In this reflection, which is best enjoyed when it is read slowly, and which is written as much for serving officials as for academics, philosophy will be treated as a practical thing. To many people, this announcement may be unexpected. Are not philosophers the most theoretical tribe of people, with their heads in the clouds? As far as generalisations go, this description of philosophers is not too inaccurate. However, it leads to a nice paradox (something much liked by philosophers): philosophy should be as practical and as theoretical as possible. The reason that this can be the case is that Philosophy is the practice or profession of theory par excellence.

If we treat philosophy as a practical thing in this reflection, it means that we need not have a special training in Philosophy as a subject to apply its outcomes. In fact, philosopher is not a recognised occupational class in the public service at all. This is not in any way to disparage those who make Philosophy their full-time occupation. We can expect that full-time philosophers will be more adroit at exercising philosophical skills than the rest of us, but it does not mean that their field is a realm of mystery that is inaccessible to outsiders. It is my firm belief that all people can benefit from having some philosophical competence, that they can apply that competence in most of the tasks people have in large organisations, and that a person cannot be a good senior manager without it.

Obviously, philosophy relates to thinking. Philosophical skills are a special class of thinking skills. Of course, there are many other thinking skills, such as understanding, planning, imagining, evaluating, calculating, scheming, hoping, and remembering. Also, we can think about understanding, planning, imagining, evaluating, calculating, and so forth. Now, philosophy is thinking about thinking in a special way. Philosophical thinking is thinking about the efficiency and effectiveness of concepts in contexts. It is about the way we order ideas in our minds and judge the usefulness of the concepts and intellectual patterns we use.