HBR Guide to Critical Thinking

CHAPTER 3 Act Like a Scientist

by Stefan Thomke and Gary W. Loveman

Every day, managers make decisions about products, customers, resource allocation, employee pay, and more, basing them on assumptions that have never been critically examined, much less challenged. “I’ve always been successful doing it this way and never thought about doing it another way” is what we often hear when managers are asked why they didn’t question practices that turned out to be faulty. But when skeptics show that ideas underlying practices are wrong, confounding, or even costly, leaders grasp the importance of systematically testing assumptions.

If challenging assumptions is so valuable, why don’t managers make it a standard operating procedure? After decades ...