{"id":68412,"date":"2021-07-05T07:14:20","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T07:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=68412"},"modified":"2021-07-05T07:14:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-05T07:14:20","slug":"leaving-of-the-lateral-thinking-legendary-goodbye-to-edward-de-bono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/leaving-of-the-lateral-thinking-legendary-goodbye-to-edward-de-bono\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving of the \u2018lateral thinking\u2019 legendary: Goodbye to Edward de Bono"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leaving of the \u2018lateral thinking\u2019 legendary: Goodbye to Edward de Bono<\/span><\/h1>\n

\"Leaving<\/p>\n

Source:-Daily FT, Sri Lanka Friday, 2 July 2021\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"LeavingIt was sad to note the demise of Dr. Edward de Bono on 9 June 2021. He is hailed as the \u2018Father of creativity\u2019 in the western world. His contribution towards making the planet a better place to live through his \u2018lateral thinking\u2019 is indeedamazing. Today\u2019s column is to discover the dynamics of Dr. de Bono in the broad context of creativity, with a view of reflecting on them in relation to the local scene.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Overview\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can analyse the past, but you need to design the future,\u201d so said Edward de Bono. We have passed the era of information and reached the era of imagination. Creativity has become a cutting-edge factor for competitive advantage. Creative thinking is a mental activity, which produces new ideas or new insights. It does this by de-patterning or re-patterning thoughts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, our mind is the sum-total of our memories, images, desires, expectations, beliefs, feelings, and other such mental processes. Thinking is therefore a sequence of images and events, which constitutes our mind. Here comes our hero. Dr. Edward de Bono, who shared several simple yet significant techniques to sharpen our thinking towards finding solutions to pressing problems.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Glimpses of an illustrious career\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Edward de Bono played multiple roles as a physician, psychologist, author, inventor, philosopher, and a consultant. He was born in was born in Malta in 1933, gained a medical degree from the University of Malta. Following this, he proceeded as a Rhodes Scholar to Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained MA in psychology and physiology. He then gained a doctorate from Trinity College, Cambridge, and many other honorary doctorates subsequently.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. de Bono worked with many of the major corporations in the world such as IBM, Du Pont, Prudential, AT&T, British Airways, British Coal, NTT (Japan), Ericsson (Sweden), Total (France), etc. \u201cWe all hang on to assumptions of the past to make conclusions about the future……de Bono teaches us to challenge such assumptions and develop new creative solutions to problems.\u201d So said Philip L Smith, President, General Foods Corporation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. De Bono wrote over 60 books including The Mechanism of Mind (1969), Six Thinking Hats (1985), How to Have a Beautiful Mind (2004) and Think! Before It\u2019s Too Late (2009). He wrote in his book The Mechanism of Mind, \u201cA memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.\u201d As the Guardian newspaper reported, his books, seminars, training courses and television series, sought to free people from the tyranny of logic through creative thinking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened was, 2,400 years ago, the Greek Gang of Three, by whom I mean Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, started to think based on analysis, judgment and knowledge,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the same time, church people, who ran the schools and universities, wanted logic to prove the heretics wrong. As a result, design and perceptual thinking was never developed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

De Bono\u2019s \u2018road less travelled\u2019 began in 1967 with his book, \u2018The Use of Lateral Thinking\u2019. Imagine, he said, that a money lender claims a merchant\u2019s daughter in lieu of her father\u2019s debt. The merchant and daughter concoct a compromise. The money lender will put a black stone in one bag and in the other, a white. If the daughter chooses the black stone, she will be doomed to marry the money lender and the debt cancelled; if the white she will stay with her father and the debt be cancelled. But as the trio stand on a pebble-strewn path, she notices the money lender putting a black stone in each bag.<\/span><\/p>\n

What should she do to avoid a nightmarish fate?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This is where lateral thinking \u2013 i.e., employing unorthodox means to solve a problem \u2013 comes in. De Bono suggested the daughter should pick either bag, but fumble and drop her stone on to the path. \u201cSince the remaining pebble is of course black, it must be assumed she picked the white pebble, since the money lender dare not admit his dishonesty.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

De Bono believed humour was one of the most significant characteristics of the human mind, precisely for its basis in shifting perceptions. \u201cLet me tell you a joke,\u201d he said. \u201cAn old man dies and goes to hell. When he gets there, he sees his friend, a 90-year-old man, with a beautiful woman sitting on his knee. He says to his friend, \u2018This can\u2019t be hell, you\u2019re not being punished, you\u2019re having fun!\u2019, to which his friend replies, \u2018This is punishment \u2013 for her!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Creativity and organisations\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery organisation has to prepare for the abandonment of everything it does,\u201d so said Peter Drucker. Innovation is followed by imitation. Only way to sustain the competitiveness is to continue to innovate further. Creativity is the starting point. Dr de Bono, elaborates further on creativity: \u201cAs competition intensifies, so does the need for creative thinking. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better. It is no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems. Far more is needed. Business needs creativity both on the strategic level and on the front line to make the shift of those competitive business demands \u2013 from administration to true entrepreneurship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The practical application of the above comes from the technique known as \u2018six thinking hats\u2019, suggested by Dr. de Bono in 1985. It is essentially six different perspectives towards an issue or a problem. This novel method found its admirers worldwide. Motorola, IBM, and Boeing as example, reported cutting meeting times by half by applying it. Ron Barbaro, CEO of Prudential Insurance, one of the ardent users of the above said that after suggesting an idea that executives might counter was too risky, \u201che would say: \u2018Yes, that\u2019s fine black hat thinking. Now let\u2019s try the yellow hat.\u2019\u201d \u201cThe six thinking hats method may well be the most important change in human thinking for the past 2,300 years,\u201d de Bono wrote in the preface to the book.<\/span><\/p>\n

With logic you start out with certain ingredients just as in playing chess you start out with given pieces. But what are those pieces? In most real-life situations, the pieces are not given, we just assume they are there. We assume certain perceptions, certain concepts, and certain boundaries. Lateral thinking is concerned not with playing with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces. Lateral thinking is concerned with the perception part of thinking. This is where we organise the external world into the pieces we can then \u2018process\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Creativity involves breaking patterns and thinking out of the box. For that to happen, we should know what the \u2018box\u2019 is. In other words, one should know the constraints that hinder creativity in moving beyond them. In fact, creative thinking is a mental activity, which produces new ideas or new insights. Innovation is the practical application of it that adds value to an organisation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Warren Bennis, the leadership legend, described creativity as a dimension of a \u2018new paradigm\u2019 for managers. He cites the following elements as parts of creativity:<\/span><\/p>\n