Strategist, Ned Hodge, discusses what a forgotten thinker can teach us about stretching our strategic imagination.

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Stretching Our Strategic Imagination

I was surprised at how little fanfare greeted the passing of the godfather of creative thinking Edward de Bono when he died in June. Perhaps the success of his Six Thinking Hats and his immodesty overshadowed his real mission in life.

His mission was not to become a multimillionaire by teaching everyone from Siemens to NASA to wear brightly coloured hats but to stretch the creative agility of everyone’s brain. To free us from the tyranny of logic through creative thinking.

His pioneering belief was that everyone has something to add through creative thinking, especially in times of change and crisis. But to do so we need to be able to look beyond what is our default.

In tribute, here are some of his lesser-known but most effective creative thinking techniques. His B-Sides and rarities compilation if you will.

1. Be wrong to be right 

 De Bono believed that how we are taught to think in school is wrong because education values being right all the time rather than being effective. Being right all the time can create an arrogant attitude that assumes that logic is enough, shutting out creativity and progress.

 “The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar there is to ideas,” wrote de Bono. “Being right means being ‘right’ all the time. Being effective means being right only at the end.”

The most common error in thinking is errors in perception. If we can suspend judgment and adopt new mental models, we can change our perception and generate new ideas. Otherwise, we will repeat the same mistakes. Being open to the possibility that your initial position is wrong and changing course is needed when dealing with today’s intractable problems.

By way of example, de Bono liked to cite a bucket with holes that cannot carry much water. We may reject this bucket out of hand, or we could see that because of the holes, it may be useful for other purposes – such as replacing a watering can.

2. Challenge assumptions with ‘intelligent naivety

De Bono was way ahead of his time in recognising that our biases create imaginary boundaries in the form of assumptions and that these greatly restrict our thinking.

His solution is to encourage us to suspend disbelief and allow us to challenge our assumptions by asking propelling ‘Why?’ and ‘What If?’ questions. In doing so, we test the boundaries of our understanding and make new breakthroughs.

We see this with the masters of reinvention in business – they ask these propelling questions to break with the immediate past to reinvent themselves and create significant differences.

3. Find the dominant idea: 

We all experience this in our day-to-day. When a large team is all working on the same project, each person usually has a different answer for what they are trying to achieve. Creating confusion and lack of progress on the problem. de Bono instead encourages us to cut through the vagueness of this situation and identify the dominant idea to rally everyone around and use to navigate different possible options.

For example, one international bank was recently going through a troubled spell on a complicated project. By identifying a dominant idea of ‘Happiness’, they rallied everyone around one goal and transformed the project’s fortunes. 

4. If it’s fixed, break it – restructuring the problem

The previous lessons have demonstrated that we take our mode of thinking for granted and don’t question assumptions every day. de Bono teaches us that these assumptions are a cliché pattern. By treating the mind like jelly, we can fit into new moulds for more effective thinking. But our mindset will only get us so far; we also need to break down information to escape the natural and the obvious. Breaking down the component parts of information and combining them into new combinations is creativity and originality. As Steve Jobs said, “Creativity is just connecting things”.

 For example: If you were tasked with improving bus transport, you might immediately start sketching out a new bus. de Bono and Jobs show that instead, you would be better off breaking a bus down into its component parts and trying new combinations:

Transport by bus: 

• Choice of the route.
• Frequency.
• Convenience.
• The number of people using the service.
• The number of people using the service at different times
• Size of the bus.
• Economics of use and cost.

In conclusion, de Bono tells us that when most people think, they dig a deep hole—overvaluing their assumptions and making the same mistakes at the expense of creative breakthroughs. I hope I’ve shown that by just pausing for thought to consider the tools you need and whether everything is quite as it seems, you can leap instead of dig.