20 types of thinking that must be possessed for good procurement

Original Liu Shulin Supply Chain Restructuring 2024-06-04 00:02 Shanghai

According to the definition of thinking in Medical Psychology (by Liu Ying and Su Qiaoling), thinking involves "all cognitive or intellectual activities" of a person. It explores and discovers the internal essential connections and regularities of things, and is an advanced stage of the cognitive process. ”

In work and life, we can always see people analyzing problems from different angles, methods, and depths.

Some people analyze the problem more comprehensively, and some people only think of part of the factors; Some people can quickly think of solutions to new problems, and some people are at a loss when they encounter new problems; Some people explain a thing in a clear way and have a clear point of view, and some people talk for a long time and you can't understand what he is saying.

All of these reflect the differences in thinking between people. Thinking is a person's underlying thinking mode, which determines his ability to solve problems. The importance of thinking can be said to be "thinking is everything".

All abilities, knowledge and character are distributed in the pyramid structure, and the most important thing in any profession is a person's underlying logical thinking and behavioral habits, above which are values such as honesty and integrity, and then up are professional abilities, such as procurement expertise, and then industry knowledge, such as product knowledge. The further down, the easier it is to migrate; The higher you go, the easier it is to learn. ——Excerpt from the official account Supply Chain Reconstruction "What kind of workplace do we want to become? 》

The thinking process is the process by which the human brain explores and discovers the internal essential connections and regularities of things. What kind of thinking is conducive to our analysis and problem solving, this article lists 20 kinds of thinking, I hope to inspire and help you.

1. Inductive thinking

Inductive thinking is the thinking that deduces the general laws and common conclusions from specific cases.

In the midst of thousands of phenomena, the essential reasons behind them are explored and the laws are summarized. Being able to review and summarize is a very important learning ability.

2. Deductive thinking

Deductive thinking is the way of thinking that applies general laws to specific cases. In logic, it is also called deductive reasoning. It is a way of thinking that extends from general principles and principles to individual specific cases.

Apply the law to specific phenomena one by one. Being able to deduce and apply is a very important ability to do things.

Induction and deduction are a pair of very important logical thinking. The former is that we generalize the law from practice, and the latter is that we apply the law to practice. Come from practice and return to practice.

3. Critical thinking

Critical thinking is the process of evaluating and critiquing one's own ideas or hypotheses while thinking about them. When it comes to problem solving, critical thinking has historically been emphasized. Critical thinking includes six elements: independence, self-confidence, thinking, not believing in authority, open-mindedness, and respect for others.

Critical thinking refers to a kind of thinking activity that evaluates, questions, and corrects the opinions, practices, or thinking processes of others or oneself, and then achieves a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the nature of things through analysis, comparison, and synthesis.

Critical thinking promotes independent thinking and does not follow the crowd. In work and life, we see that people who are not assertive basically lack critical thinking.

4. Concentrate your thinking

Concentrated thinking is to find logical connections from many sources and thus draw certain conclusions; This kind of thinking is the comparison of several solutions to derive a solution.

Concentrated thinking, as opposed to divergent thinking, is also known as convergence thinking or convergent thinking, which is the thinking of identification, selection, and processing, and is also an element of creative thinking.

5. Divergent thinking

Divergent thinking is the search for multiple answers to the same problem, the most common being multiple solutions to a problem in mathematics or multiple meanings of a word in language.

Divergent thinking is manifested in the expansion of an individual's thinking in many different directions, so that the concept diverges to all relevant aspects, and eventually produces a variety of possible answers rather than a single correct answer, so that it is easy to produce innovative and novel ideas.

6. Lateral thinking

Lateral thinking is thinking that uses "outside" information to discover ways to solve problems, like the sideways view of the eyes. Lateral thinking is a way of thinking that is inspired by other areas.

Lateral thinking, also known as lateral thinking, or bypass thinking, is a form of thinking that uses knowledge and information from other fields to solve problems from the side and in a roundabout way.

More than 100 years ago, the Austrian doctor Auernbrugg wanted to solve the problem of how to detect hydropleural cavity in people, and he thought about it and suddenly thought of his father, who was a wine merchant, and when he was running a wine business, he only had to knock on the barrel with his hand, and by the sound of percussion, he could know how much wine was in the barrel.

Ornbrugg thought: The human chest cavity is similar to a wine barrel, and if you knock on the chest cavity with your hand, can't you also diagnose the condition of water accumulation in the chest cavity by sound?" Thus was invented the method of "percussion".

7. Vertical thinking

Vertical thinking is a form of thinking that is carried out within a structural scope, in an orderly, predictable, and stylized direction, which is a way of thinking that conforms to the direction of things and human cognitive habits, and follows clues from low to high, from shallow to deep, from beginning to end, so it is clear and logical.

Longitudinal thinking is to analyze and solve problems on the part of problems.

For example, employees complain that there are not enough elevators in office buildings, and they often have to wait for a long time.

If you think of adding elevators, it is longitudinal thinking; If you think of setting up a rest area next to the elevator so that people can read the newspaper and chat while waiting for the elevator, it is lateral thinking.

Lateral thinking is not what the office building lacks, but the lack of patience of employees.

8. Empirical thinking

Verification thinking is the thinking of using one's own knowledge and experience to verify a certain conclusion. The structure of critical thinking includes a topic, an argument, and a way of arguing. Verification thinking is used by everyone every day.

Verification thinking plays a very important role in academic research and case handling. The use of verification thinking requires people to abandon their habitual thinking, not blindly follow common sense judgments, not blindly believe in authoritative determinations, establish skeptical thinking, and continue to seek verification through hard work. No verification, no conclusions.

9. Reverse thinking

Reverse thinking is a way of thinking about things or opinions that are commonplace and seem to be a foregone conclusion. Pushing back from the conclusion, thinking backwards, from solving to known conditions, and thinking backwards may simplify the problem.

A congregation who became addicted to smoking while praying asked the priest: Is it permissible to smoke while praying? The priest glared at him and said, "No."

Another congregation, who also suffers from smoking while praying, asked the priest: Is it okay to pray while smoking? The priest said appreciatively: Yes.

10. Progressive thinking

Progressive thinking is the thinking that starts from the current step and takes the deeper goal as the direction, and goes deeper step by step. It's like multi-step operations in math.

Progressive thinking cultivates us to think deeply and develop the habit of exhaustive research.

For example, if you are proficient in procurement, your subordinates report that the market has risen, and you ask why it has risen? Raw materials have risen. Further question: Why did raw materials rise? Raw material manufacturers have stopped production in a large area. Further, why is there a large-scale shutdown? Wait a minute.

11. Imaginative thinking

Imaginative thinking is thinking in association, which is the thinking of creating a new image through new cooperation on the basis of known materials, and it is the process of this and the other.

Imaginative thinking can be said to be the embodiment of figurative thinking, which is the most important form of processing and operation of the human brain with the help of appearances, and an important form of thinking for human innovation and activities.

12. Break down your thinking

Discomposing thinking is the process of breaking down a problem into its parts, looking for answers from each part and its interrelationships.

On October 25, 1961, after Guo Moruo watched the Shao drama "Sun Wukong Three Fights the White Bone Spirit", he wrote a poem "Seven Laws: Look at the Monkey King Three Fights the White Bone Spirit" and sent it to Mao Zedong: "The shemale reverses right and wrong, and is merciful to the enemy and cruel to the friend." The curse of the golden hoop has been heard thousands of times, and the essence has escaped three times. A thousand knives should be used to chop the flesh of the Tang monk, and what a loss is the great sage hair when you pull it out. Education is timely and appreciative, and pigs are wiser than foolish. ”

Mao Zedong replied to "Seven Laws and Comrade Guo Moruo": "As soon as the wind and thunder rise from the earth, there will be piles of refined white bones. A monk is a fool and can still be trained, and a demon is a ghost. The golden monkey rose up with a thousand sticks, and Yuyu clarified thousands of miles. Hail Sun Dasheng today, only because the demon fog has returned. ”

Mao Zedong believes that this problem should be broken down and looked at, although Tang Seng is dull and confused, and does not distinguish between good and evil, but his nature is not bad, and he still belongs to the centrists, and he can adopt a united front policy to criticize and educate him, and as for the white bones, he must be resolutely eliminated.

In "Zhu Yuanzhang", after Zhu Yuanzhang put Hu Weiyong in prison, he ordered hundreds of civil and military officials to expose Hu Weiyong's crimes, and Hu Weiyong's son Tu Jie was the first to expose it to Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu Yuanzhang scolded on the spot: "Hu Weiyong recognizes you as a righteous son, it's really blind!" ”

For more complex problems, we need to analyze and solve them at several levels, see the article "A Method for Analyzing Problems - Onion Method" for details in the supply chain reconstruction article of the official account.

13. Reasoning thinking

Reasoning thinking is the ability to answer questions through judgment and reasoning. It is also a kind of logical thinking. First of all, we must analyze and judge a thing, draw conclusions, and so on.

The thought process of deriving an unknown conclusion from one or several known judgments (premises). Reasoning is the science that studies people's thinking forms and their laws and some simple logical methods, and its role is to obtain unknown knowledge from known knowledge.

14. Contrastive thinking

Contrastive thinking is to think through the comparison of two identical or different things, to find the similarities and differences of things, as well as their essence and characteristics.

Usually two interrelated indicator data are compared, and the size of the research object, the level of the level, the speed of the speed, and the coordination of various relationships are usually shown and illustrated quantitatively.

Contrastive thinking, very commonly used. We often have to compare and analyze various data in order to guide decision-making.

15. Cross-thinking

Cross-thinking is to find the answer from one end, pause at a certain point, and then find the answer from the other end, and pause at this point, and the two ends cross to communicate ideas and find the right answer.

Interdisciplinary thinking is a magical way of thinking, which creates a new world through the interweaving and collision of understanding of different industries, different disciplines, different concepts, and different cultures.

For example, in order to reduce costs, Xiaomi's supply chain found a paper clip manufacturer to produce mobile phone card needles to achieve a significant reduction in costs. The development history of Xiaomi is also a history of the growth of the supply chain. For details, see Fan Haitao's book "Unstoppable", which is known as Xiaomi's biography:

16. Shift your mindset

Changing thinking is to transform a problem from one form to another when encountering obstacles in the process of solving a problem, so as to make the problem simpler and clearer.

For example, the famous chickens and rabbits in the same cage question: there are 50 heads and 140 feet in the cage, how many chickens and rabbits are there?

We know that each chicken has 2 legs and each rabbit has 4 legs. Now the known conditions of the problem are changed: "one order", each chicken is required to hang one foot (in the form of a golden rooster independently), and each rabbit is required to hang two front feet (in the shape of a jade rabbit worshipping the moon), that is, the number of all animal feet in the cage is halved.

Then, there are still 50 heads in the cage, and only 70 feet are left, and at this time, the number of heads and feet of chickens is equal, and the number of feet of rabbits is not equal to the number of heads of rabbits, and there is one rabbit, there is one extra foot, and now there are 50 heads and 70 feet, which means that there are 20 rabbits and 30 chickens.

17. Parallel thinking

Parallel thinking is a way of thinking that is to solve a relatively large problem, and it is necessary to seek parallel methods from different directions that do not interfere with each other and do not conflict with each other. It is also a form of divergent thinking.

The typical method of parallel thinking is the six thinking caps. The Six Thinking Hats are not only a tool for innovative thinking, but also an operational framework for interpersonal communication, and an effective way to improve the IQ of the team.

18. Dialectical thinking

Dialectical thinking is an important way of scientific thinking, which understands things from the perspective of change and development, and is often considered to be the opposite of logical thinking. Use the laws of dialectics to think, mainly use the three laws of mutual transformation of quality and quantity, unity of opposites, and negation of negation, grasp the key, find the key point, and gain insight into the law of the development of things.

The most basic characteristic of dialectical thinking is to examine the object as a whole from its internal contradictory movements, changes and interconnections in various aspects, in order to understand the object systematically and completely in essence.

19. Systems thinking

Systems thinking is a way of thinking that treats the internal and external elements of the system as a whole, starting from the whole, first synthesizing, then analyzing, and finally returning to a new synthesis at a higher stage, which has the characteristics of holistic, comprehensive, quantitative and precise.

Only systems thinking can achieve the organic combination of principle and flexibility. Only by thinking systematically can we grasp the whole and grasp the key points, and can we adopt flexible and effective methods to handle affairs without losing principle.

Systems thinking requires understanding things and grasping the laws in the dynamic process of interconnection and interaction between systems and elements, elements and elements, structure and hierarchy, and system and environment, so as to achieve overall structural and functional optimization.

20. Structural thinking

Structural thinking, when thinking about and analyzing a problem or stating an event, first has a structural framework, and then according to this framework and hierarchy, the event is thought, analyzed, or stated in a structured manner.

This kind of structural framework has a pyramid structure, a process sequence structure, a 5W2H structure, a cognitive circle structure, a golden circle structure, etc., and there is no one that is necessarily optimal, and it is necessary to train and select according to specific problems and events.

Apply what you have learned and integrate it. In work and life, the most simple truth is always the same, and there is an interesting article about thinking about the supply chain reconstruction of the official account, "Thinking Triggered by a Small Thing in R&D: Educating the Next Generation in a Different Way of Thinking", if you are interested, you can click to continue reading.

The index of historical articles has been updated and organized in the "Read the Original Text" below, which you can refer to.