About The Thinking Quiz

Aloha! My name is Joseph Audette and I created The Thinking Quiz as a personal project and an experiment in building with AI. The quiz is based on the work of Allen F. Harrison and Robert M. Bramson, Ph.D., specifically their psychology book: The Art of Thinking: The Classic Guide to Increasing Brain Power. This book has been incredibly enlightening in my own journey as a product executive at startups, and I built this site to help others better understand how they think and interact with other styles.

I have been interested in leadership and organizational behavior since my undergrad at MIT. I wrote my senior thesis on motivating engineering teams as the Manager of the MIT Motorsports Formula SAE team. Most leaders are familiar with frameworks like the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs. They're useful (Enthusiast - 7 & INTP checking in 🙋‍♂️), but I've increasingly found a different lens to be more valuable at the executive level. The Art of Thinking shifts the focus away from personality traits and toward how people solve problems. Thousands of leaders have taken personality tests. Far fewer have explored how they actually think.

In both early-stage startups and later-stage companies, outcomes are shaped less by whether teams skew introvert or extrovert, and far more by problem-solving style. Product, strategy, and operating leaders are responsible for navigating ambiguity, making tradeoffs, and driving decisions forward. Understanding whether someone approaches problems analytically, pragmatically, synthetically, or idealistically can significantly improve alignment and execution. This framework helped me better understand my own approach, and just as importantly, how to partner more effectively with leaders who think differently.

More about the author

Joseph Audette builds product development teams that help early-stage startups scale into category-defining companies. As VP of Product & Engineering at Pilotly, he is developing next-generation research solutions used by major studios including Amazon, Netflix, and NBC, while leveraging AI to accelerate product velocity. Previously, Joseph led Product and Design at RepairPal, where he built and scaled a ten-person team to help drive the company's fastest period of revenue growth. Earlier in his career, Joseph held leadership roles at several high-growth startups including Carlypso (acquired by Carvana), TrueCar (IPO), and NerdWallet, where he was employee #2. Joseph began his career developing product strategy at Ford and Toyota. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, where he also led the MIT Motorsports Formula SAE team.

To balance his professional career, Joseph lives in upcountry Maui, Hawaiʻi with his family, where he enjoys hiking, collecting tiki mugs, and riding his Triumph motorcycles.

Contact Me

Questions about The Thinking Quiz or need some Maui recommendations? Drop me a line!