Professionals today face complexity at every turn. Whether it is managing a matrix organization or reengineering a factory, whether setting up a distributed computing network or writing a proposal, the level of complexity and extent of interrelations between causal factors have increased to almost a bewildering level. Higher education does not provide adequate preparation for making decisions in such a context because it focuses largely on procedural knowledge and the solution of well-defined problems. In school, every problem has a fixed answer, but in the real world, every new technology, every change in the markets, every customer design specification calls for a novel response. Our economic survival (individually and collectively) depends on our mastery of the complex and rapidly changing world we have created. What is required is strategic thinking, which is a process of reasoning about complex problems or systems to achieve a goal. Strategic thinking is exhibited by the general who wages a brilliant campaign, by the business manager who makes a complex enterprise run smoothly, by the scientist who always picks a fruitful problem and finds a clever way to solve it. The author believes that these successful people utilize skills and techniques that can be shared, and sets out to teach the component skills essential to strategic thinking.

In certain types of problem solving, special skills are learned and are then applied repeatedly.