Logic education can reduce or eliminate the most costly and difficult challenges facing modern organizations. Our goal at the CLBC is to incorporate classical logic into business education at every level and across all disciplines. Here are 7 things every business leader should know about logic:
- Logic is not the opposite of emotion. People use the same patterns of reasoning when they follow their heads as when they follow their hearts. Logic helps people make better decisions regardless of their objectives and motivations. Learning logic may even increase emotional intelligence and self awareness by enabling people to reason more clearly.
- Logic can and should be used as a common language to communicate requirements between business organizations and IT. Logic allows business professionals to express ideas clearly and in their simplest meaningful form. Ambiguity and imprecision are not possible with logic. When requirements are expressed using the classical rules of inference and standard operators, every stage of the system development life cycle is improved, leading to lower costs and superior outcomes.
- Business schools and employers report significant deficiencies of critical-thinking skills among students and employees, despite a prolonged focus on critical thinking in business education. We believe this is due to the decline of logic education during the 20th century. Effective reasoning is necessary for critical thinking, and logic is necessary for effective reasoning. Critical thinking is impaired without logic, and most schools, including most business schools, do not require any courses in logic.
- Logic literacy among educated adults is at a 900-year low. For most of modern history logic was considered the starting point for all further learning. In fact, teaching logic was one of the main reasons universities were created in the first place. Unfortunately, logic today is seen as a niche, specialized subject that only a small fraction of educated people know anything about. The standard of logic as a required subject for everyone ended with the education reforms of the late 19th and early 20th century. It is obvious now that this was a mistake.
- Logic is not only important for human reasoning, it also provides the basic operating principles of computers. Computers don't decrease the value of logic literacy, they increase it -- just as the printing press increased the value of standard literacy.
- Logic, like reading, is easy to learn but it does not come naturally, or even from experience. It must be taught and practiced. It can be self-taught, but many aspects of logic are non-intuitive and for most people are easier to learn with an instructor.
- The Center for Logic and Business Communication offers business-focused logic training from highly-rated instructors with university teaching experience. Contact us for more information on logic training for business professionals and managers.