Here’s something absolutely fundamental about thinking that no one ever talks about: Thinking is almost always a collective activity. We think with (or against) other people.

This is especially true in business. 85% of people’s work is collaborative – and all of that work requires thinking together.

And yet, when people train thinking skills, what do they train?

That’s right.

They train skills needed to think alone.

Sure, those skills are necessary. But they’re just table stakes. The really important thing is learning to think well together. But no one trains this, really. In fact, as far as we can tell, no one even notices that it’s required.

This blows our collective mind. And it also represents an opportunity. Get better at thinking together and you’ll turbocharge everything your business does – because everything your business does requires thinking together. And that’s what we focus on at The Philosophy Practice.

We teach the skills needed to think better together.

How You Benefit From Doing It Better

⁃ Better decisions

⁃ More efficient and more effective meetings.

⁃ Better problem-solving.

⁃ Higher engagement, more buy-in, greater alignment.

⁃ More trust and psychological safety.

What’s Needed to do it Better

Getting better at thinking together requires:

⁃ recognising that there is such a thing as thinking together, and that it is a different thing to many individuals sitting together but thinking alone.

⁃ acknowledging the facts of collective intelligence and collective learning, and a curiosity about how to develop both capacities.

⁃ individuals and systems interacting in mutually supportive ways.

⁃ cognitive skills and emotional intelligence, adaptability just as much as rigour, empathy coupled with logic, mindsets as well as rules.

⁃ the ability to build consensus and the ability to strongly disagree, and the wisdom to know what the moment requires.

How We Help You Do It Better

Philosophy is the longest living human tradition of human beings thinking together. We use those resources, combined with the most useful insights of cutting-edge science, to help you think better together.

⁃ We teach a set of skills that are indispensable to thinking together better: collective observing, listening, disagreeing, clarifying, feeling, empathising, arguing.

⁃ We create learning contexts and experiences that allow teams to use those skills and feel the magic of really thinking together.

⁃ We design and refine systems to allow groups to tap into the age-old human instinct to cooperate – to let the human talent for collaboration flow freely again.

⁃ We facilitate spaces where people experience the raw, messy magic of genuine dialogue.

⁃ We establish structures that make it easier for organisations to observe, remember, debate, discuss, learn, and act together – structures that ignite the evolution of organisational intelligence.