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C. Divakaran, India
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Lateral Thinking Methods / Tools
Lateral thinking is key today. What methods and tools are being deployed within lateral thinking?
Please summarize one tool in your reply. Thanks!
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Anton Korchinskiy
Coach, Ukraine
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What are Methods of Lateral Thinking?
Lateral thinking is the group of methods to find definitely new way of reaching your goals. After finding them you also need to analyze them, because the ideas are not always really good. I had two occasions in my practice as a business-coach to train managers in lateral thinking methods. In one company it gave a serious financial result. In the other it was also useful, but the situation they wanted to change is still the same after three years :-)
All methods of LT are based on two principles:
1. One of them is telling that mostly people use up to 3 ways of finding the solution. lt needs believing that there are always more than 20 ways of solving a problem. You simply need to investigate how you can change your attitude to the situation. It is the key.
2. The second principle is telling that using LT works when you focus at the result you need, but not at the problem. This is easy to say, but my experience shows that people very often think they are result-focused when they are really stunned in the "swamp" of problems-focusing.
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R Hallagan, United States
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What are Methods of Lateral Thinking?
To Divakaran's question, Shipra make a good point about categorisation. Categorization is a useful and necessary tool of the human mind that enables us to organize the myriad information coming at us. It is like a sorting function based on identifying common denominators among the data being sorted.
However, this process would not be so valuable in solving problems because it tends to lead to generalizations.
If the problem is isolated and small, then it's fine to attack it directly.
But if the problem starts repeating, building up or spreading into other areas, then the root of the problem is not likely to be so evident.
I think it was Peter Drucker who said you may need to ask the question why as many as 5 times before you get to the root of the problem, and I subscribe to this completely.
Lateral thinking takes this a step further.
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Johnny Michael Tan
Management Consultant, Malaysia
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Lateral Thinking and the Green Hat
Lateral thinking is about questioning the basic fundamentals of how else to get the solution.
It's as simple as seeing 1+1+1 is more than 3... Why not 111?
It's knowing how to make the Green Hat interesting to find alternative paths in the Blue Hat process.
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Michael Goss
Student (University), Ireland
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Decreasing Bias in Lateral Thinking
Have a look at the article by Stephen Butler, it explains very well lateral thinking and how it can be used.
Source: Butler, Stephen (Management Decision; 2010, vol. 48 issue 1, p58-64, 7p.)
1. Basing one's business decision on an approach that relies on experience may work sometimes. Experience is a useful part of the process, but it may also lock the decision maker into a method that cannot lead to an innovative solution.
2. An alternative to this experience-based (linear) way of problem solving is a certain skillful way of thinking known as lateral thinking. This is a simple alternative approach to managerial decision making.
3. Design/methodology/approach - here lateral thinking is defined as methods of thinking concerned with changing concepts and perception. Various tests are suggested that show how it might be measured. These tests developed to identify creative thinking ability. One of these tests is used in an illustrative decision aid to reduce a common decision-making "bias" labeled "hindsight bias".
4. Findings - the simple decision aid reduced the hindsight effect for those decision makers who were deemed to be limited in their lateral thinking ability.
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Saravanan Radhakrishnan , India
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Today, Tomorrow and Future
The Today, Tomorrow and Future model could be used for creating lateral thinking within an organisation, to keep it simple:
- Today - Problem solving by the actual work force (team members / operators / supervisors)
- Tomorrow - Improvements planning (points to ponder for near future & execution (engineers & managers)
- Future - Strategic planning for the growth of the organisation.
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Dilip Khanal
CEO, Nepal
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Disagreement is Good: Can Lateral Thinking Be Stimulated?
In Nepal, normally a boss's version is the organization's version.
Once I was addressing a group of employees in a office. I was surprised that nobody questioned my view points. When prompted, they shared that they were nurtured to accept. I talked with the top management and advised that they need to cultivate the habit of "saying no" to ideas that they don't like.
After two years, I had a meeting with the same group. But, believe me, their staff were totally different. They challenged some of my ideas so nicely that I had to appreciate them.
Then I started to think that an unconventional way of doing things could trigger lateral thinking.
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Jackie Consbruck, United States
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Lateral Thinking
I am getting a clearer picture of what lateral thinking is. I appreciate everyone's response. This helps me a lot. Thank you!
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Gary Wong
Consultant, Canada
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Serious Creativity Tools
I had the great privilege of being trained by Edward De Bono to deliver lateral thinking training sessions. He titled the course "serious creativity" because Edward believed creativity was a skill that could be taught. You didn't have to be born creative; it was a matter of learning how the brain functions and then applying these lessons in a disciplined fashion. In the morning we covered focus, challenge, alternatives, concepts. In the afternoon I introduced provocations - what they are, how they relate to the brain, setting them up as a LT exercise. Movement and idea harvesting were then explained.
Lastly, I presented actual examples where Edward's techniques were used to generate new ideas.
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Abdul Qadir, Pakistan
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6 Hats
Besides lateral thinking, Edward De Bono is also known for his Six Thinking Hats method. These hats are helpful for developing new thoughts as well. (...)
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