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.
BANGKOK, 6 March 2010 – Originator of Lateral Thinking, Edward de Bono yesterday met Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva at the Government House. He praised Thai government for the proclaimation of National Creative Economy Policy.
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:
Our habits of thinking are too much judgement based and not enough design based. This arises from the origin with the GG3 (Greek Gang of Three). When this thinking came into Europe at the Renaissance, the Church ran schools, universities and thinking in general. What the Church needed was truth, logic and argument to prove heretics wrong. So we developed an excellent thinking system for ‘finding the truth’ but we never developed thinking ‘for creating value (design)’.
Our language also forces us to use judgement. We need to judge whether something is a ‘chair’ before we can us the word ‘chair’. We cannot easily say ‘a sort of thing for sitting on’. So everything ends up in sharp edged boxes. To these we can then apply the logic of Aristotle.
Sooner or later I am going to develop a very different sort of logic.
Interested in Thinking Differently?Learn the thinking tools that have revolutionised many public and private sector companies, helping them to innovate on demand.Attend a Dr Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking™ & Serious Creativity workshop across the UK - Go to http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk/workshops/workshop.php?wid=4 .
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.
I once suggested a change to the rules of soccer. When there is a draw then extra time is played. If there is still a draw then there is a penalty shoot-out. This introduces an element of luck. In addition if one side has a player good at penalty shooting then that side would win. My suggestion would reflect the whole game. Every time the goalkeeper touched the ball that side gets a minus point. This would encourage attacks on goal and discourage passing back to the goal-keeper. After extra time if the score was still equal then the side with the least minus points is the winner. This now reflects the whole game.
It may take a long time for this rule to be adopted. Meantime newspaper reporters could report a game as Goals 3 - 1; de Bono 10 - 30. That way people would get used to the idea.
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.
The current economic crisis requires some new thinking. It will not get that. There will be a lot of analysis and references to the 1930 crisis.
The methods for influencing the local economy are very limited. There are interest rate changes and there are tax changes. If there is inflation you raise the interest rate. If you are in the eurozone you cannot do that because interest rates are set by the Central Bank in Europe and if other countries do not have inflation you cannot raise the interest rates.
It is assumed that if raising the interest rates stop inflation then the opposite should stop deflation. So interest rates may be reduced almost to zero. The effect is weak or absent.Edward de Bono - 31st March 2009
If you would like to know more about the de Bono Thinking Training, simply call us on +44 20 7924 8760 or go to www.indigobusiness.co.uk
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.
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Google]](http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[LinkedIn]](http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://www.indigobusiness.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)