His books are part of the school-curriculum in Venezuela, and he's widely recognised as the leading authority on thinking and creativity. Edward de Bono is the author of books like Lateral Thinking and Six Thinking Hats, and is equally at ease working with schoolchildren, governments, or giant corporations. In India to speak to senior executives on how to think creatively, de Bono spent some time with BT's Dilip Maitra discussing his work. Excerpts:

Q. Mr. de Bono, you claim it is possible to teach any one to think conceptually. Doesn't that go against the general belief that you either have the ability to think or you don't?

A. People often say you can't teach thinking. People always say it is impossible to teach thinking. (But) It is possible to show huge changes by teaching thinking. A major company in Scandinavia reduced its meeting times on transnational projects from 20 days to just two days using my 'Six Hats' method. It is possible to teach thinking. The mind has a tendency to create and consolidate information in rigid patterns, polarising and dividing information, consequently affecting our perception and inhibiting our ability to think. By understanding this mechanism, we can greatly improve our thinking abilities and the generation of new ideas. If we know how memory works, we can make better use of it and know how it is going to behave in certain circumstances.

Can you tell us how the Six Hats method works?

My 'Six Thinking Hats' technique presents a simple but effective way to become a better thinker. It separates thinking into six distinct modes, identified with six coloured 'thinking hats': white for facts, figures, and objective information; red for emotions and feelings; black for logical negative thoughts; yellow for positive constructive thoughts; green for creativity and new ideas; and blue for control of the other hats and thinking steps.

'Putting on' a hat focuses thinking; 'switching' hats redirects thinking. With the different parts of the thinking process thus clearly defined, discussions can be more productive.

In today's corporate environment, thinking is confined to just a few people in the organisation...

It's true that a few think and others just follow. I think that the 'thinking' of workers is probably the most under - used asset in any organization - be it India or the US. There is a great need to learn constructive thinking. Our job is to train people in creative thinking. You can get your trainers trained by our methods and they, in turn, can start teaching people within the company. To give an example, a platinum mine in South Africa boasts workers from seven different tribes who never went to school. There used to be 210 fights every month between the workers. After teaching them thinking, the fights dropped to four; the mine made a huge extra profit last year; the safety was up; and wage negotiations which used to take three weeks earlier took just 45 minutes. Just imagine what strategic thinking can do to even people who have not gone to school.

Indians are considered intelligent but does this necessarily mean we are creative thinkers?

The intelligence level of Indians is high, but that is not enough. What does matter is how you use it. You do not need to be a genius to think creatively. In fact, highly intelligent people are often caught in an intelligence trap because they are obsessed with their own ideas and cannot see beyond (them). If, for instance, you are intelligent but use all your time in arguing or trying to find faults, then you are not using your time productively.

At a larger level, how can we get as large a nation as India to think creatively?

I think the best thing that can happen to India is making creative thinking a key subject in every school. If young stars leave school with a better ability to think, they will be more constructive. In England, we conducted a pilot test on the unemployed and found that teaching them thinking for six hours increased their employability 500 per cent.

So, if we do not teach thinking at the school level, those students who are not good in academic games and in competitive tests will leave school with low self-esteem and low self-respect. They will think they are stupid. But if you want to build confidence in them you have to make them think creatively.

The biggest problem is to get people in education to realise that thinking is a skill which can be taught directly. Most people in the education field believe that you cannot teach thinking directly, but only through teaching some subject matter.

What do recent advances in information and communication technologies mean for thinking?

The fact that we can communicate better does not necessarily mean we think better. But computers and the internet do give people access to information. Overall, the fact that we have more information means we need to do more thinking on how to select the information and how to format it for our use. So, increased information actually increases the need to think. In a way we are moving away from the information age to the idea age. Because we have been so successful with information technology, that is no longer a bottleneck.

The bottleneck is how we use that information. It's the same with the internet companies. Technology does not make a bad business idea better. The need now is not so much in terms of technology as in designing the value concept that the technology can easily deliver. So, what we need is creative thinking; most of our traditional thinking is simply concerned with recognising standard situations and providing standard answers.

Analysis, argument, judgment-all are (forms of) basic thinking which will not be enough for the future. What we need is creative thinking to look beyond the obvious.

That means that's the kind of thinking companies need to get their executives to do...

Competence, information, and technology are all going to be available to everyone. What is going to be the most crucial differentiator is the design and delivery of value, and that's going to need great thinking. Corporate managers first of all need to understand that creativity is an essential ingredient in business. It does not always mean new products or services; it may just be new ways of marketing and new ways of delivering.

Dell Computers, the second biggest computer vendor in the world, succeeded because it had two brilliant ideas: sell direct; and let the customers order the configuration they want.

So, the first thing that managers need to understand is that creativity is as essential as energy and skills. Next, they need to realise that creativity is not some kind of mystery talent that some have and others don't. Everyone can acquire it, but some people will still be better than the others. Then it's also necessary for them to have what I call, a creative a 'hit list'.

Every organisation, every division, or every taskforce should have a list of areas where it needs new ideas. It's not much to say 'we are all very creative' unless you decide what you are creative about? Creativity should be made the heart of the culture of an organisation. For example, 3m Corporation, is highly creative as nearly 40 per cent or so of its turnover comes from products which were developed in the last four to five years.

Still, there's the risk of top managements shooting down ideas without thinking about them too much...

Absolutely. This is what I call the lack of value sensitivity. You may generate new ideas, but the top management has to recognise an idea that can be a winner tomorrow. Otherwise you will be wasting a lot of time and energy without any productive return.

Issue Contents  Write to us   Subscriptions   Syndication 

INDIA TODAY |  INDIA TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS TODAY
TEENS TODAY | NEWS TODAY | MUSIC TODAY | ART TODAY | CARE TODAY

© Living Media India Ltd