Creativity

This page is about Lateral Thinking , Six Hats decision making and other approaches to innovation and creative thinking. This section owes much to the work of Edward de Bono, pioneer in this area and inventor of these techniques.

Lateral thinking

Lateral thinking is all about interrupting conventional and traditional patterns of thought, shifting the mind onto new, more creative tracks. Conventional "Western" problem solving relies on building on the experiences you have had in the past and extrapolating the approaches that have worked in the past into the present. This has the unfortunate effect of constraining you to think along the same lines every time, something that may simply not work every time.

So, how do you make yourself think creatively, how do you think along new lines? The answer provided by lateral thinking techniques emerges from the question - think along new lines. The creative process is kicked off by introducing some sort of disruptive factor that is intended to knock your thought processes off of their traditional experience-led lines and onto parallel or divergent paths. Out of that shift in thinking comes novelty and creativity.

Easy enough to say, of course. Exactly how do you shift the thinking process? Some people are creative, some people aren't, goes the traditional thinking (there we go again, traditional thinking).

The work of Edward de Bono shows many ways in which traditional linear thinking patterns can be disrupted (in the most positive sense of that word) onto divergent or parallel, more creative lines.

You can learn a lot more about lateral and creative thinking models by visiting the resources at the bottom of this page. There are books and web-based resources, and links to companies that can offer the formal de Bono courses.

Six Hats decision making

If you have worked in any sort of organisation that requires decision making in groups, from club committees to company boardrooms, you cannot fail to have been struck by how difficult it can be to run meetings, engage in positive debate and reach sensible decisions. Meetings so often run over time, go down rat-holes, become dominated by one or two outspoken people and rarely arrive at well-thought-out decisions that are truly owned by their participants.

Why is that? And since it is such a universally-recognisable feature of the traditional Western society approach to decision-making, how come no-one has done anything to change it?

A major barrier to productive meetings and discussions in Western business grows out of the essentially adversarial model of debate. People engage in debate in order to establish the complete and utter truth and perfection of their case and the complete and utter falsehood and worthlessness of their opponent's. This approach has two adverse consequences:

• Each party tends to apply every possible argument to prove his case, mixing up logic and emotion and selective use of information
• Each party only considers the good things about his own case and the bad things about his opponent's.

At this stage you may be thinking "Yes? and the problem with this is what, exactly? That's just the way things are. You learn it and you work with it."

Well, it doesn't have to be this way. Adversarial models of debate are not the only ones, and as we know from everyday experience, are rarely that effective. The problems are many-fold:

• Opponents square up and essentially shout their case without any balance (or consideration of alternatives that might actually be just as satisfactory). This is simply a consequence of the overriding necessity, mandated by this approach, of winning the argument even at the cost of solving the problem.
• Arguments tend to be won by the most vocal or aggressive participants regardless of the inherent merits of their case.
• Quiet or less confident people, who may have much to offer, don't get heard
• Adversarial debate doesn't give rise to opportunities to explore alternative or creative answers to problems. People feel that the strength of their position will be eroded by conceding that an alternative solution to their own might be worthy of exploration.

All of these factors throw up barriers in the way of genuine exploration of the components of an issue under discussion. Six Hats thinking is an approach that helps break down some of these barriers.

This is how it works. A group of people who have met to discuss an issue will do so in a structured debate. During this debate they consider the problem from each of a number of points of view, one at a time. Each point of view is modelled by pretending to wear a different coloured hat (the idea of, say, "speaking with my manager's hat on" is common enough in our society, so this should not seem too odd). The different coloured hats represent different perspectives on the issue:

• Black hat (negative): what are the problems with this?
• Yellow hat (positive): what are the benefits?
• Red hat (emotion): what is my gut feeling or emotional response to this?
• White hat (information): what additional information do I need to understand this?
• Green hat (creative): what alternatives might there be to solve the problem?
• Blue hat (process): used to control and maintain flow of information in the meeting

The meeting will discuss the problem with each hat on in turn, and everyone in the meeting is expected to provide input (so, for example, everyone is asked to give their gut reaction to an idea, then they "take off" the red hat, "put on" the yellow hat and everyone says something positive about the idea, and so on). Periodically someone will put on the blue hat if there is a danger of someone else using the wrong hat at that point in the discussion. Did I mention that you don't actually put real hats on in all this?

Does this all sound a little unwieldy? Possibly a little earnest? Well, it does take some getting used to initially, particularly the discipline of forcing yourself to consider only one component of a problem at a time, but the benefits start to appear very quickly:

• Meetings don't drag on - discussions under each hat tend to be time-bound and in any case there tends to be greater ownership of the importance of problem resolution
• Discussions stay on the point - diversions down rat-holes don't tend to happen
• Everyone gets a say (so everyone is more likely to buy into the outcome)
• Because it is OK to say something negative about your own idea, or positive about someone else's, opportunities arise for alternative and creative ideas to be introduced
• Discussions tend to be conducted along more reasonable and productive lines - winning the debate becomes secondary to resolving the issue

Use the resources at the bottom of the page to explore more the potential of six hats thinking. There are books and web-based resources, and links to companies that can offer the formal de Bono training.

Further resources related to Edward de Bono's techniques

• Edward de Bono's authorised website
• Serious Creativity software site (lateral thinking training and software)
• Advanced Practical Thinking Training Inc (publishers of de Bono training materials)
• The Edward de Bono foundation
• Office Associates (provide excellent training for de Bono techniques). Actually, I have to say a little more about this. The Serious Creativity workshops are run by Paul Ferguson in a dedicated training centre attached to his home in an old rectory in the Lincolnshire countryside. Paul's courses are unlike any other that I have attended: delegates stay at the rectory and are treated more like house guests than trainees over the two or three days of a workshop. Accommodation includes all meals - excellent home-cooked food and good wine. The quality of information exchange that results from this informal approach and Paul Ferguson's first-class training skills needs to be experienced first-hand to be properly appreciated. Suffice to say that I would attend another of his workshops and would recommend anyone seriously interested in improving their creative thinking skills to talk to Office Associates.