Recently someone attending a Kepner-Tregoe workshop at Maserati/Fiat/Chrysler in Italy brought in some KT materials used by his father in the 1960s in Argentina. While the colors of the materials had changed and the language was different, it was clear: the KT approach to clear thinking remains pretty much the same, almost 50 years later.
High tech firms that face problems never imagined in the 1960s are among the fastest growing segments to adopt the classic KT skills. People are often surprised to learn about KT’s long history as they apply KT processes within industries that didn’t exist when the company was founded. First developed in the 1950s, Kepner-Tregoe processes stay perennially relevant across industries, cultures, education levels, and other factors by integrating analytical thinking to address four universal questions: What’s going on? Why did this happen? Which course of action should we take? What lies ahead?
The old KT materials from Argentina brought by a new generation to a workshop in Italy, illustrate that the value of clear thinking spans generations, applications, borders and languages. In The New Rational Manager, the business classic written by KT founders Ben Tregoe and Charles Kepner, the authors write that the KT approach “releases intellectual resources that have been hidden, unused, or underused. It opens channels of communication among people by giving them common approaches and a common language for dealing with the ordinary and extraordinary situations they face in their jobs”.
This is still true today.
