of the goal we wish to achieve, provides us with a rigid process to identify the roots of the undesirable effects we experience and expose the faulty assumptions and conflicts that often explain the existence of the root causes. Finally, it provides us with a practical process for formulating a plan towards a solution. All visual and easy to understand. All logically watertight when done correctly.

And no less importantly, the Logical Thinking Process not only helps us structure our own thoughts and analyses. For by visually displaying the links between causes and effects, in a way everyone can understand, it becomes much easier for those not involved in building the analysis to understand it, spot any flaws in the reasoning, and/or add further important refinements. This way the Logical Thinking Process is actually a very strong framework to enhance collaboration and improve communication.

The Logical Thinking Process is a framework that helps us to take better advantage of our ability to think logically, a tool that helps us cut through the complexity of a situation – just like a visualized sequence of chess moves would enable us to understand the player‘s strategy – and to communicate our insights to others in a clear and compelling way.

This article is based on my book, From Symptoms to Causes - Applying the Logical Thinking Process to an Everyday Problem.

Information on training options is available here.

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