One of the great difficulties in getting people to understand the absolute necessity for creativity and lateral thinking is that all good lateral solutions will appear logical in hindsight. So, if the solution is logical we don’t need lateral thinking only logical thinking. Right?

Wrong!

Lateral thinking allows us to change the way we perceive a given situation or issue by disrupting our usual way of perceiving it. Through this disruption we can begin to see new options and possibilities to help address an issue that we would not have otherwise considered.

The methods can throw our thinking into new and strange places we would not normally visit, and this in itself can be threatening to the thinker that relies solely on logic. It is because of this that the first port of call when we think laterally, is usually a place that can feel uncomfortable, strange or even a bit crazy. Unfortunately, this initial discomfort often proves to be too much for those that struggle beyond the linear.

The key thing to remember however is that from this “strange” place we can perceive the issue through a very different lens and start to generate new and novel ideas to address the issue. We all know the old sayings, from left field and outside the box, well unless you’re ready to actually jump into that field, or stray outside that box, you will rarely produce the new and novel ideas that our complex world now demands.

OK, we have been all theoretical to this point, so I’d now like to turn the concept of thinking laterally into real-life practice. To do this I’ll briefly describe some of the elephant conservation work using lateral thinking that we are currently undertaking across South East Asia.

First some very brief context. The numbers of Asian Elephants has diminished over the years from the 10′s of millions across Asia to a figure of around 30,000 or less. The reasons for this are many and include loss of natural habitat, hunting, reproductive issues and human/elephant conflict, which occurs when elephants decide they’d like to eat the crops of local villagers (and when a herd of wild elephants decide to eat your crop, you generally don’t argue.)

A future with Elephants (AFWE) is an action focused, conservation fund designing and applying experiments and projects to help save this highly intelligent and social creature from extinction. Some predict this extinction could be as soon as before the end of this century. With an initial focus on reducing human/elephant conflict, lateral thinking tools have been applied in the design of potential interventions.

The lateral approach initially applied was Provocation and Movement. With this approach we  ….

1. Establish what it is we’re trying to do: Eg: Design an effective barrier that can be placed between the elephants and the village crops.
2. We then discussed a range of factors, characteristics, descriptions, assumptions about things that may visually and physically deter an elephant.
3. Having done this we then set up Provocations, i.e. deliberately provocative statements that are designed to push our thinking into new places and provide a stepping stone for a new and better ideas.
4. Provocations commence with the word “Po” to clearly indicate the provocative nature of the statement, and in this instance one of our provocations was: “Po, we produce a barrier that is invisible to the elephant.”
5. Now, this is a seemingly strange statement, however it did allow us to look at the problem from different perspectives and the resultant perspective shift has realised a current project in Sri Lanka where NFE are recording and experimenting with the sounds of naturally occurring hornets as a deterrent to the elephant crop raiding. (Every year an average 60 people and 200 elephants in Sri Lanka, alone are killed as a result of this type of Human/Elephant conflict. 200 out of a total population of 3000 is horrendous.)

A fairly logical way of potentially deterring elephants you may say, but it took lateral thinking to produce this “logical” option.

The team then took this new idea and applied another lateral approach known as Concept Extraction. In this approach we:

1. Commence with a starting idea: i.e. “Use the sound of naturally occurring hornets to deter the approach of elephants.”
2. We then extracted a concept that underpins that idea: i.e. the concept of using sound as a deterrent.
3. The group then generated new ideas in which sound might be used to reduce crop raiding.
4. One of the many new ideas that arose has resulted in a major ongoing project to “Record and playback different elephant vocalisations as a deterrent to crop raiding.”
   

While these projects are currently underway and in their early stages, there has been some promising results recorded. Again all quite logical but arrived at by lateral thinking!

The point to which I am laboriously making my way is that there is some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is that we can no longer be so rigid in our thinking that we simply assume lateral thinking and creativity are not part of our “normal” business. As the world becomes increasingly, complex, connected and competitive we have an urgent need to dramatically increase our capacity to generate new ideas that will help us act with impact.

The good news is that you do not have to be a creative genius to think laterally. If you did, I wouldn’t be writing this now. You simply have to learn these powerful, process based tools and apply them to the areas in which you need new thinking, new options, new possibilities and new answers. In fact, why limit their application to problem areas, apply them to things that appear to going well, you’ll be surprised at the new potential they can shed light on.

(NB: Word just in from Sri Lanka (9:30pm 2/2/11) says that AFWE’s initial wild playback experiments have been completed and have achieved a 100% success rate at diverting elephants away from food sources.)

Permalink| Comments(3) | ->

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.)

Permalink|Comments(0) | ->

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.

Permalink| Comments(3) | ->

Lateral thinking is a way of breaking existing and predictable patterns of thought so that new perspectives, new concepts and new ideas can emerge.

The complexity of the problems we face today demand that we approach them in an altogether different manner. We are not well served by the logical and linear methods we have become so comfortable with over time, and need new means of addressing those issues that seem to have gotten-away from us over time.  These could be environmental issues, public order issues, a failing health system or any of a litany that are never long out of the news.

When thinking laterally we seeks solutions to an intractable problems through unorthodox methods that would normally be ignored by logical thinking. New ways of thinking can provide new options and open doors we didn’t know existed. This is why we have an absolute need for Lateral Thinking. Through this type of thinking we disrupt linear thinking sequences and arrive at potential solution from other angles.

Developing breakthrough ideas does not have to be the result of luck. Lateral thinking provides a deliberate, systematic process that results in more innovative thinking. You do not need to be a creative genius to use these methods, they follow very specific processes and I’d back someone who can follow process using the tools to produce more ideas than any creative genius without the tools, any day!

The video attached is an impromptu capture of a lateral thinking process that trainees undertook to complete their two day training in the methods earlier this month. The and simply outlines the key stages of an end to end approach to developing new insights and ideas to address a complex issue.

Logical and linear thinking are fine in context, but they are not nearly enough. It’s time to seriously consider new ways of dealing with those issues that will just not go away.

Permalink|Comment(1) | ->

At Think Quick we don’t simply assist with your issues, we help build your capacity to solve your own.

We provide new perspectives and new means of looking at your organisational issues so that appropriate and sustainable action can be designed in-house to address them.

In every instance we use accredited and experienced practitioners and practice a range of contemporary techniques designed to address the thinking of participants so that the focus leads to tangible and improved design and action.

The world is highly complex and rapidly shifting, so to be able to act with impact we must first be able to make sense of what is happening around us. The methods we use are designed to do this. Sessions are designed to replicate the way people behave in real life, as opposed to the way we “expect” them to behave in organisational settings.

Amongst the methods we use are those developed by Edward de Bono and include Lateral Thinking, Direct Attention Thinking Tools and the Six Thinking Hats. We also focus strongly on the Cognitive Edge methods which enable the emergence of fresh ideas, insights, new design and solutions derived form the multiple and diverse perspectives present in the room. The cognitive Edge methods are based on participation and discovery, as apposed to more traditional linear and prescriptive group methods that are common.

All of the methods applied are focused on gaining new insights, navigating through complex issues thereby allowing organisations and participants to take advantage of new opportunities in conditions of uncertainty.

The strengths and benefits of these approaches are:

*    We generate means of seeing the world through the eyes of participants, rather than via the narrower interpretations of a facilitator or third party.

*   We assist organisations to develop contextually appropriate interventions to address issues rather than applying standard methods that have minimal impact when issues are complex.

*    The methods tap directly into the knowledge of the assembled group and generate new design possibilities and participant buy-in. With this buy-in, outcomes tend to be more resilient and sustainable.

*    The methods allow for the navigation of issues for a fuller exploration rather than a solution oriented approach reliant on our first pattern matches that are not always the best fit.

*    The methods encourage innovative thinking and generate a range of possible solutions by tapping into the diverse perspectives and knowledge of the assembled group.

*    We use techniques that allow for wide scanning and the identification of weak signals that potentially have economic and human costs to the organisation.

*    The methods used move participants from a static approach to addressing issues to one in which there is a strong focus on design and forward momentum without the paralysis of perceived risk.

Our accredited and experienced practitioners have successfully facilitated many sessions and projects across public and private sectors and have worked closely with clients to determine need and co-design and process to ensure the best possible outcomes.

Think Quick also assists in the design and implementation of projects where new perspectives and new approaches are required.  These include evaluations, navigating change, strategy, planning, leadership and culture related interventions.

For more information contact Frank at think.quick@me.com

Permalink|Comments(0) | ->

Lateral thinking is a term invented by Edward de Bono which describes thinking that uses specific techniques for developing new ideas through changing concepts and perceptions through using formal thinking tools. A lateral thinking solution to a problem is often described as coming from left field or from outside the box.

The lateral thinking tools developed by de Bono are for breaking open entrenched and predictable thinking. “The brain is a self-organising system that routinely organises input into patterns. These tools enable us to move laterally across those patterns, thereby opening up new, concepts, perceptions and ideas.”

Lateral thinking provides a means of generating new ideas which has never ending application inside an organisations where new and innovative ways of doing things are increasingly called for. The lateral thinking tools provide a structured and logical approach to creativity and are based on an understanding of the brain being a self-organising information system. This makes creativity and the generation of valuable ideas a skill that everyone can learn, develop and deliberately apply.

Lateral thinking should not be viewed solely as a means of solving problems. The tools are designed to be able to look at anything with a view to exploring and designing a better way forward. This thinking is about making a creative effort and looking at alternatives and possibilities.

Lateral thinking is one of the prerequisites for innovation to occur. Lateral thinking assists in changing people’s perceptions, which intern changes how they feel about something, which then helps facilitate change.

This training is designed for those with a need to regularly generate ideas and new perspectives, and in this complex and rapidly changing world, that means everyone!

For more information on the 1.5 day training, contact Frank on 0400 109727 or at think.quick@me.com

Permalink|Comments(0) | ->