NBA 5880 - Critical Thinking for Business Leaders

Spring. 1.5 credits.

R. Mish.

This course is based on the proposition that leading well requires thinking well-that is, in order to succeed in any business leadership role, one must learn, exhibit, and model critical thinking skills to organizational stakeholders: colleagues, supervisors/senior executives, and clients/customers. The first few class sessions look at a series of brief articles that attempt to advance arguments in favor of a particular business proposition, and students learn how to examine these arguments critically, including by evaluating the strength and limitations of the evidence presented and by identifying and articulating the best counter-arguments to the positions offered. The remainder of the course is spent applying these critical thinking skills to a set of business cases, using a Strategic Thinking Problem-Solving framework. By the end of the course, the goal is for students to be able to approach business problems in a systematic and critically thoughtful way, and to produce and communicate a problem solution that is well reasoned, well received by ultimate decision makers, and likely to be implemented with success by a group/organization that a student is leading.