Answers.com defines mindset as:

1. A fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's responses to and interpretations of situations.
2. An inclination or a habit.

A mindset is akin to a habit, but it steps back one position to the frame of mind that you have about any given situation or topic. It is the beginning point of your thought process. When someone asks you "what is the best way to celebrate Christmas?", you approach this question with a specific mindset. You may have come from a family that was musical and so music enters into your thinking. You may have come from a family that was service oriented and so giving to others may be on your mind. Or you may come from a family that thinks that large meals are the way to go. The mindset that you have comes from many things that have influenced your thinking. We all have a mindset and we all use it to begin the filtering process in our thinking.

CAD managers can have a mindset they develop over their years of service. It’s an approach that you take when you enter into planning, preparation, negotiations, or problems. A mindset is your mind, set on something. So we will look at this topic from the overall vantage point of what you should be thinking when faced with CAD management issues.

I have written on bad habits of a CAD Manager on my blog (www.caddmanager.com) which included the following topics: Jumping to Conclusions, Attacking the Person not the Problem, Allowing others to make your decisions, Offering False Hope, Thinking it is All or Nothing, and Being Too Flexible. These take a negative look at the habits that some CAD managers may adopt.

In this article, I offer a more positive approach to the way CAD managers might be thinking as they enter into discussions with design staff, planning for tomorrow, or talking to management.

A mind set on Pondering
I cannot stress enough that just thinking about things more will set you apart from others. Most people go about completing tasks, getting things done, and making progress without thinking about what should or could be done. Don't get me wrong. Getting things done is paramount, but thinking about things is as well. Spend time thinking about what may be coming next. Think about your productivity processes and how they could be improved. Think about how you can save your company money. Think about things to which you should apply more planning. Think about the best and worst user in your firm and how you can help both of them.

Pondering is taking one step or more back from the original thought and going a little deeper, a little broader, or a little farther than others. Pondering takes longer than just a quick thought or two, not that many are willing to give that much time to things such as thinking. They are people of action, moving in such a way that activity replaces thinking. CAD managers should take some time to think before acting.

A mind set on Analyzing
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior that were important in learning. Bloom’s Taxonomy divides the levels of cognitive reasoning into these six major categories.

1. Knowledge: which includes activities such as arranging, defining, labeling, memorizing, recognizing, and more
2. Comprehension: which helps us to classify, describe, discuss, explain, express, and identify
3. Application: which is where we live most of the time as we apply, choose, demonstrate, illustrate, interpret, operate, practice, schedule, solve, use, and document.
4. Analysis: The topic at hand, where you analyze, appraise, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, differentiate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, and test.

   I will continue Bloom's list in a minute, but first let's discuss number 4 above. Collecting and analyzing data is crucial to having a proper perspective on just about everything. Analyzing breaks things apart, dividing them into smaller and smaller components. Analying allows you see what makes up the whole from the collection of parts.

   My goal in mentioning this one is to get you to see that you do this all the time when troubleshooting CAD problems. You break things into steps and see which step is failing. Find the failing part, fix it, and you have fixed the troubles. As CAD managers, we do this every day.

   But how many of you apply this to the other areas of your oversight? What about your spending, your upgrades, your standards? By breaking it all down you can see what parts are missing, which ones need refinement, and which ones are failing.

   A mind set on a Holistic View
   Moving on to the higher levels of cognitive reasoning we come to the ones that you may employ from time to time. These may help move you to a higher level of impact if you apply them consistently.

5. Synthesis: This is when you are looking to arrange, assemble, collect, compose, construct, create, design, develop, manage, organize, plan, prepare, or instruct.
6. Evaluation: The last and highest level of thinking, evaluation is when you appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose, compare, defend, estimate, judge, predict, rate, core, select, support, value, and evaluate.

A holistic view takes the parts that you have broken up in the analytical phase and puts them back together in new ways. Appraising the new combination, you look for new patterns that others may not see. These new patterns allow you to reposition yourself and others so that they can collectively agree on an outcome. CAD managers should live in this space. Taking the highest level view of everything allows you to harmonize your environment and processes for greater efficiencies and effectiveness.

From the practical perspective, it means taking the individual, seemingly disparate, parts of a problem or a process and arranging or refining them back into a better, more streamlined procedure. It is spotting the flaws, thinking in new ways, and developing better methods of working.

By thinking your way through your jobs, you can become a better manager and a better coach, moving people from novice to expert and refining the unity of your overall production methods.

Think about it.

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Mark W. Kiker is President of AUGI's Board of Directors. Mark is a National CAD Standards Project Team Member and team member of the National BIM Standard. He is the general editor of BLAUGI and also publishes caddmanager.com, the CADD Managers Journal, and the caddmanager.com blog. He is a returning faculty member of Autodesk University. He is currently Chief Information Officer for HMC Architects in Ontario, California, USA.