Forever keen to keep our clients updated with the latest management thinking and techniques, we are proud to launch ourIndigo Facebook page.
As well as getting bite size updates from us, you will see that, when you become a fan of the page, you can comment and start communicating with other members of the group. So after your workshop you can catch up and link up with delegates and contacts you may have met at your event. We will also be publishing all of our most recent Indigo Earlysavings on this page. So if you are looking to make your training budget go that bit further, make sure you subscribe to our updates.
Finally, if you would like to get specific workshop email updates, or the de Bono Message, why not choose what areas interest you in our free newsletter service by signing up here.
Of course in all of this technology it is important to stress that we love talking to you. So if you are fed up with Facebook, tired of Twitter and bored of Bebo - why not call us on 020 7924 8760.
The human brain is designed to recognise. I described in detail how the brain does this in my book “Mechanism of the Mind”.The leading physicist in the world liked my book and commissioned a team of computer experts to simulate what I had described. They reported that the system worked exactly as claimed.
So if the brain is a recognition machine, this means that most of our thinking is judgemental. This has serious consequences - especially in international affairs and Leadership.
Complacent, adequate, sufficient all imply that something is not wrong or bad. Our normal language and thinking behaviour does not have a convenient way of saying: “That is excellent but not enough”. Or we might need to say “That is excellent but that is only part of the picture”.
When I talk about the need for better thinking people often assume that I am attacking existing thinking as being wrong. It is not wrong. It is only wrong when it assumes that it is sufficient. We need to add perceptual thinking, creative thinking, design thinking and exploratory thinking.
My Indigo colleague and friend, Stephanie Butland is coming to the end of her ‘dance with cancer’.To celebrate, she organised a party for friends and family at stunning Warren House in Kingston-upon-Thames.I was lucky enough to be invited and attended on Sunday evening.It was a fantastic event in beautiful surroundings.Thanks Stephanie.Your strength, determination and positivity are a personal inspiration.
Putting the most important reason for being there (Stephanie) aside for one moment… a number of my other Indigo colleagues were also at the party.Spending ‘quality time’ with colleagues really develops a team ethos and spirit.However, in the current climate companies are understandably reserved about spending money on lavish team-building events.At the moment, instant return on investment is needed, and is a necessity to avoid a potential PR disaster.
But what if your team is suffering from poor morale?Are they being asked to do more, with less? Applying ‘re-integrated thinking’ (something you learn on our Thought Leadership workshop) your company can build morale, enhance team-working and productivity by holding an Indigo training event.
You can hold the event at your offices, but your delegates may find it more difficult to focus when they are so close to their desk.So why not speak to your suppliers or customers to see if you could use their facilities?I know the Indigo offices in London are up for grabs to any clients who wish to take advantage.
Get in touch with me to have a creative discussion about making an event work for your team:
The brain is designed to allow incoming information to form itself into routine patterns. Without this life would be impossible. With eleven items of clothing to put on in the morning, it would take seventy six years to go through all the ways of getting dressed - spending just one minute on each.
It is the same with organisations. People working within an organisation become aware of the idiom, the culture and the guiding frames for that organisation. That is why they perform well.It is very difficult for executives to think outside this box. What is worse is that when someone makes a conscious effort to jump out of the box, they usually jump too far.
It is even more difficult to think of an idea which is only slightly outside of the box. Of course, executives should learn the specific thinking tools of Lateral Thinking™. These can be very powerful. Use of just one tool generated 21,000 new ideas in a workshop in one afternoon. There is also another approach which I shall outline in my next message.
The media, and especially the press, are usually full of negative news: murders, attacks, economic failures etc. It may be that experience has indeed shown that negative matters are of more interest to readers. Even if this is so, I believe that at least one page of positive news would be welcomed by readers. Readers would turn to this page - even if they found the negative stuff more interesting. Editors might agree with me. Then they would ask where positive stuff is to come from. Negative stuff comes easily from the police or the law courts. But where is the source of positive stuff.
So my suggestion is that someone sets up a ‘Positive News Agency’. This would be a news agency like Reuters. It would collect positive news and make it available on demand.
I was in Prague on January 7th for the launch of the European Year of Creativity, 2009. The CzechRepublic has the presidency of the EU for the first half of 2009.
As usual, one of the big problems facing creativity is the inability of language to distinguish between artistic creativity and idea creativity. Both involve creating something new which has value. The practical problem is that the Year of Creativity may tend to focus on artistic creativity because it is better known. That is unfortunate because the world needs creative thinking more than even before. Many problems facing the world are not easily solved with our existing thinking. I am very much in favour of artistic creativity but we do need idea creativity.
It may be that people still believe that nothing can be done about creative thinking and that we just have to wait and hope for new ideas. That attitude is very old fashioned but still prevalent. Many people just do not know that there are formal and deliberate ways of creating new ideas - such as the tools of lateral thinking. I encourage anyone reading this message to write to your government and the European Union to emphasise the need and possibility of creative thinking.
It is indeed a move in the right direction that the EU has appointed me ‘Ambassador for Thinking’ for the year of creativity.
Edward de Bono - is the worlds leading authority on the use of creative thinking in business. To learn Dr de Bono’s revolutionary thinking tools, join us at http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk and be trained by an officially recognised de Bono Master Trainer.
The European Union has declared 2009 to be the year of Creativity. On December 5th. I was officially appointed ‘Ambassador for Thinking’ for the European Union. Among other things I shall be issuing a monthly ‘World Thinking Report’. There may be occasional extra reports as required.
In my first thinking report I indicated that the major problem facing the earth and humanity is the inadequacy of our thinking. This is a problem even bigger than climate change. It is a huge problem because no one notices it as a problem. This is because we use our existing thinking to judge our thinking.
For religious reasons (Middle Ages etc) we developed a type of thinking concerned with ‘discovering the truth’. This is excellent but not enough. We also need the thinking concerned with ‘creating value’.
This year a new book of mine will be published with the sub-title “23 Reasons Why World Thinking is so Poor”.
I am also introducing a new and much needed word. This word is ‘ebne’ which means ‘excellent but not enough’. The rear left wheel of a motor car is ebne. The existing leg of a one legged man is ebne. Our thinking is ebne.
Too often people think of creativity as being concerned with new products, new services and new markets. All of these imply a risk factor. So in difficult times people tend to reduce their creative efforts.
It could be argued that in difficult times there is more need for creativity than at other times. There may be new situations to consider and new problems to solve. Too often it is forgotten that one of the main outcomes of creativity is ’simplification’. This may reduce costs, manpower etc. The current way of doing things may not be the best. There may even be operations which can simply be dropped. In my book on Simplicity I suggest dropping passport control on leaving the UK. Three months later this was dropped. I cannot prove any connection.Edward de Bono - is the worlds leading authority on the use of creative thinking in business. To learn Dr de Bono’s revolutionary thinking tools, join us at http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk and be trained by an officially recognised de Bono Master Trainer.
There is a growing tendency for corporations to feed all available data into a computer. The computer analyses the data and this shapes the strategy of the corporation and makes decisions. This is a dangerous tendency because thinking is locked into the old concepts which form the basis of the analysis.
There is a need for creative thinking in order to look at information in different ways. This is quite separate, and additional, to the use of creativity to find new ways of using the data.
There are examples of medical research which seems to prove a point but only because the original data has been assumed to be one thing when it was actually another. Does smoking cannabis produce schizophrenia or do people with a schizophrenic tendency enjoy smoking cannabis more than others?
Edward de Bono - is the worlds leading authority on the use of creative thinking in business.To learn Dr de Bono’s revolutionary thinking tools, join us at http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk and be trained by an officially recognised de Bono Master Trainer.
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