As a business owner, I am always looking for ways to improve my workplace. Gino and Staats’ article, Developing Employees Who Think for Themselves is particularly relevant to my leadership area (2015). The article focuses on three things employers can do to help their employees use critical thinking in their position: Process, Identity and Time.
1. Process
To help employees use critical thinking, Gino & Staats say there needs to be a “shift in ownership of the process from the manager to the worker” (2015). They further state that many “managers punish their subordinates for failing to follow instructions” but then “complain that employees don’t think for themselves” (2015). To achieve a change in process, managers need to focus on the outcome not the process.
2. Identity
Identity is enabling employees to “… bring their true and best selves to work” (Gino & Staats, 2015). Gino and Staats argue that, “People … lose their sense of identity at work [because they] learn how to behave in clearly defined ways” (2015). By giving employees “the ability to reshape [their] actual work,” they are able to use critical thinking in their position (Gino & Staats, 2015).
3. Time
The aspect of time is “allow[ing] individuals to consider how best to complete the work that needs to be done within the constraints of the company and their own lives” (Gino & Staats, 2015). By giving employees time flexibility, a manager gives them the opportunity to think about their tasks a different times.
The focus of this article is the transferral of critical thinking from managers to employees. The authors argue that for the past hundred years, management’s main role was to identify the best processes and then have workers follow the processes precisely (Gino & Staats, 2015). In today’s world, though, the only way for companies to thrive is to get employees to think and not just follow procedure. The authors then state that many organizations merely stress building critical thinking and developing “process-improvement skills” rather than redesigning the actual jobs of their employees (Gino & Staats, 2015). Essentially, jobs need to be redesigned so they give employees ownership over how they perform their job, how they act within their job and how they manage their time while completing their tasks.
Gino, F. & Staats, B. (2015, June). Developing Employees Who Think for Themselves. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/06/developing-employees-who-think-for-themselves
Hi Norm,
You did a really great job at summarizing Gino and Staats’ article. I agree that process, identity and time are important for employees to develop their critical thinking skills. I am however struggling to see how this would be possible to incorporate when I work in a highly regulated environment. Almost every aspect of some peoples jobs are covered by Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) which literally spell out step by step how to complete ever procedure in your job. Any deviations from an SOP results in a lot of paperwork as to investigate why the procedure was not followed. Identity is also tough when employees have uniforms, are told how to act and what to say in front of donors. Incorporating time would also be a challenged each employees time is managed for them. They are most often engaged in repetitive work, and have schedule break and lunch times. I’m curious, did Gino and Staats mention anything about whether these suggestions could be applied in all workplaces? Or where they designed for a specific type of workplace?
Gino and Staats, unfortunately, did not mention specific workplaces that this wouldn’t work in. I believe it’s idealistic to think these ideas could be implemented successfully in every workplace. I do think their article provides food for thought, though, for leaders on how some or all or modified versions of process, identity and time could be implemented in their environment. Thanks for your comment!
It’s an interesting part of leadership — to empower those you lead to engage in critical thinking, and support them in their decision making. As some of the comments indicate, context matters with regard to employee critical thinking, since some decisions are not delegated in certain contexts. How do you think critical thinking plays a role in these contexts? Do you think, for example, that employees might be engaged in the development, review, or revision of Standard Operating Procedures, as SJasmins refers to?
Leadership Prof
SJasmins raised a good point about some corporate SOPs, which can be very rigid. For instance, some employees, be it in making calls to customers, responding to complaints might have to follow a script in order to comply with legal regulations. In this context, critical thinking would be discouraged as it could get the company into trouble. Outside of legal requirements, though, if employees were able to regularly review and critique SOPs, I think their sense of identity at work would also improve.
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