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Eiji Toyoda: Yes we can

Eiji was not a management theorist and neither did he found a business. His genius lies in his absolute determination to take on a huge challenge and do difficult things… and he did it twice.

Eiji Toyoda

Brief Biography

Eiji Toyoda was born in 1913 and grew up near Japan’s third city, Nagoya. There, his father had a textile mill, so Toyoda grew up surrounded by the potent combination of engineering and business that was to define his life. He studied engineering at Tokyo Imperial University and, upon graduating in 1936, he joined his cousin’s Toyoda Automatic Loom Works business, where they set up an automobile works and soon changed the name to Toyota.

Toyoda took on a number of roles in setting up research and production planning, but the steady growth of the business was interrupted in 1941, when Japan entered the war. The General Motors car parts they needed were no longer available, and besides; the country now needed trucks. So Toyota became a truck manufacturer. In the early years after the war, trading was tough and Toyoda was heavily involved in the inevitable lay-offs. But he also decided to diversify the company’s future by establishing Toyota Motor Sales.

But there was still precious little to sell. In 1950, Toyoda visited a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan. In the time since Toyota had produced their first car in 1936, they had built around 2,500. What Toyoda saw was a plant producing 8,000 every day. He saw immediately that this was the future and determined to revolutionise Toyota’s manufacturing.

Toyoda – like many of his Japanese contemporaries – was often described as under-stated, or taciturn. This was characterised by his outward response to his experience in Michigan. He wrote back to Toyota headquarters that he ‘thought there were some possibilities to improve the production system.’ He brought a manual of Ford’s quality-control methods, which he had translated into Japanese, changing all references to Ford to ‘Toyota’.

This was the start of his first big challenge.

In 1955, Toyoda led the introduction of Toyota’s first mass production car, the Crown. It was a huge success in Japan, but in serving the Japanese market, it was poorly suited to the US Market, where it failed to gain a foothold. That came in 1960, when Toyota launched two new models, the Corona and the Corolla. Both sold massively in the US and, by  1975, Toyota overtook Volkswagen as the largest car importer into the US.

By then, Toyoda had been appointed president of Toyota, serving for longer than anyone to date, from 1967 to 1981, when he stepped into the newly created role of Chairman. It was as Chairman that he really took on and equalled the US, forming a joint venture with General Motors in 1984 to manufacture Toyota cars in the US.

But it was a year earlier, in 1983, that he kicked off his second big challenge: to create a luxury car to challenge the best.

This was to become the Lexus, which later grew into a new brand, to create a clear marketing distinction between the mass-market Toyota cars and the elite Lexus vehicles. His success was complete. Lexus regularly competes with prestige German marques Audi, BMW and Mercedes.

In 1984, Toyoda resigned from the Chairmanship although he continued to go into the office (where all three of his sons are executives) into his nineties. He died, shortly after his 100th birthday, in 2013.

Challenge 1: Become a World Class Manufacturer, to rival the US ‘Big Three’ auto manufacturers

Toyoda set out to take US mass-production ideas and fine tune them to the point where he could out-compete the US auto giants. He worked with a veteran loom engineer, Taiichi Ohno (who deserves, and will doubtless get, his own Pocketblog one day). They created together the ‘Toyota Production System (TPS)’ which is now more generically known as ‘Lean Production’. It rested on three core tenets:

  1. Just in time (JIT) production
    Ohno extended the concept of quality to reduction of waste and asked ‘why stockpile components?’. The result was a revolution
  2. Value Stream – also known as Value Chain
    To make JIT work, you need to see the production process as a part of a longer stream of activities from procurement to production to delivery. Customer demand drives ordering.
  3. Kaizen and Responsibility
    TPS makes everyone responsible for quality. While Toyota did not invent continuous improvement, or Kaizen, it is only when everyone takes responsibility for quality that it can really work.

Challenge 2: Create a World Class Luxury Brand, to rival established German auto manufacturers

From a top secret meeting to a world class luxury marque, Toyoda created a new brand from nothing but determination and around $2 billion of investment. Well, you can do a lot with $2 billion (I think – I’d love to try). But who, in 1983, would have thought that a Japanese car maker would out-engineer the German luxury brands? To do this, Toyoda’s engineers had an eye for detail that today reminds me of Apple. They tested the Lexus on Japanese roads, but knew that Japan would not be their primary market if they were to succeed. So they built new roads in Japan, mimicking roads in the US, UK, and Germany, and tested the Lexus on these. In the process of building the first Lexus, Toyota innovated and experimented like never before.

And what did Toyota get for their 200 patents and 450 prototypes? The Lexus LS400 and the start of a whole new world class business.

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Susan Cain: Introvert

Susan Cain took the world by [quiet] storm at the start of 2012, with the publication of her her book, Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking. It won many plaudits and quickly became (and remains in autumn 2014) an international best-seller. In it are some gems that can transform the world of managerial and professional work radically.

Susan Cain

Brief Biography

Susan Cain (formerly Devenyi) was born in New York, in 1968 and grew up loving reading.  So it seems little surprise that she took a degree in English at Princeton. She followed this with Harvard Law School, where she graduated with a doctoral degree in 1993. This led her to practise corporate law on Wall Street in the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, representing blue chip corporations.

She put her commercial experience to use in co-founding the Downing Street Group, a strategic research and consulting firm, and founding The Negotiation Company. In the latter, she was making good use not only of her experience as a practising attorney, but also of having studied negotiation intensively while at Harvard Law School, with Roger Fisher, author of the seminal book on the subject, Getting to Yes.

But she wanted (needed?) a quieter life, so took seven years to write and research her best-selling book. Now, ironically, she has become a major public figure, much in demand as a speaker (her TED talk, which you can watch below, is one of their most watched ever with approaching 10 million views).

More recently, she has also established ‘The Quiet Revolution’. In her 2014 TED talk (not yet available online) she announced three objectives:

  1. Transforming office architecture to make offices once again a place where extroverts can flourish and where everyone can gain some solitude and quiet thinking time (‘hurrah!’ he says from his quiet office).
  2. Helping companies train the next generation of quiet leaders. A lot of her book is about the strengths of introverts and the power of quiet reflection to deliver better leadership.
  3. Empowering quiet children. Creating the tools that will allow schools to give introverted children the same opportunities to thrive as extroverts.

What is Introversion?

Introverts are not necessarily shy. Cain describes shyness as: ‘the fear of social disapproval or humiliation’. Introversion, on the other hand, is a preference for quiet, low stimulation environments. Introverts like to have time to themselves, to be with their thoughts.

Compare introverts with the opposite end of the scale: extroverts. Extroverts crave stimulation; especially from social situations. Note, however, that neither you nor I are either an introvert or an extrovert. We all lie somewhere on the scale from a arbitrary archetype of introversion to an equivalent extreme of extroversion. And, in the middle, lie ambiverts. These are people who are equally comfortable in stimulating social environments and in quiet private spaces.

Here is Cain’s description of the two types:

‘Introverts are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling, said Jung, extroverts to the external life of people and activities. Introverts focus on the meaning they make of the events swirling around them; extroverts plunge into the events themselves. Introverts recharge their batteries by being alone; extroverts need to recharge when they don’t socialize enough.’

Cain describes introverts living in a world that puts a premium on extroversion as being like ‘second class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent’.

Introverts are compelled to spend a lot of their time in ways that they would prefer to avoid, and therefore find it hard to be at their most creative and productive.

Creativity and Solitude

Cain’s research has led her to conclude that most creative people are introverts. The short video, below Cain’s TED talk at the foot of this blog, shows just how true this is of author, John Irving. His description of himself in the first half is clearly one of an introvert and has great similarities with Cain’s description of herself at a young age.

She goes further. Solitude, she asserts, is vital for the creative process. At the end of her TED talk, whilst acknowledging the value of collaboration, she says: ‘Let’s stop the madness of constant group work.’

In the book, she cites studies that show that performance diminishes as group size increases: bigger groups generate fewer and poorer ideas compared to smaller groups. She quotes organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham as saying that  ‘evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups.’  Her conclusion is stark:

‘If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.’

Transforming Office Architecture

This extends to the way we organise offices. I recall hating open plan offices, and it seems I am far from alone. Research in many industries all points in the same direction. Open-plan offices reduce productivity,  impair memory, and increase staff turnover. Ironically, they diminish the quality of communication, decreasing motivation, increasing hostility and stress, and leading to more sickness and absence.

What is the solution if you are stuck in an open plan office? Mine has always been to seek refuge when I need to think: in meeting rooms, in foyers (ironically – in fact they tend to be fairly isolating) and in coffee shops.


Susan Cain setting out a summary of quiet in an astonishing TED talk in 2012.

[ted id=1377]

And here is author John Irving speaking of himself in very similar terms.

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Jeff Bezos: Deliberate Billionaire

Is it possible to think yourself rich?

Is it possible to define a hugely successful business through careful consideration?

I think the answer is yes, and the evidence is Jeff Bezos.

Jeff Bezos

Brief Biography

Jeff Bezos was born in 1964 and grew up in New Mexico and on his grandparents’ ranch in Texas. From an early age, he enjoyed tinkering and building engineering and science projects in his parents’ and grand-parents’ garages. After graduating in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University, he started a rapid rise through the corporate world, moving from a New York start-up, Fitel, to Bankers Trust, where he became its youngest vice president. He then went to a Wall Street firm called DE Shaw & Co, where someone said of him: ‘he is going to make someone a lot of money one day’.

I don’t know how much he made them, but it was whilst he was there that he had the inspiration that would lead him to found Amazon.com. Amazon led the internet revolution in the late 1990s, rapidly overtaking its major competitors, the big US retailers, in turnover. It rode out the storm of the 2000 dot com bubble bursting, and went on to where it is now, taking on just about any big interests – most notably at the moment, the big publishers (about which both I and my publishers have a vested interest and I, for one, as an author and a reader, have complex and mixed views).

But Amazon is no longer just a book seller: it sells anything anyone wants to sell. It also manufactures handheld devices as part of its revolution in eBook selling, and has recently launched its first mobile phone. Bezos himself is now worth over $30 billion and uses his money to pursue his passion for space exploration, his belief in the long term future of the planet and, recently, in acquiring the Washington Post newspaper (2013).

Bezos and Business Strategy

All of the above is well-documented (indeed more fully documented) elsewhere. So why put Bezos into the Management Pocketblog? I think there is one really important lesson I want to draw from the often told foundation story of Amazon, which can be a vital lesson for managers everywhere. It comes in three parts:

1. Openness and Perception

We all come across interesting facts and curious statistics every day. It sometimes seems that this is what the internet is for (if it is not for cat photos or shopping at Amazon, that is). The difference with Bezos is that he took a statistic that millions were aware of and thought about it: In 1992, the internet was growing at 2,300 per cent per year. No matter how small the base was, this meant a huge potential and he saw it. And he also saw that this meant a potential for successful online commerce.

2. Deliberate Analysis

Bezos didn’t just go for what he knew, for what he liked, or for what seemed easy. He made a long list of every category he could sell and whittled it down to find the category with the greatest potential to make a breakthrough in online retail. Books had a lot going for them, he reasoned:

  • A huge inventory of titles – that traditional retailers could not offer but he could
  • No single (or few in number) dominant retailer
  • Easy to transport by post

He then selected his base of operations a long way from where he was living (New York) or his family (Texas and New Mexico) because it was right for the business. Seattle offered:

  • The right workforce of skilled software engineers
  • The right taxation regime
  • The proximity of a major book wholesaler

3. Constant Innovation, Development and Striving

Amazon has never rested and the driving force for that has been Bezos. It has innovated in:

  • Customer engagement
  • Retail software
  • Synergistic hardware development

Bezos Quote

What could you achieve with a fraction of Bezos’:

  1. Openness and perception?
  2. Deliberate analysis?
  3. Innovation, development and striving?
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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: In the Flow

Pronunciation: Me-high Chick-sent-me-high-ee

 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a US psychologist at forefront of the field of positive psychology; the study of human strengths and how we can have a happy, flourishing life.

His research into flow states has made a famous figure among specialists and interested general readers alike, with several books including his two best-sellers: Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

 

Brief Biography

Csikszentmihalyi was born to a Hungarian family in a city long disputed by Hungary, Italy and Croatia – now called Rijeka and part of Croatia; it was, at the time of his birth in 1934 a part of Italy, named Fiume. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 22, and got a BA and PhD from the University of Chicago, going on to become a a professor and chairman of the Department of Psychology. He is the founder and a co-director of the Quality of Life Research Center – a non-profit research institute that studies positive psychology.

Flow, in a Nutshell

Csikszentmihalyi’s signature research was into Flow States – those states of mind when we are totally absorbed in an activity, and can therefore want nothing else in the world, at that time, than to continue uninterrupted. He describes these Flow States as the optimum states for a human being, and catalogues the three conditions under which they arise:

  1. The task has a clear and worthwhile goal
  2. The task is sufficiently challenging to stretch us to our limits (and maybe a little beyond) but not so challenging for us that we find ourselves anxious and hyper-alert for failure
  3. The task offers constant feedback on our progress and performance levels

For more details on Flow, see our earlier blog: Flow and Performance Management.

Contribution to Management Thinking

It would be easy to write a long blog about Csikszentmihalyi’s contributions to positive psychology, but from a management perspective, I want to focus on his work on creativity, in documented in his book: Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.

In the book, he relates interviews with over 90 creative people from many fields of the arts, sciences and humanities. From those, he distils a great many lessons. For me, one of the simplest is most valuable, his five steps to creativity:

  1. Preparation
    Becoming immersed in a problem that is interesting and arouses curiosity.
  2. Incubation
    Ideas churn around at an unconsciousness level.
  3. Insight
    The “Aha!” moment when the answers you reach unconsciously emerge into consciousness.
  4. Evaluation
    Evaluating the insight to test if it is valuable and worth pursuing.
  5. Elaboration
    Translating the insight into a workable solution – Edison’s ’99 per cent perspiration’.

This to me explains why we seem to get our best ideas when out walking, sipping a coffee, or in a shower. These are not the times when we solve our problems: they are the times when our conscious mind is sufficiently unoccupied to notice the answers that our unconscious has developed.

What does this mean for managers?

If you want creative thinking from your team, I think it tells us four things:

  1. You need to give people time to understand and research the problem, making it as interesting and relevant to them as you can.
  2. You need to let people go away and mull, allowing a reasonable period for ideas to incubate.
  3. You need to bring people back together with no distractions and pressures, so that the ideas can naturally emerge.
  4. You need to create separate stages of your process for evaluating the solutions and then for implemental thinking, when you hone the preferred solution into a workable plan.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at TED

Here is an excellent video from 2004 of the man himself…

[ted id=366]

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The DUCK Creativity Model

Any thoughts that readers may have that all management models originate in the US or the UK – or the wider Anglophone world – can be put to one side. I have discovered a marvellously powerful method for creative innovation, emerging from France.

The French model can be translated into the English acronym DUCK and it gives us the four stages of radical innovation.

D – Drop
– abandon wholly your old ways of doing things

U – Upend
– turn the old ways entirely on their head

C – Create
– build a new process, system, toolkit or idea from the inverted ideas of the past

K – Kindle
– ignite the sparks of your creative thinking with bold execution of your new ideas

DUCK Methodology

What I love about the DUCK method is its gutsy Gallic determination to stimulate creation. From now on, whenever I am in need of new ideas, I will doggedly DUCK the issue.


By the way, on a curious note, the French word for duck is canard, which the English dictionary defines as ‘a false report, rumour or hoax’.

How can that be?

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Creativity

The Management Pocketbooks Pocket Correspondence Course

This is part of an extended management course. You can dip into it, or follow the course from the start. If you do that, you may want a course notebook, for the exercises and any notes you want to make.


In last week’s Pocket Correspondence Course module, we looked at problem solving, using the Synectics process. The problem with all problem solving processes is the black hole in the middle:

Problem Solving Process

That black hole is where a brilliant, innovative, creative idea happens.

Many, Many Approaches to Creativity

There are many approaches to stimulating this sort of creative idea, from bisociation to nyaka, from the Eureka method to Merlin. You will find all of these and more in The Creative Manager’s Pocketbook.

But there are two ‘master techniques’ that will serve a busy manager magnificently well. Let’s try them out. To do so, think of one or two problems for which you want to find a creative solution. Write them down in your notebook in the form:

‘I would like to discover how to…’

This is your ‘problem definition’.

Exercise 1: Sleep on it

Most creativity methods implicitly recognise that creativity happens while we are not looking. Given a problem, our brains will work on it at any time they have spare capacity. So the master technique creates that space by taking your mind off actively considering the problem – or anything else. Go for a walk, go out with friends or, better yet, take a nap. Best of all, write down your problem definition before you go to sleep at night.

The second stage to the process recognises that, when our brains are busy, ideas can’t find the room to get out. They tend to emerge either when something in our environment triggers them to emerge, because it bears some form of similarity, so the barrier is lowered, or in the spaces when our minds are still, like in the shower, walking to the bus stop, or drinking a coffee.

Since you cannot arrange the trigger event that lowers the barriers momentarily, create the quietening conditions that will let your idea emerge. Spend some time doing nothing that requires deliberate thought. Daydream, jot random thoughts onto a page, or sip a coffee or a tea, looking out of the window.

Constructive idleness is one of the two master techniques for creativity.

Exercise 2: Up and Down

Many creativity techniques are about breaking the mental constraints that we impose on our own thinking and finding a new way to look at the problem: so called ‘thinking outside the box’. Here, ‘the box’ represents your mental constraints.

The master technique for doing this is to start with your problem definition: ‘how to…’ and ask your self:

‘What is my reason for wanting to…?’

Keep asking this question of each answer (akin to the 5 Whys Technique) until the answer is both fundamental and self-evidently true. This is your ultimate purpose. Having gone ‘up’, now come back down, with the question:

‘How else can I achieve this purpose?’

Keep asking this to generate creative new options.

Further Reading 

  1. The Problem Solving Pocketbook
  2. The Creative Manager’s Pocketbook
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The Synectics Problem Solving Process

The Management Pocketbooks Pocket Correspondence Course

This is part of an extended management course. You can dip into it, or follow the course from the start. If you do that, you may want a course notebook, for the exercises and any notes you want to make.


As a manager, one of your responsibilities will be to solve problems. Set aside the small day-to-day problems you are constantly tackling: when you have a bigger,more challenging problem, how do you handle it? Do you have a process?

One process for structured problem solving – ideal for teams to use – is called Synectics. The methodology was developed observing many problem solving sessions by two Arthur D Little consultants,  George Prince, Bill Gordon and their team in the 1950s. The story of its development is on the Synecticsworld website.

The process has nine steps:

Synectics Problem Solving Process

1. Task Headline

Define the problem in the form ‘How to…’

2. Task Analysis

Set out why the problem exists, and its background, the oportunity before you and what you have already tried or thought of. If you have one, set out your ‘dream solution’, so that later, you can see if there are ways to break down the barriers to achieving it.

3. Springboards

Invite provocative statements and random ideas to set off creative thinking, like:

  • ‘Why can’t we…’
  • ‘I want to…’
  • ‘If only we could…’
  • ‘One idea might be to…’
  • ‘With unlimited resources, we could…’

4. Selection

Select the most appealing ideas to emerge from the Springboard, to work on further. These may be practical, visionary or intriguing.

5. Ways and Means

Look for practical steps to develop selected ideas, and ways you may be able to implement them.

6. Emerging Idea

Allow one idea to emerge as the strongest potential solution.

7. Itemised Response

Evaluate the Emerging Idea, looking for ideas for how to make it work until you identify the best way forward, if the idea were finally chosen. Test out your level of satisfaction with the idea/implementation package: is this your possible solution?

If it is not, return to Step 6 and work with a new Emerging Idea.

8. Possible Solution

State and document the Possible Solution and the associated implementation approaches.

9. Next Step

Document the actions to be taken, by whom and to what deadlines?

Further Reading

  1. The Problem Solving Pocketbook
  2. There is a host of valuable resources about Synectics on the Synectics World website.

Seven more problem solving methods in The Management Pocketblog

  1. Going round in circles: Problem Solving Simplicity
    Fisher and Ury’s Circle Chart
  2. The Fertile Mind of Edward de Bono
    The Six Thinking Hats Methodology
  3. Six Tools from Six Sigma
    Includes 5 Whys, Fishbone Analsys and SIPOC Analysis
  4. The DMAIC Solution Process
    An alternative to Synectics
  5. Go to the Gemba
    Argues for being at the right place to solve a problem
  6. Truly Radical!
    Appreciative Inquiry as a radical approach to problem solving
  7. Adapting and Innovating
    Two opposite approaches to problem solving
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Six times Four: More de Bono

Last week, I discussed Edward de Bono’s (or maybe his and others’) Six Thinking Hats.  In my blog title, I described his mind as fertile and that fertility led, step by step, from:

  1. Six Thinking Hats (1985) to:
  2. Six Action Shoes (1991)
  3. Six Value Medals (2005)
  4. Six Frames – for thinking about information (2008)

We’ve listed the six hats.  Let’s do the same for the others.  Whilst I own copies of Six Action Shoes and Six Value Medals, it was only in researching this blog that I learned about the newest book here, so I am indebted to Professor Tortoise for the primer in the Six Frames.

Six Action Shoes

Six Action Shoes - de Bono

Navy Formal Shoes
Represent formal routines, processes and procedures.

Grey Sneakers
Represent exploring, investigating and gathering information.

Brown Practical Brogues
Represent practical, pragmatic, roll-your-sleeves-up action.

Orange Gumboots
Represent safety-conscious activities and emergency action.

Pink Comfy Slippers
Represent caring, concerned, compassionate and sensitive action.

Purple Riding Boots
Represent leadership, authority and command.

Six Value Medals

Six Value Medals - de Bono

Gold Medal – Human Values
Values relating to putting people first.

Silver Medal – Organisational Values
Values relating to your organisation’s purpose.

Steel Medal – Quality Values
Values relating to your product, service or function.

Glass Medal  – Creativity Values
Values relating to creating, innovating and simplicity.

Wood Medal – Environmental Values
Values relating to sustainability and impact on the community and on society.

Brass Medal – Perceptual Values
Values relating to the way things appear.

Six Frames for Thinking

Six Thinking Frames - de Bono

Triangle Frame – Purpose
Understanding the information at hand – the What, the Why and the Where.

Circle Frame – Accuracy
Is the information consistent, accurate and adequate for our needs (to solve a problem or make a decision, for example)?

Square frame – Perspectives
We can look at information and a situation from different points of view, with different biases and prejudices.  Which ones are present?

Heart Frame – Interest
Focuses our attention on the relevant, salient, interesting information that matters most to you.

Diamond Frame – Value
How do we evaluate the value of our information?  We can use the six value medals to prioritise its importance.

Slab Frame – Conclusions
What does the information tell us and, crucially, what next?

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The Fertile Mind of Edward de Bono

The Green Hat Fits

Without a doubt, one of the most fertile minds in personal and management effectiveness of the late Twentieth Century is Edward de Bono.  His almost constant stream of books about thinking skills (approaching 60 to date – the latest is Think!: Before It’s Too Late) has provided insight, provocation, practical skills and frustrating verbiage by turns.  The fact is that I’m a sucker for his books and have 17 on my shelf.  Many have inspired me.

Green is One of Six

Perhaps de Bono’s two most famous titles are The Use of Lateral Thinking (1967 – and the several similar follow-up titles) and Six Thinking Hats(1985).

Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats

Six Thinking Hats is the one I frequently return to – both in my own thinking and in offering it as a valuable tool to workshop participants.  In a nutshell, de Bono advocates deploying different thinking modes to examine an issue, consider a decision or work on a problem from different points of view.

The Green Hat – Creativity

Put this on to think innovatively, creatively, and from a new perspective.

Yellow Hat – Positive

Put this on to think constructively, develop ideas, identify benefits and find practical ways to implement them.

Black Hat – Judgement

Put this on to evaluate risks, downsides and problems with an idea and evaluate it critically to protect us from mistakes.

White Hat – Factual

Put this on to focus on facts, evidence and logical analysis of the situation.

Red Hat – Feeling

Put this on for one of two reasons: to think intuitively and also to use your emotional response to generate and evaluate ideas.

Blue Hat – Process

Put this on to direct your team’s and your own thinking process; to provide an orderly structure for problem-solving, decision-making and evaluation, using all of the hats to see the topic in all possible ways.

The Thinking Hats Controversy

I don’t want to take sides: I don’t have a basis to do so.  But it is worth noting that Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson puts forward a case that the idea was developed not by de Bono, but by the directors of The Edward de Bono School of Thinking Inc – now defunct – but which Hewitt-Gleeson argues is the predecessor of his own School of Thinking.

What I do agree with Hewitt-Gleeson on is his rather lovely suggestion for a seventh hat.

The Grey Hat

Hewitt-Gleeson proposes a Grey Thinking Hat for Wisdom and I love the idea.  In his words:

Grey Hat Thinking is the ability to see consequences, immediate, short term and long term. It is the ability to look back over history and to see forward into the future. To understand cycles, passages of time, the passing of fashions, eras, eons and the many possible futures including extinction, the possibility of no future at all.

‘Grey Hat Thinking also means the wisdom to see other points of view. It includes the sagacity of patience to see beyond one’s own immediate viewpoint and the wisdom to see the viewpoints of others involved in situations: your partner’s viewpoint, your children’s, your children’s children, your neighbour’s, your customer’s, your enemy’s.’

From School of Thinking: Seventh Hat for Wisdom

Wisdom is a topic of great interest to me and, from now on, I intend to add The Grey Hat to my descriptions and credit it clearly.

Grey Thinking Hat of Wisdom

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Innovation, Creativity and Heroism

Neil Alden ArmstrongNeil Armstrong died last week (25 August 2012).

He died a pilot, a professor, a scientist and a hero.

There are a lot of pilots, a lot of professors and a lot of scientists.  But if the word is to mean something worthwhile, there are few heroes.

.

.

.

.

Hero

Like many words, the word hero has become debased somewhat, by overuse, but my 1988 Collins dictionary defines it well (although old-fashionedly in its gender assumption) as:

‘a man distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, etc’

That’s my emphasis, please note.

Curiosity

One of Armstrong’s exceptional etc’s was curiosity.  And anyone who reads my own newsletter will know that I am a big fan of what NASA has started to achieve with its Curiosity rover, on Mars.

The development of this project was an exercise in astonishing boldness, heaped upon massive innovation, grown out of remarkable creativity.  And what makes it particularly appealing to me is that I believe curiosity to be the magic ingredient of creativity.

We choose to do these things…

In launching the Apollo space programme that put Armstrong on the moon, John F Kennedy made two key speeches: the first to Congress in May 1961 announced the goal of going to the moon.  Then, in September 1962, speaking at Rice University, he spoke at length about the project, saying:

‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.’

Is that not the nature of creativity and innovation?

What is the nature of heroism?

Innovation, by its very definition, is risky.  It is new, it is uncertain, it could fail.  But if it presents a challenge that is truly worthwhile, if it addresses a deep hunger for knowledge and a nobility of endeavour, then being prepared to take that risk, for its own sake, is heroism.

Neil Armstrong was a hero.

Neil Alden Armstrong was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also an aerospace engineer, U.S. Navy pilot, test pilot, and university professor.
Source: Wikipedia

Born: August 5, 1930
Died: August 25, 2012

Education:
University of Southern California(1970)
Purdue University (1947–1955)


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