Creative vs Analytical Thinking: Is it really versus?

Tha latest "Future of Jobs" report by WEF has listed the top skill needed by business as "analytical thinking" and number two been listed as "creative thinking". The report also highlights that this order will change in five years and "creative thinking" will be number one as "analytic thinking" will fall a rank.

The first interpretation of this data is usually including a reflection of the reader, thinking like "ohhh I'm lucky (or unlucky), because I'm closer to creative (or analytic) thinking." As if that either today or in five years we miss one of them and have luck to favor the other. Correct! And misses a point!

With a through interpretation, first of all we need to highlight the fact that business world is needing people who are THINKING! We often fail to think throughly on this or that as we are usually too busy with continuously increasing speed of life. Also, as we are shaped by an education system that is favoring doing (or following the order and the orders) rather than thinking and doing. So, within this environment we usually have no space to think, and when we do so, we incline to think in our favorite style, either creative or analytic.

The correct interpretation of the data I was highlighting above tells us that the top needed skill of business life is "thinking creative AND analytic", doing both of them at the same time. This approach will also liberate us from being limited to our favorite thinking style and invite our innate abilities to think both analytically and creatively. It's good news that we all do have the capacity of both ways of thinking. Yet, there is one more step to do so:

We consciously need to invite our less favorite thinking style to support us in what we are doing. If you are natural in analytical thinking, you may benefit from creating some space (preferably a relax space accompanied with a relax mindset) for creative thinking and utilize your higher level of thinking capacity. Similarly, if you rather a natural in creative thinking, you may benefit from creating some space for more focused work.

Regardless of your natural thinking style, I may ask you "when and how much time do you allocate for quality thinking?". This has been a question I've found myself asking to so many clients in my coaching sessions and it's saddening to share that it's very rare to hear that people are allocating quality time for thinking. What's cheerful to share though is that all of the clients who have started to allocate that time and created some space for themselves for quality thinking later shared that it had a widespread and impactful results in the goals they were bringing to the coaching sessions.

So, let's ask ourselves and try to answer, "when and how much time do you allocate for quality thinking?". And together with the answer, let's consciously invite our less natural thinking style to join us in our thinking space.