![\"HBR\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/firmsconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/harvard-business-review2.jpg?resize=5475%2C2028&quality=89&ssl=1\")
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Reading the Harvard Business Review (HBR) or the McKinsey Quarterly to develop your critical thinking ability is a flawed approach. Reading these publications helps a little, but not a lot.<\/p>\n
This article explores why this is the case\u00a0and\u00a0dives into what pieces to read, and how to read them, to develop your own critical thinking ability.<\/p>\n
I recently\u00a0received an email from a client. On the Firmsconsulting website we have a complimentary section called What Firmsconsulting is Reading<\/a><\/em> (under community and in groups). And what I do in this section is I post all of the major online articles I’ve read on each day. I read much more, but the pieces I post are the most useful to me. So that way you can track and see what a consulting partner reads.<\/p>\n And my thinking was that by replicating my reading process you can replicate my strategy to build my business judgement. And someone wrote in, a client that I have known for a long time, and asked the following questions.<\/p>\n \u201cMichael,\u00a0<\/em>I noticed that you read about fashion, you read about what is happening in Ukraine, you read about business topics, but most of it are newspaper articles. You read the New York Times a lot, you read Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and so on.<\/em><\/p>\n The articles usually about news events. Why don\u2019t you recommend HBR<\/a>\u00a0articles for us? Why is that you don’t recommend McKinsey Quarterly<\/a> articles for us? If you want us to learn to think like a consulting partner shouldn’t we be reading those things?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n My answer is no, that is not what you should be reading if you want to think like a consulting partner. “Think” is the operating word here. And this\u00a0post, and related podcast<\/a>, explains why that is the case.<\/p>\n If you read HBR or McKinsey Quarterly\u00a0you are going to learn about some new concept or idea in business, which is good. And if your objective is to learn about some new concept in business and be able to talk about it at a cocktail party, with your friends at the office or with clients, continue reading those publications.<\/p>\n They teach you useful nuggets of information to share.<\/p>\n Yet,\u00a0that’s not the objective we have with our clients. The objective we have is to train<\/em> you to be able to think<\/em> in the way<\/em> that allowed<\/em> the author of the HBR article to develop<\/em>\u00a0the insight<\/em> in the article. And that is a profoundly different objective.<\/p>\n Our objective is not to train you to memorize<\/strong> useful insights. We want to train you to independently<\/strong>\u00a0develop<\/strong> useful insights.<\/p>\n That is a different objective and a different skill.<\/p>\n So we don\u2019t teach people to\u00a0just sound as if\u00a0they\u00a0know what they are\u00a0saying. If we made you read some of the most popular articles in the HBR\u00a0you will sound as if\u00a0you know what you’re talking about. However,\u00a0it doesn’t make you an outstanding management consultant<\/a>, strategist or business leader.<\/p>\n It does not improve your ability to generate your own insights.<\/p>\n We teach\u00a0the ability to go through a\u00a0thought process and come up with the same level of insight that you see in the HBR. That’s what you should\u00a0learn. That is what is useful. To come out with a great insight, you need to logically analyze the\u00a0issue and thereafter apply your business judgement to interpret the findings of the analysis.<\/p>\n Many people focus on building their logical problem solving skills while they lack the business judgement to interpret the analysis. Brilliant analyses coupled with weak business judgement leads to weak insights.\u00a0Wider reading on critical issues which are controversial improves your business judgement.<\/p>\n I was recently corresponding with a member of a business journal at a very prominent MBA program in North America. And he was telling me about how they wanted\u00a0to move their student\u00a0publication to the same status as the HBR. That is certainly possible.<\/p>\n He was saying, \u201cLook at the quality of our writing. Look at the quality of our publication. We have invested money putting together good graphics. Our style of writing is very similar to the Harvard Business Review. The way we analyze issues is very similar to the way HBR\u00a0analyzes issues<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n And I pointed out to him that actually it’s not. There is a profound difference between his publication and the HBR. They may look the same but the process to produce the insights is very different.<\/p>\n In the Harvard Business Review, and I’m just using the HBR\u00a0as an example because everyone knows it, the people who publish the articles do a lot of work. I don\u2019t know what is the validity of their research or veracity of their findings. Yet, I do know that they do a lot of work: bottom-up analysis, working with real clients, testing the ideas before it\u2019s written up.<\/p>\n For example, I was reading an article recently written by a Bain<\/a> partner, which was a pretty good article. And he was talking about how he has learned about the process of growth expansion through working with clients and solving their real problems. He has noticed certain patterns and he wrote it up. That is the process he used. His ideas have been battle tested with clients, adjusted as the data disproved their initial hypotheses and tested again until he could see some replicable pattern emerge.<\/p>\n Compare this to\u00a0the process used by the upstart business journal in question. The business school gets undergraduate\u00a0students\u00a0to do desktop research and then write-up these articles.<\/p>\n Just because their\u00a0articles look similar to\u00a0Harvard Business Review articles, sound like HBR\u00a0articles, does not mean the upstart business journal team\u00a0captured the process<\/strong> to produce articles of that quality. The process matters. Making an article pretty does not make the insight useful.<\/p>\n They are mainly using\u00a0desktop research. Desktop research is a very limited type of research. Unless authors\u00a0actually worked with the client all they\u00a0are relying on is what some journalist is reporting or what some journalist thinks is the issue. So when people\u00a0base their\u00a0work on desktop research they are\u00a0basically regurgitating someone else’s interpretation.<\/p>\n This story is important because it explains the importance of the process followed to create an insight.<\/p>\n What I’m teaching you\u00a0to do in getting you\u00a0to read the articles I read is to apply critical thinking.\u00a0I’m teaching you\u00a0how to build those very important analytical problem solving<\/a> skills that will allow you\u00a0to think the way consulting partners<\/a> think. I am forcing you to learn business judgement. I give you\u00a0articles to read that sharpen your critical judgment skills and I nudge you towards questions you should be asking while you are reading each\u00a0article.<\/p>\n I force you to read things that do not conform to your world views. I guide\u00a0you to see multiple sides and some of it may make you uncomfortable but you are certainly thinking about the core issues. I am helping you to build your business judgment because that is somewhat more important than just the analytic skills.<\/p>\n I will give you another example of a display of a weak critical thinking\u00a0ability that I am trying to help readers\u00a0improve.<\/p>\n The immigration debate is a massive debate in the United States. Actually go to almost any country in the world, immigration is a vitally important\u00a0topic.<\/p>\n And I was having a discussion with someone, lets call him Josh, who was telling me how Asians dominate the Ivy leagues in the US and, therefore, Asians must be more intelligent than any other race. I was careful to\u00a0not get into a discussion on which race is more intelligent because it’s automatically going to be an explosive topic. However, I needed to help Josh see why his opinion was not based on logic. Our discussion went like this.<\/p>\n Michael: Why do you say that?<\/em><\/p>\n Josh: I have read so many different publications. They all say the same things. The Asians dominate the Ivy Leagues<\/em>.<\/p>\n Michael:\u00a0Okay, that makes sense. But where does it say that one nation is more intelligent than the other<\/em>.<\/p>\n Josh: Well, you can infer that.<\/em><\/p>\n Michael:\u00a0You can\u2019t infer that. Logic would dictate that in the 1950s Asians didn’t dominate the Ivy leagues. Are you then saying that Asians were not intelligent in the 1950s?<\/em><\/p>\n Josh:\u00a0Well no, I’m not saying that. I am just saying the Ivy leagues were not popular for Asians then.<\/em><\/p>\n Michael:\u00a0Okay, by that logic if Asians dominate the Ivy leagues now, how do you know the Ivy leagues are not popular with\u00a0another race which is equally or more intelligent than Asians, but are not applying or permitted to study in the US in large numbers?<\/em><\/p>\n What I see with Josh above is a tendency to select data which proves his pre-determined hypothesis. He has already decided this to be true, and he is simply selecting the data to prove it. Now, it may be true or it may not be true. It is just that his data does not support his conclusion.<\/p>\n One could easily argue that attending the Ivy’s are a means to securing wealth. Now, if you could secure wealth without studying, you would do it. So, should we not measure the end goal? Which group is wealthiest? Is that not a better measure of intelligence? I hope you see my point. And I could develop even more arguments.<\/p>\n When you are critically assessing a situation don’t get caught into the media bias. Learn to think\u00a0critically so you can evaluate information and form your own opinion, free from bias.<\/p>\n When you go in looking for one answer, you will never see\u00a0the\u00a0<\/em>answer.<\/p>\n As you approach reading, you need\u00a0to ask yourself: do I\u00a0want to be a guy or a lady who can recite the HBR\u00a0article or who has the ability to produce something of the HBR\u00a0quality? The reading regimen for these two goals differs substantially.<\/p>\n What you should\u00a0learn is not how to memorize and recall\u00a0key concepts from HBR or McKinsey\u00a0Quarterly, which is what anyone can do. Instead, you should\u00a0build the skills to critically evaluate any situation, see patterns, link seemingly unconnected data points, develop as well as\u00a0test hypotheses and form your own opinion, which should be\u00a0data driven and free from bias.<\/p>\n And this is what the news articles are teaching you to do, if you read them with the right mindset. They are teaching you very foundational skills.<\/p>\n It is\u00a0important to keep your pulse on the current sources of discussion around the world. And to build the ability to think about what’s happening, ask critical questions, see the insights that are not obvious and form your own viewpoints. You have to ask such questions as:<\/p>\n Those three\u00a0questions, which can be answered before you even read the article will tell you more about the article than\u00a0the content of the article. Try it, you will be surprised!<\/p>\n And over time, as you start reading more of these articles and pose the right questions as you read them, your critical reasoning skill will develop.<\/p>\n In What Firmsconsulting is Reading\u00a0<\/em>most of the time I give you a one line question\/comment. Some of them are a bit snarky. As you probably know I can’t hide my feelings sometimes. Yet, I try. I am careful to do so. I usually try not to disclose\u00a0a personal view. I generally\u00a0don\u2019t say, “I am mentioning\u00a0this article because I think this nation or this person did the right or wrong thing<\/em>“. I usually come from the basis that the article may or may not reflect my viewpoint but I want you to pick up the following item.<\/p>\n And I\u00a0choose controversial pieces. I\u00a0don\u2019t shy away from it because you have to be able to critically evaluate things. I put out stuff about the poverty debate in the United States, immigration, the issues in Ukraine and so on. And I pick words very carefully to not show bias because our job is not to be biased.<\/p>\n You will also notice I always recommend you read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (liberal and conservative viewpoints). They attack problems from completely different sides. If you only read the New York Times or Wall Street Journal you will struggle to form an informed opinion about issues.<\/p>\n There is another\u00a0reason I rarely read HBR. A lot of the things they publish are actually fairly obvious. Some of the things are interesting. I do like some of the new pieces they put out where they talk to CEOs about the experiences they had. However,\u00a0a lot of the other things are basically an analysis which is very easy to do and a few interesting insights. And\u00a0rarely are\u00a0HBR articles mind-blowing.<\/p>\n Overall, reading the finished product in the HBR\u00a0article or McKinsey Quarterly article is useful. However,\u00a0it is not teaching you how to think in a logical and critical way.<\/p>\n And that’s a fact. So I am not saying don’t read the HBR\u00a0or McKinsey Quarterly. Definitely read them. Yet,\u00a0don’t be so thrilled with yourself if you can only repeat what’s there.<\/p>\n It\u2019s more important to develop the skills to produce the quality of thinking HBR\u00a0publish. Even though you will not get there immediately, it is better to slowly get to a point where you can structure a study to test a hypothesis and come up with a finding that you can write-up at the HBR\u00a0level.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n When you are reading remember to choose your objective:\u00a0do you want to be able to\u00a0recite the HBR article or have the\u00a0ability to come up with your own insights, the kind of ability a consulting partner has? The reading regimen to achieve\u00a0each of these two goals is\u00a0very different. You have got to be very strategic in what you read and how you read if your goal is to develop a solid critical thinking\u00a0ability.<\/p>\n Be critical. Turn the story around in your head in different ways. Do not simply take the facts you want to take, because you may be closing your mind to something that will truly change your viewpoint.<\/p>\n QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY:<\/strong>\u00a0Why do you think business judgement matters more than analytic ability when developing insights? Please share in the comments.<\/p>\n SPREAD THE WORD!<\/strong>\u00a0Like this? Please share it.<\/p>\n COME HANG OUT WITH US:<\/strong>\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a><\/p>\n Also, remember to visit our\u00a0iTunes<\/a>\u00a0account to rate us and post comments on what more you would like to see.<\/p>\n Image from\u00a0Trey Ratcliff<\/a>\u00a0under\u00a0cc<\/a>.<\/p>\n RELATED ARTICLES:<\/strong><\/p>\n Effective Brainstorming Technique Used by Consulting Partners<\/a> Reading HBR to develop a critical thinking ability is a flawed approach. We explore why this is the case and what you should do instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-management-consulting"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"HBR](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/firmsconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/HBR-quote.jpg?resize=940%2C788&quality=89&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nStriving to recreate the\u00a0HBR<\/h2>\n
Learn to think the way a consulting partner thinks<\/h2>\n
Another example of a display of a weak critical thinking ability<\/h2>\n
What news articles teach you and HBR\u00a0does not<\/h2>\n
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\nStoryboard Development in Strategy Engagements<\/a>
\nDeloitte S&O New York Principal Interview<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"