I came across Bloom's taxonomy of higher order thinking while listening to another Knowledge Project podcast episode Dr. Gio Valiante (Part 2): Failure and Success.
I found the concept intriguing, with reference to learning organizations and learning in organizations.
I made a little drawing to help me remember the hierarchy, and then did a bit of research on the topic based off the first Google search results for "Bloom’s taxonomy of higher-order thinking".
First thing to note is that this is Bloom's taxonomy of the Cognitive domain. The wikipedia page lists two additional taxonomies in the Affective and Psychomotor domains.
Other online resources about higher order thinking rename or reposition the last three levels, as shown in the bottom part of the drawing above.
How can I use this newly discovered information?
I guess really my question is: how can I use this newly discovered information?
And right now I am thinking at two ways:
- how can I index the hiring process towards higher order thinking
- how can I promote, encourage, develop this higher order thinking with the people that we already have
In the podcast episode Dr. Gio Valiante follows up to the introduction of Bloom's taxonomy with the following (emphasis mine):
You see, number one, believe it or not, is humility. The best in the world readily acknowledge that they don’t know. Now I’m not saying… So they’re humble, but there’s also a little arrogance. There’s conviction. There’s belief that “What I’m doing is right. I believe in my path.” But underneath that is the humility and the recognition that they don’t know, which is why the second step [is] a never-ending series of problem solving and testing and risk taking.
In my experience, I have to say that people that are not humble are generally the people that will have an unchangeable opinion about everything and will actively engage in conversations with the intent of winning them. Often, interactions with such people tend to be of the win-lose type.
For this I believe I do have already a system of screening candidates in the hiring process, and for those who are already with us the cultural conflict that will inevitable arise will take care of them anyways.
Conviction is more tricky though, as that IMHO sounds like the agency mentioned in the another KP episode. And my conclusion is that some people have agency and some don't and there's something we can do to promote agency, but ultimately the seed needs to be already there.
So, when it comes to agency I suppose my approach is to make space for people to grow. This can happen intentionally or as a side-effect.
Intentionally: in conversations, they express the desire to grow, and we agree on clearing a path for that.
Side-effect: I move out of a team, or shift my focus and leave an area open for the taking. I would usually announce this in some way or form, to make sure that it does not look like neglect (even though it might be neglect, and in practice it is a risk I'm willing to take).
Update: I came back to add the paragraph below after I listened to the episode again
Before mentioning Bloom's taxonomy, Dr. Valiante mentions "knowing when to quit". Perhaps this is key to finding people with high agency and who also have the judgement to understand when it's time to "quit". Note that quitting can mean many things, and not just leaving a position or job. For example, knowing when to quit can mean stopping an effort when are we getting diminishing returns, going back to the drawing board when we're not getting the intended outcome, understanding when the time is right and when it is not for a certain action.
Do you know when to quit? could be an interesting question to ask in an interview.
Last, but not least is the experimentation part and this is what I find it's harder to apply a process to (*). I'll think about it and maybe write about it another time.
(*) someone might suggest the Toyota Kata process
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