lateral thinking, reflection, meta-cognition, creativity, Six Hats method, value, design, training

I have just attended the Ninth International Thinking Conference in Auckland, New Zealand. The buzz words were: reflection, meta-cognition, intelligent questions, etc. The hope was that if you became more aware of your thinking you would, in time, get better at it. It is only natural to assume that if you can "see" something you will be able to remove faults, improve it and control it. I am not at all sure that this is true.

Recently I was teaching thinking to a class of children aged five to six, all of whom had Down's Syndrome. I took off my tie and said that it was a "snake with a head at each end". I then asked them to do a PMI on such a snake. They had learned in a previous lesson what a "PMI" was. A PMI is a simple perceptual scan. You look first at the PLUS or positive aspects, then at the MINUS or negative aspects. Finally you focus on the INTERESTING aspects - neither good nor bad.

These were some of the PLUS points the youngsters came up with:
...if the snake went down a hole it could come back out of the hole without having to turn around.
...if something were chasing the snake the head at the back could see how close the chaser was getting.
...one head could be awake while the other was asleep.

There were other good points, too. Now these points are as good as, or even better than, I would get from a roomful of executives. Had I encouraged the youngsters to consider their meta-cognition or to frame "intelligent questions" they would have been confused and lost. But they were fully capable of carrying through clearly defined mental "operations".

GANG OF THREE
Western thinking, following Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, is very oriented to the negative - this is wrong; faulty; a defect; a weakness, etc. We then set about solving the problem, correcting what was wrong and putting right the defect. This is our basic notion of change and improvement. So there are a multitude of managerial programmes which are based on assuming that you need to know yourself. This can be achieved by various questionnaires; assessment scales, etc., etc. Once you know yourself, then you have to seek to put yourself right. This may mean coaching or using various management training programmes.

This is how change is supposed to be achieved. It is a bit like sinners being made aware of their sins and then being told to avoid them in the future. I am sure that this approach works sometimes, but I do not believe it to be very efficient. I believe that if someone is told that assessment techniques place that person in the "non-creative" box, it becomes a matter of self-image and that person loses all confidence in his or her creativity.

So what is the alternative? One possible alternative is the Japanese mode of change. Because the Japanese were not influenced in their thinking by the Greek Gang of Three, they evolved quite different methods of change. There is no attempt to point out the faults in the existing habits of behaviour. Instead that present system is accepted as "the existing game". Now a new "game" is introduced.

Imagine you are playing bridge. Someone comes along, but does not criticise your bridge-playing. Instead that person sets out to teach you another game: poker. You learn the new game of poker. Now poker is not a modification of the game of bridge, but a new game with its own rules, etc. You then decide whether to play bridge or poker. For a time the two games may co-exist as alternatives. After a while the new game takes over and the old game is forgotten. This game concept of change is very powerful, but very much underused in Western attempts at change.

When the Japanese set out to play the industrial game (1869) they learned the game and played it well. Then there was the quality game, which they played very well indeed. Today they are learning the "creativity game", and they will also become good at that.

BRAINSTORMING
Traditional brainstorming is more attitude than structure. You are allowed to say anything. Judgment is suspended. You seek to build upon the ideas of others. The method was designed by Alex Osborne for the advertising industry. In advertising "novelty" may have a value. In the world outside advertising, novelty must always be accompanied by effectiveness. Instead of the general attitudes of brainstorming there are the specific tools of lateral thinking. These deliberate tools together form the "game" of lateral thinking. You learn that game and use it.

Operational tools are very different from attitudes. Carole Ferguson, working with ISCOR, set up 130 workshops one afternoon. Using just one of the formal tools of lateral thinking, the workshops generated 21,000 ideas. It took nine months to work through the ideas generated that afternoon. Channel 4 TV was trained in the methods of lateral thinking. They then said that they had generated more ideas in two days than in six months before the training. Deliberate operational tools are very powerful. They do not require personality changes or attitude changes at all.

THE NEW GAME
When the Down's Syndrome youngsters were using the PMI they were playing a game: the PMI game. This is very different from exhorting the youngsters to "have a balanced view", or "to look at both sides of the question" or "to examine the situation fully" or "to avoid just looking at one side of the situation". Although such intentions are well-meaning and, from a philosophical point of view, are designed to achieve the same objective, they are just very much weaker.

Argument is a traditional way of dealing with different points of view. It is often used as a method of exploration. Different parties take up different positions and as they argue they explore the subject.

But there is another game. This other game is the parallel thinking of the Six Hats method. This is a very different game. When people play it, their attitudes are forced to change by the very nature of the game.

Imagine a table around which are seated highly intelligent and very well paid executives. Someone is talking. Everyone else is sitting there just looking for some point to attack. That is the argument game. With parallel thinking, everyone is thinking in parallel according to the "colour" of the hat that is in use (white hat for information, red hat for feelings, etc.) One well- known company used to spend thirty days on its multi-national project discussions. Using the "game" of parallel thinking, the process needs only two days.

The usual "game" of thinking that we employ is very, very limited. In some respects the human race has not really started to think. Our habits of thinking are based on "recognising" standard situations and then providing the standard answer. This is very like what a doctor does in his or her surgery. I spell out the difference between "what is" thinking and "what can be" thinking in my book New Thinking for the New Millennium. The difference is much greater than people believe. We have done very well indeed with this recognition thinking. We now need to supplement it with design thinking.

Value is to design what truth is to analysis. Knowing something is not enough. To take full advantage of the opportunities provided by technology and science, we need to move into the design mode. Conflicts can rarely be solved through the judgment mode. They demand the design mode.