>> MIM Speaks
LATERAL THINKING NURTURES CREATIVITY
MARCH 3, 1996 -
THE STAR
IN his book Lateral Thinking For Management, Dr Edward de Bono
wrote that creative thinking is an essential part of
decision-making. There are three points where creativity
comes into play:
(a) Setting goals and objectives.
(b) Generating alternative courses of action from which the
most appropriate course will be selected.
(c) Handling and processing mountain-loads of information.
Dr De Bono remarked that the whiz kids in organisations are
able to combine effectiveness with creativity.
Most of us can appreciate the value of creative thinking. Some
of us may even vouch that it is the key to success and
happiness. And in the world of business, creativity can give
us a cutting edge over our competitors.
Traditionally, creativity is perceived as a gift, a divine
flash of inspiration. Whoever possesses this gift is
venerated as a genius.
We have associated creativity with artists: Painters,
sculptors, writers, poets and musicians. And as a word, it is
emotionally loaded - no one ever calls something "creative"
which he or she does not like.
Because of this Dr De Bono coined the neutral term lateral
thinking" in 1970 to describe the change from one way of
looking at things to another. To him, a creative person is
able to look at information and data and form many different
and new ideas.
To him, practical creativity is a skill that can be developed
through lateral thinking tools. Creativity can be learned
practised and used. And with practice and confidence in its
use, lateral thinking can become a natural part of our
thinking.
Does lateral thinking work? The Washington Post (Sept 30,
1984) published an interview with Peter Ueberroth, chairman of
the organising committee of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic
Games, in which he was asked the secret of his success. He
answered that it was lateral thinking, and described its
classic provocative techniques.
Before the LA Olympics, the staging of the Games usually ended
with losses amounting to US$500 million (about RM1.25 billion)
for the host countries. The 1984 Olympics made a surplus of
US$215 million (about RM537 million), and much of the credit
goes to Ueber-l roth and his team.
To demonstrate the power of lateral thinking, let us look at
the dilemma faced by a young girl in the following story. In
this particular case, logical thinking cannot save her from a
life of misery. Only lateral thinking can.
The pebble story.
Many hundreds of years ago in a small Italian town, a merchant
had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to a
moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied
the merchant's beautiful daughter. So he proposed a bargain.
He said he would forgo the merchant's debt if he could marry
his daughter.
Both the merchant and his daughter were horrified by the
proposal. So the cunning money-lender suggested that they let
providence decide the matter. He told them that he would put
a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag.
Then the girl would have to pick one pebble from the bag.
If she picked the black pebble, she would become his wife and
her father's debt would be forgiven. If she picked the white
pebble she need not marry him and her father's debt would
still be forgiven. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her
father would be thrown into jail.
They were standing on a pebble strewn path in the merchant's
garden. As they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up
two pebbles. As he picked them up, the sharp-eyed girl noticed
that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the
bag. He then asked the girl to pick a pebble from the bag.
Now, imagine you were standing in the merchant's garden. What
would you have done if you were the girl? If you had to advise
her, what would you have told her?
Careful analysis would produce three possibilities:
1. The girl should refuse to take a pebble.
2. The girl should show that there were two black pebbles in
the bag and expose the money-lender as a cheat.
3. The girl should pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself
in order to save her father from his debt and imprisonment.
Take a moment to ponder over the story. You will find the
answer to the girl's dilemma at the end of this article. The
above story is used with the hope that it will make us
appreciate the difference between lateral and logical
thinking, which is a Western thinking system fashioned by
Socrates, Plan and Aristotle more than 2,300 years ago. The
girl's dilemma cannot be solved with traditional logical
thinking.
In another of Dr De Bono's many books on lateral thinking, he
told of the case concerning Dr Edward Jenner trying to find a
solution to the smallpox scourge in Western Europe. After
much hard work, he switched his attention from those stricken
with smallpox to the dairy maids who apparently never got the
disease. This change of point of view (or paradigm shift as we
would now call it) enabled Jenner to discover that the
harmless cowpox gave protection to the dairymaids against the
deadly smallpox. The smallpox vaccine was discovered.
Pattern-forming system
Because our mind is a pattern forming system, a concept
expounded by Dr De Bono in the late 1960s, our mental
behaviour is greatly influenced by earlier established thought
patterns which dominate our thinking. For instance, when
someone holds a dominant viewpoint, it is very difficult to
dislodge it.
Old mind-sets cause us to be "blind" towards information that
is not in congruence with them. We perceive new information
through old ways of seeing and it is natural to be prejudiced
and biased because of these paradigms. This phenomenon also
makes it extremely difficult for us to be creative as old
mind-sets cause us to reject new ideas.
Other views on creativity
In an article in the Management Review, USA (February 1986),
management guru Dr Rosabeth Moss Kanter says most corporate
leaders believe that creativity cannot be programmed. They
tend to believe that inventive geniuses creating great
business ideas are endowed with an inborn gift.
But Dr Kanter believes that creativity can be taught and that
organisations can increase their level of creativity if they
provided a coducive environment to support and reward whatever
great new ideas their employees can generate.
Her perception of creativity is that it consists of the
rearranging of pieces of information to form new patterns,
just like in the case of shaking, twisting and changing the
angles in a kaleidoscope.
In his book A Whack on The Side Of The Head, Roger von Oech
suggests that we can all think of something differently if
only we change our mental attitudes. He calls these attitudes
mental locks (which get in our way of being more creative).
He suggests that these locks can be opened in one or two ways.
The first is to become aware of them, and then to temporarily
forget them when we are trying to generate new ideas. If that
does not work, then we need a "whack on the side of the head"
which may dislodge the presuppositions holding the locks in
place.
Some of Von Oech's mental locks are:
* The right answer- Our educational system teaches us to look
for the one right answer. But in the real world there are many
right answers, depending from which angle you are looking at a
thing.
* That's not logical - Let us assume that we have made a
statement claiming that something is true. Logic is concerned
with whether the reasons we present in substantiating that
claim are justifiable.
Excessive logical thinking shortcuts our creative process.
This is because the imaginative phase is governed by a
different logic that is best described as ambiguous, fantastic
or metaphorical.
* Follow the rules - Some writers have coined the term
"creative destruction" to express the need to break away from
conventional wisdom and rules. Following the rules and going
down trodden paths surely would not lead us to new ideas or
new discoveries. Creative thinkers or doers always challenge
the rules. One organisation that is trying to nurture a
conducive creative environment has the following quotation as
their motto: "Every rule here can be challenged except this
one."
* Don't be foolish - A good way to think of the fool is to
compare our thinking to the transmission of a car. Most of
the gears, like most thinking, are designed to move forward,
to get the job done. But sometimes, when we come to a dead
end, we need to put in the reverse gear so that we can go
forward in a new direction. Therefore, we should not be afraid
to ask some silly questions when we are stuck with a problem.
Very often, those same foolish questions turn out to be not so
silly.
* To err is wrong - we have been taught that it is shameful to
be wrong, that it is good to be right. Many of us develop the
fear of failure. This makes us unwilling to take risks or try
new options. We need to try seeing failure as the stepping
stone to success.
Christopher Columbus thought he was finding a shorter route to
India. Johannes Kepler stumbled onto the idea of
interplanetary gravity because of assumptions which were right
but for the wrong reasons. Thomas Edison knew 1,800 ways not
to build a light bulb. Sigmund Freud had several big failures
before he developed psychoanalysis. One of Madame Curie's
failures was radium.
* I am not creative - This is a negative self-fulfilling
prophecy. In the field of education, athletics and business
and so on, this phenomenon has been found to work. If you
think you have lost, you have ! Winners see themselves as
winners, and losers generally give themselves many reasons or
excuses to lose.
If you believe something to be true and act on that belief
your actions will cause the belief to become true. In the
world of action a right thinking attitude has an enormous
impact on our behaviour.
So if you think you are creative, then you will put yourself
in situations where you can use your creativity, take a few
risks, try some new approaches, or convert your small idea
into a big one.
Eastern philosophy
More than 1,300 years ago, Zen philosophers used the koan
(basically a ridiculous proposition) to free one's mind from
the dualistic way of ordinary thinking, such as right/ wrong,
good/bad or logical/illogical.
The main objectives of using koan are: To stimulate
practitioners to acquire an inquiring attitude of mind to
force the mind to take great leaps into the dark (unknown) or
break away from the limitations of ordinary thinking; to
provoke the mind so that we can reach the hidden chambers and
tap into their creative imaginations.
An example of a koan is: "Listen to the sound of a one-hand
clap." Lateral minded individuals can "hear" the clap. The
clap cannot be heard in the physical world as we know it, but
it can be heard in our perceptual world.
Other examples of unconventional methods Zen masters use to
provoke their students are:
* Using "silence" as the reply to a question.
* Giving a sermon to a congregration without uttering a word.
* Holding a novice's nose and giving it a sharp twist when he
rehashed the master's thinking.
Solution to the pebble story:
The girl put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble.
Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the
pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all
the other pebbles.
"Oh, how clumsy of me," she said. "But never mind, if you
look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able
to tell which pebble I picked."
Since the remaining pebble is black, it must be assumed that
she had picked the white one. And since the money-lender dared
not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an
impossible situation into an extremely advantageous one.
That is using lateral thinking.
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