Posted Jun 24, 2008
Austhink Presents the Industry’s First Critical Thinking Software Designed for Management Consultants
CHICAGO, June 24, 2008: Consulting Magazine’s Best Practices Event
Austhink, the leading provider of critical thinking software, today unveiled a major addition to the management consultant’s toolkit: bCisive™. With the introduction of bCisive, there is finally a software package that directly supports hierarchical structured thinking, such as the Minto Pyramid Principle®, a foundational methodology within successful consulting firms.
bCisive addresses the pain points that are top-of-mind for management consultants including:
- Training staff in key consulting thinking disciplines
- Rapid development of logic trees
- Internal team collaboration and task assignment
- Improved communication and engagement with clients
“Structured thinking is the essence of management consulting. It gives consultants their edge,” says Austhink’s CEO, renowned cognitive scientist Dr Tim van Gelder. “However, until now, there has been no tool that directly supports this activity. Instead, consultants have had to improvise with PowerPoint or Visio, which instead of speeding up the critical thinking process, can often slow it down and make it more frustrating.”
A cornerstone of the new tool is bCisive’s unmatched ease-of-use and application for critical thinking, which is based on years of scientific research and extensive testing in the workplace. The creation of bCisive for management consultants follows Austhink’s success in creating critical thinking applications that have been used in government, law firms, large corporations and universities. For instance, Austhink’s software is increasingly the critical thinking solution of choice for U.S. intelligence agencies as well as Australian academic communities. Now, with bCisive, Austhink is building off of its success in other realms and is setting its sights on solving the pains plaguing management consulting.
bCisive Addresses Key Pain Points for Management Consultants
Whether they are called logic trees, issue maps, Minto Pyramid Principle® diagrams or argument maps, hierarchical diagrams are among the most distinctive and powerful tools consultants have. Prior to bCisive, there has not been a tool designed specifically to automate this process. bCisive allows consultants to create, modify and format these diagrams, generating succinct and professional plans with minimal time and effort. More importantly, bCisive turns static diagrams into dynamic and interactive thought structures, making the thinking process more fluid, thorough and rigorous.
A major challenge for consulting organizations is training new associates to ‘think like a consultant’. bCisive was designed to dramatically reduce the time it takes for associates to learn and comprehend the principles of hierarchical thinking, and as a result it helps firms standardize methodologies across their organizations. With consultants conversant in the same methodologies and the right tool to communicate, they are in a stronger position to thoughtfully share their ideas, foster collaboration, speed the path to decisions, and move from idea into action.
Client satisfaction and buy-in is also paramount to moving from idea into action. bCisive allows consultants to engage and interact with clients about their decisions in a way that, until now, has not been possible. bCisive captures client inputs and perspectives and displays them instantaneously so they can be used to facilitate discussion. Management consultants can also immediately garner approval at every stage in the consultative process. By encouraging this type of interaction, decisions become more collaborative, clients feel more at ease and invested in the decisions, and an action plan is agreed to more quickly – all contributing to greater overall client satisfaction. Simply put, bCisive transforms the usual consultant-client dynamic into a collaborative and highly productive engagement.
“We’re excited to apply many years of research to solve a very acute problem within management consulting,” noted Dr van Gelder. “We see immediate opportunities to add value and we’re looking forward to transforming the way management consultants work today.”
Collaboration with Barbara Minto
Barbara Minto of London, England and Austhink of Melbourne, Australia have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to collaboratively produce a Minto software product based on the Minto Pyramid Principle® and Austhink’s bCisive product. This collaboration brings together Minto’s expertise, processes and reputation with Austhink’s software development skills and expertise in structured thinking. The product will complement Minto’s renowned book, The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking and Problem Solving (1996), and her celebrated Minto Pyramid Principle® Course and self-study courses. The jointly branded product is expected to be available towards the end of 2008.
For more information about this collaboration, please contact:- Henry Okraglik, Austhink’s VP of Sales & Marketing, by phone +61 (0)3 8317 1002 ext. 108; mobile +61 (0)400 866 249; or by email.
- Michael Peel (for Barbara Minto), by mobile +44 (0)7900 438 483 or by email at mjrpeel@gmail.com.
About Austhink
Austhink provides critical thinking solutions for both the enterprise and education. Founded and led by cognitive scientist, Dr Tim van Gelder, Austhink’s software applies insights from cognitive science to enhance thinking and decision making capacities. Its Rationale™ product is used by major universities, such as New York Law School, San Francisco State University and the University of Melbourne. Austhink’s latest software, bCisive, is the first and only solution on the market that directly supports the informal deliberative processes underlying most business decision making. For more information, visit the Austhink website.
