Join us for an interactive day of learning and the practical application of 10 thinking tools at Melbourne’s most prestigious training venue.

People and organisations are seeking improvement and quality across many areas except that which is the most important – the quality of the way they think. If we improve the quality of our thinking the quality of the actions that follow will improve.

The Six Thinking Hats are designed to dramatically improve the way individuals and groups think. The methods are used to look at issues from multiple perspectives and help teams to move beyond their habitual thinking styles to achieve a more rounded and thorough view of a given situation. In this full day session participants will develop:

• a sound understanding of multiple thinking styles,
  

• the ability to design and lay out a thinking process,
  

• The ability to better navigate complex and difficult issues,

• the ability to design and facilitate effective, outcome oriented meetings,     

• the ability to generate genuinely new ideas using lateral thinking methods,     

• and become more thorough and objective thinkers.

The session will be held at Melbourne’s premier training venue and all participants will be provided with an optional work-based assessment with which to immediately start to apply and embed the methods and practice back in the workplace. Successful completion of this assessment provides the “Blue Hat Facilitator” Pin.  Email & telephone coaching will be provided to assist with this at no additional cost.

Course Brochure: Six Thinking Hats ALDC May 29, 2012

To Register: Click Here

For more information, contact Frank at Think Quick on 0400 109727, or think.quick@me.com

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There are two broad pathways to efficiency and sustainable practice.

Mandated requirements to look beyond economic considerations demand that we make a concerted effort seek out new ways and means of developing efficient and sustainable business practices.

The first pathway is one we all understand and routinely apply – i.e. conserving our resources so they are not depleted and therefore available for ongoing use. The second involves designing new and improved ways of doing things that do not tie us to the limiting factors of current thinking, practice and resource.

The first path is about the maintenance of the status-quo. So even when we act sustainably we can in effect be going backward with the quality of our services diminishing. I refer to this approach as Rear-View path. It is largely reactive and although we seek to move forward with good intent, this is in effect like trying driving a car whilst focusing primarily on the rear-view mirror and not the windscreen.

The Rear-View is dominated by austerity methods such as staff cuts, wage-freezes, cost-cutting and a hold on new projects. With the Rear-View to sustainability we adopt reactive and precautionary approaches in which we seek to do the same things we have done in the past but faster and at less cost.  The Rear-View pathway is characterised by  short-term “management” thinking that ultimately contributes to a downward spiral in efficiency given that service demands usually increase, and cheaper and faster rarely equate to better.

The old mantra of doing more with less is fine but let’s focus on the more in addition to the less.

The second path to sustainability is a proactive one and through new design focuses on the “more”.

With design we seek to develop new ways of delivering the same value (or better) but in manners newly conceived. The thinking here is quite different to the Rear-View and I refer to it as Forward-View (not a real imaginative name I know, but it serves purpose!) On this Forward-View pathway we design and navigate our way forward with an eye firmly focused on the future. The Forward-View is characterised by new thinking, design and navigation. This pathway challenges the status quo and asks “Are they other ways we can do this better?”

Longer-term “leadership” thinking forms the basis for the Forward-View as we focus on What can be rather than the usual What is. Forward-View approaches involve the application of methods that assist organisations to build agility and navigate difficult times with greater impact.

These methods include:

1. New ways of focusing on and defining our real issues
2. New ways of thinking and collaborating,
3. New means of tapping into our diversity & knowledge,
4. The means of scanning and understanding the shifting environment,
5. New ways of generating genuinely new perspectives, insights & approaches, and
6. More practical means of safe implementation that are not bogged down with bureaucratic processes and the fear of failure.

Austerity methods absolutely have their place but we need to be aware of their limitations and not overuse them when better ways can be conceived.

Both pathways need to be applied and intertwine, but we must learn not to routinely default to the Rear-View path alone as our management practices to date have had us do.  The degree to which one pathway predominates is wholly dependent on context but an approach to sustainability that involves only one reactive pathway diminishes capacity over time, and this is not sustainable.

Organisations looking to build on their capacity to navigate difficult economic times and make sustainable practice a part of normal business are invited to contact us at Think Quick to discuss how we can assist in incorporating Forward-View thinking and action with a view to building business efficiency and proactive sustainable practices.

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One of the most important things we do in organisations is interact in meetings.

Yet 90% of people I speak to indicate their meetings are not as productive as they could be or worse, a waste of their time. There is a general consensus across industry that our meetings are all too often insufficiently focused, lacking sound collaborative approaches, have a limited outcome orientation and consume way more time than is necessary.

The importance of meetings in an organisation cannot be understated. In terms of knowledge-transfer and decision-making our meetings are potentially our most potent method because we:

• have the right subject matter experts invited and in attendance,
• if they are in attendance, they should be there with intent, and
• they are in a face-to-face setting where the most meaningful communication should be possible.

There are a number of methods doing the rounds that focus on improving meeting processes and many of these work well but the key to effective meetings is addressing the thinking that takes place within those processes. At Think Quick we have facilitated many difficult and potentially difficult meetings using the Six Thinking Hats and have high levels of success.

Not all meetings of course require such facilitation, I suspect a great deal could be run simply and efficiently if the participants could simply develop some tolerance and empathy for opinions that differ from their own. However, we routinely use the  parallel thinking of the Thinking Hats when:

• there are strongly held views
• there are challenging issues at hand
• there are diverse perspectives on offer
• the conversation is rambling and unfocused, and
• when time is short

The challenge is to incorporate the methods into meetings so they become a part of business practice and are routinely applied. This challenge when accepted is one that can bare great benefits.

To date, just a few of our client’s successes using parallel thinking in their meetings have been:
• Millions of dollars worth of savings in one Department where such saving could not be envisaged prior.
• A $600,000 saving within a business unit as a result of training in the thinking and its subsequent same day application to a key issue.
• The smooth planning of moving 20+ city locations into one newly constructed building.
• A business restructure planned and implemented without any of the associated angst by getting everyone thinking in parallel throughout.

Meetings can be productive, focused and enjoyable. They are the primary engine-room for transferring knowledge and making decisions in organisations, so if you get the thinking right in your meetings right, the flow-on effects are substantial.

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Recent trips to Malaysia and Thailand are starting to convince me that Australia as we have known it is gone and is soon to be consumed by South East Asia. Now that sounds a bit threatening on one hand but I suspect on balance, it’s going to be a good thing.

When one walks around the cities of South East Asia there is a vibrancy that we seem to lack in Australia, there are people everywhere and more often than not, they are friendly. Not something we can’t claim in Australia anymore. You can now walk quite safely in many areas at night in Bangkok which is something we can’t say about our big cities here. I think in terms of violent crime we are going backwards. In our altogether civilised attempts at addressing our anti-social behaviours we seem to have gone very wrong somewhere.

When one looks in awe at all of the development happening in Sth East Asia one asks, would this type of  structure or design happen in Australia? The answer is almost always, No. We seem to have become so hamstrung and heavily laden with taxation, policies, rules, regulations, laws and bureaucracy there is just no way such projects would ever get off the ground. There is a boldness to many of them too, which our planning people would run a mile from for fear of forever fighting losing battles for approval.

The public transport systems too, are pleasantly surprising. When I think of how well the train systems run in Bangkok (both above and below ground) I am ashamed to think of the mess our public transport system is here in Melbourne. We can’t even get a ticketing system to work and yet, in Sth East Asia they have a brilliant systems that are intuitive, can be easily understood by foreigners and are far more functional than anything here. And, the trains run on time!

My last observation is purely anecdotal but the younger students I have trained in South East Asia seem to have a serious “get up and go” about them that many in Australia seem to lack. Not only do they embrace and enjoy doing the Lateral Thinking but they learn and do so in a language that is invariably a second language to them. How good is that!  How many of us could do the same? Not me.

The students seem to intuitively understand that life is messy and they don’t necessarily default to the old  belief that A + B must = C. Nor do they seem to assume, as we tend to here in Australia, that logic is the best and only way of moving forward. For me the very thought of whole groups of young adults having the foresight to embrace new ways of thinking and idea generation using tools such as the lateral thinking tools makes for a future full of many grand possibilities.

I suspect we have had it so good, for so long here in Australia we have become very complacent. Countries we have simply viewed as “developing” have well and truly developed and in many aspects shot right past us. In some respects we are becoming a bit of a backwater.

The future however, is not as bleak as that would seem to indicate. After all, as migration continues into and out of Australia and other South East Asian countries, we will increasingly become a part of “Asia Proper” and not a stand alone entity just happy to plod along and sit on our rears watching “reality” TV.

(Pic: The 33 metre reclining Buddha at the Wat Chayamangkalaram in Penang, reclining and facing west toward Nirvana.)

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“A huge thanks for what was hands down the best and most practical training I have ever done.  As a mediator I loved the close parallels between the hats and the various stages and foci of mediation, but even apart from that I pretty much started using the training as soon as I walked out the door. ” (March 18 participant)

Join us for a highly interactive day of learning and practical application of 12 thinking tools at Melbourne’s most prestigious training venue.

People and organisations are seeking improvement and quality across many areas except that which is the most important – the quality of the way we think.

If we improve the quality of our thinking the quality of the actions that follow correspondingly improve.

The Six Thinking Hats are designed to dramatically improve the way we think. The methods are used to look at issues from multiple perspectives and help us to move beyond our habitual thinking styles to achieve a more rounded and thorough view of a given situation.

In this full day session participants will develop:

• a sound understanding of multiple thinking styles,
• the ability to design and facilitate effective, outcome oriented meetings,
• the ability to generate new ideas using lateral thinking methods,
• the ability to design and lay out a thinking process, and
• become a more thorough and objective thinker.

The session will be held at Melbourne’s premier training venue and all participants will be provided with an optional work-based assessment with which to immediately start to apply the methods back in the workplace. Successful completion of this assessment provides the “Blue Hat Facilitator” Pin.  Email & telephone coaching will be provided to assist with this at no additional cost.

Date & Time : 8:30am – 4:30pm, Friday May 27, 2011

Where: The Airlie Leadership Development Centre, 260 Domain Rd South Yarra

Value: $499/person with an early rate of $449/person up until May 13

Other: Participants from all sectors are welcome. Coffee/Tea will be provided upon arrival by qualified Baristas and the highest quality morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea will be provided. (If you’ve been to Airlie before you’ll know what this means!)

Course Brochure: Hats training ALDC May 27

To Register: Click Here

For more information, contact Frank at Think Quick on 0400 109727, or think.quick@me.com

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I’ve just been fortunate enough to spend some time in Bangkok teaching Lateral Thinking on behalf of the deBono Institute to a combined group of Thai and Indonesian staff from Exxon-Mobil. I promised the students that I would share a few online insights on my time with them, hence this post!

First off I must concede that Lateral Thinking is not for everyone, the methods push your brain into an unstable state and many are far from comfortable with this. It’s far easier to simply default to thinking and doing the same old things, the same old way because they are comfortable and worked in the past.

Sadly the world does not work like this. We now have an urgent need to think laterally as it’s a means of breaking the existing and well-established patterns that already exist in our heads. Without doing so we are doomed to producing the same old thoughts and ideas ad infinitum, and never come to grips with the increasing number of new and complex challenges facing us.

Anyway, despite the associated difficulties with learning these new and challenging tools, the students took to them with a great deal of enthusiasm. The thing that really impressed me the most, is that this course is delivered in English, and English for every student in the room constituted their 2nd or even 3rd language. (My Thai and Indonesian is pretty good, but a vocabulary of 4 or 5 words will just not cut it.) So not only did they grapple with new concepts and ideas, but they did it in a language that I assume was much less comfortable to them than others.

I suspect many here in Australia would struggle to be able to do similarly, let alone be able to speak multiple languages. I have read in the past that those with additional language skills have a correspondingly greater number of connections form in their brains, so I wonder if this was a factor in the groups uptake of the tools?

During the course of the two days training we looked at a number of issues, both organisational and personal, to which we could apply the lateral thinking tools. These included such diverse topics as “generating ideas to increase collaboration across the organisation’s international boundaries”, “challenging aspects of their personal development plan process” and “designing a new type of toothbrush”.  The final idea generation session during which the group applied all of the tools in an end to end process, involved generating new ideas to assist themselves to save money better and make sound personal investment decisions for the future.

Anyway, if these students were typical of the calibre of staff that the organisation has in both Thailand and Indonesia, we can expect good things from Exxon-Mobil in the future.

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