Question

Find and read one article that you feel discusses effectual thinking or describe a situation when you used effectual thinking rather than causal thinking.

Answer 1

When starting a new business which is a start -up , the entrepreneur will use effectual thinking rather than causal thinking. Causal thinking cab be used for businesses which are already established.

This way of thinking is used when building a project, all the codes are already established, the blue prints is ready and the materials used in the construction process is approved.

Effectual thinking is used when we do not have a specific end goal , the focus should be just on the means and resources that are available to us to reach those goals as the future is unpredictable.

For example, there is a situation where i have been assigned to design a new feature for a app, which would attract more people and the number of downloads would increase as a result. In these situations, making a plan, with a goal is difficult, in the mid way of developing the new feature i may completely change my plans/goals/milestones . Here, we are not concentrating on the end goal but on the available resources. In these situations effectual thinking is needed.

In the case of causal thinking, the new feature is already mentioned by the customer which is the search function. So, here the goal is pre determined and so is the target group.