Our traditional thinking methods are all about discovering and identifying "what is". This is more recognition than thinking. A doctor in his or her surgery has to identify standard illnesses in order to provide the standard treatments for each one. A child is brought in with a rash. The doctor has to make a diagnosis: what is this? The doctor thinks of some possibilities. It could be food allergy or sunburn. It could be measles. Depending on the signs, symptoms and history the doctor makes a judgment.
Once the judgment has been made, then the nature of the illness is known. The likely course of the illness is also known and so are the possible complications. The standard treatment is known and can be used.
Almost 100% of education is about identifying standard situations so that we can then understand them. Almost 90% of our behaviour in later life is also about recognising standard situations and taking appropriate action.
The system works well because it is both efficient and powerful. The experiences of the past are consolidated and given a standard name for ease of reference. Into that package goes all the experience associated with that situation.
What about an architect? When a client wants a house built does the architect invite the client to go through a book of a hundred and one designs for a house and to choose a standard design? If the architect did this he, or she, would be doing no more than the contractor could do - or the client could do for himself or herself. The purpose of the architect is to design a house to fit the needs and budget of the client.
Design is all about "what can be" rather than "what is". The architect works with standard elements. The architect does not have to test the strength of the beams or the porosity of the roof tiles. All these are known. There are also standard ways of solving the standard problems that might arise in the construction. This is no different from writing music. The notes are standard, but how you put them together is what creates the music. The distinction between "what is" thinking and "what can be" thinking is never made strongly enough.
CONFLICTS
Conflicts and disputes too often arise from the exercise of judgment on the "what is" basis. There is judgment when one party identifies the other party as "the enemy". Judgment will never get you out of a judgment box. Judgment alters perception so you sink more and more deeply into that box. Your perception selects those things that keep you in the box. So disputes grow into conflicts and once the conflict starts you are in a "defence" mode. You have to protect yourself and your fellows against the "aggressor". It is a major defect in the development and use of human thinking that we have developed the judgment side so strongly and the design side so weakly.
PARALLEL THINKING
Judgment is an extremely inefficient way of exploring a subject. Imagine a court of law. If the prosecutor thinks of something which will help the defence case, is the prosecutor going to mention that point? Of course not. If the defence lawyer thinks of some point that could help the prosecution case, is the defence lawyer going to mention that? Of course not. This is case-making and not exploration.
In parallel thinking (Six Hats method) at any moment all parties are looking and thinking in the same direction. Each colour of hat indicates that direction (possibilities, information, caution, feelings, etc.). The result is that meeting times are reduced to one quarter or even one tenth. Each person now uses his or her experience and intelligence to the fullest. In recorded instances, the sums of $10 million and $20 million have been saved through using this method. The method is now widely in use with such organisations as the Prudential, NASA, IBM, Motorola, etc.
DESIGN, NOT NEGOTIATION
In a negotiation the parties seek to bargain with each other. The parties start as far apart as possible so they can move towards each other through compromise and giving up demands. With design, both parties put all their effort into designing a way forward which is fair to both sides. Each side takes into account the fears, values and needs of both sides.
This is a classic design situation. But it is very different from traditional lawyer speak: you are wrong, these are my rights, etc. Values are often not identical and a good design may allow both sides to enjoy a large part of what they want.
Negotiations are too often a sort of auction of pain. Each side seeks to inflict as much pain as possible so the other side will concede. Design is almost exactly the opposite. The intention is to get the maximum value for each side.
Technology makes rapid advances. Generally we use technology to do what we did before in a better way. We judge which standard situation would benefit from the technology. We do not often use technology to do things that were never done before. This would require design thinking. And how could we 'judge' whether the new idea was going to work?
Technology is already far ahead of the value concepts we ask technology to deliver. The need is not for more and more technology but for the design of 'new value concepts'. There is no reason to suppose that those who designed the technology are in the best position to design these value concepts.
PROBLEM-SOLVING
Our traditional method of problem-solving works very well in most cases. Analyse the problem, identify the cause of the problem. Remove the cause of the problem.
There are times when we cannot find the cause of the problem. There are times when there are so many causes that we cannot remove them all. There are times when the cause is human nature, and cannot be removed. In all such cases we are paralysed because more and more analysis will not solve the problem.
There are times when we need to "design a way forward" even if the cause has to remain in place. Most of the major problems in the world require such design thinking. But all they get is more and more analysis.
VALUE SENSITIVITY
Creative and design thinking is useless unless you develop a high degree of value sensitivity. Without such sensitivity you will be unable to recognise the value of your own ideas. Without this sensitivity, design has no direction and no energy. Judgment has easy values. Is this correct? Is this what it is supposed to be? Does this fit with past experience? What box does this belong in? We are very sensitive to danger and what might go wrong. We are much less sensitive to value.
SUMMARY
The judgment system is excellent - but it is insufficient. We need to pay equal attention to the design system. "What is" thinking needs to be supplemented by "what can be" thinking. In some cases the judgment system creates conflicts. There is a need to be able to "design the way forward".
Inventing is usually a matter of detecting a need and then satisfying that need to create a value. Valufacture - a word I invented in my book 'Surpetition' (HarperCollins) - is much broader. Valufacture is the creation of value.
VALUFACTURE
Something which has little value in one place may have a high value in another. In Victoria, Australia, Ron Andrews is the philanthropist who put up the funds for the de Bono Institute in Melbourne. As a young man he noticed a certain type of rock on some farmland. When the farmer was ready to sell, he bought the land and established a quarry.
When the quarry was worked out, he sold the airspace for land fill (at a higher price than he had sold the rock in the quarry). Then he took the methane from the landfill and sold that to a power station. Then he took the waste heat from the power station to heat greenhouses. The final step might have been to take the waste vegetable matter from the greenhouses and to run this into ethanol (as fuel).
Valufacture is a matter of putting things together to create value. All businesses involve valufacture. The use of one party's waste in order to create real value elsewhere is a classic example of valufacture.
CREATIVITY
Putting something that is of little value in normal circumstances into special circumstances is just as much valufacture as invention. Just as much creativity is required. The very successful microlending of the Grameen bank in Bangladesh is an excellent example of valufacture for all concerned. The women who obtain loans of $100 can use this money to buy a sewing machine. The woman and her family benefit. The buyers of the clothing also benefit. The bank benefits. The maker of sewing machines benefits.
Just as dirt may be defined as matter in the wrong place, so value may be defined as matter in the right place. That right place is broadly defined as 'circumstances'. Those circumstances may be a more or less permanent set of circumstances (like people who cannot easily get mortgages) or the circumstances may be a particular point in time.
Giving water to someone who happens to be thirsty at that moment is time-dependent. The fashion industry thrives by driving cycles of acceptance so that there is demand for the fashion products at any moment.
OPPORTUNITY
Opportunity is the reciprocal of valufacture. Sometimes the opportunity is obvious to all. The tragic death of Princess Diana provided an obvious opportunity to certain authors and to producers of memorabilia. Many states and countries have in place laws to restrict landfill of garbage. In addition, new evidence suggests that incineration releases dioxins that cause cancer in those living nearby.
Between 60-70% of garbage is vegetable (putrescible) matter. This can be turned into ethanol. Ethanol up to 22% in a mixture with petrol can be used in cars without any modification at all. With minor modifications cars can run on 100% ethanol (which was the original fuel for cars).
The combustion of ethanol is considerably less toxic than the combustion of petrol. The existence of an ethanol industry now allows farmers to make money out of their waste (rice husks, sugar cane, etc.) and also allows farmers to grow crops that are needed for the soil (for de-salination) but hitherto had no commercial value.
If the value is so obvious then why is it not being done more widely? (Brazil is the exception.) Because the 'edge effect' of getting it going is considerable and oil companies that control distribution are not that enthusiastic about a rival fuel. Value has to be seen by all parties.
SEARCH OR CREATE
I have been mainly writing here about searching for those circumstances which create value around something. This is a process of creative search which is every bit as creative as putting things together to produce value.
In fact, the creative process is very similar (use of concepts, etc.). It is also possible to create circumstances which give value to something. Soccer is a designed circumstance that gives value to kicking a ball about. Teams and football leagues are further steps in the design of circumstances.
Sometimes there is one missing ingredient, and supplying that missing ingredient sets off a whole chain of values. The development of telephone shopping depends on one missing ingredient which is not yet in place.
SUMMARY
Throughout Thinking Managers I have sought to show the difference between creating a value to fit a set of circumstances and finding (or making) the circumstances that give value to something. Far too often creativity only concerns itself with the first operation.
We seek to design new products and services. Yet the second approach is just as valuable and often much quicker. But the creative skill is very different.
In designing a new mechanical product, the inventor may need creative engineering skills. But finding circumstances that give value to an existing product requires very different skills. Instead of engineering skills, the thinker requires valufacturing skills. Such skills are never consciously developed. They are just supposed to arise by themselves.
Conversely, this special type of creativity does not require any technical skills. It is therefore open to everybody. The downside is that it may take people a long time to recognise new values, and by that time the entrepreneur may have run out of money. It is said that it took McDonald's four years before the breakfast business became profitable. People do not immediately rush to embrace a new value if it means changing habits.
Because the 'circumstance' type of creativity is intangible, and because it involves search as much as design, this type of creativity gets far less attention. This is a pity, because it is just as valuable as the more traditional type of creativity.
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