Collective thinking begins before decisions, methods, or tools. It begins with attention: what a group is able to notice, keep in view, and return to when the conversation becomes noisy.
In many teams, attention is treated as an individual discipline. But in practice, attention is also a shared environment. It is shaped by agendas, interfaces, meeting formats, incentives, language, and the quiet hierarchy of who gets to define what is important.
A design question
The practical question is not only how to make people more focused. It is how to design situations where the important object of thought remains visible to the group.
A good collective thinking process protects attention from premature answers. It slows the group down enough to see the problem, but not so much that the group loses momentum.