How to Improve Your Analytical Skills

When we talk about developing analytical skills and applying them to our projects, there is often a temptation among students to jump straight into analysis. However, good analytical work requires students to follow some protocol, procedures and a well-established plan, and that is especially important in the era of information revolution, as we have sometimes too much information on important topics.  I always advise my students that the first rule is to start with the basics and foundations and not skip the first step: reading textbooks, articles and other materials in order to come to a common understanding of the general types of analytical skills and analytical tools that we need for our projects.

The second rule I have is that students also need to develop subject-specific or project-specific analytical skills, or perhaps interdisciplinary analytical skills. In the case of students at Al-Farabi KazNU working on the assessment of small technoparks in Kazakhstan, interdisciplinary analytical skills were needed. This is because the report on KazNU and other technoparks required analysis not only of the policy aspect of establishing and running these technoparks, but also managerial, commercial and legal aspects of successes and failures.

One secret of long-term success in analytical work lies in developing and strengthening analytical skills and practicing them regularly in order to maintain the quality of analysis and indeed the quality of the analytical mind. Some people claim that analytical skills are a gift given by nature, while others say that it is the intellectual environment around a person that shapes these abilities. In my view both of these assumptions are off the mark – analytical skills are talents that can and should be seen as soft technical skills. Thus, these skills should be developed through regular exercises – from “mind games” like Sudoku and chess and computer strategy games, to academic studies where a student evaluates different pieces of information for identifying trends and strategies.

For group projects (and for individual efforts too) students can acquire specific analytical tools that will enable them to run a successful analysis. For our purposes, our MDP/Global classroom students at Al-Farabi KazNU often use a tool dubbed the “analytical decision tree”. An analytical decision tree is commonly used in policy research and especially in decision-making analysis. This analytical tool uses a graph or model to analyze the chain of decisions and their possible consequences, and visualize them with a tree-like graphic focusing on policy/action outcomes and resource costs, in order to identify a strategy to reach desirable goals.

Creative students in my class regularly look for innovative ways to develop and strengthen their analytical skills. And one of the best ways is to work on group projects, discussing these projects within the group and presenting them to a larger audience. The feedback or what we call “bouncing ideas” between team-members or just friends – both positive and critical – help form self-assessment of analytical skills to work on sharpening and improving them.  Famous businessperson and practical management guru Mr. Lee Iacocca once said: “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you cannot get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere!”