David Pollard, in his latest blog entry on How to Save the World, echoes a point that I have struggled with too--creating thinking time on the job for my clients.
David states:
My observation, throughout my career, has been that as businesses become more 'efficient' (i.e. they lay more people off and load the work onto fewer and fewer workers), there is less and less time to think.
Most of the CEOs I have known openly lament that they have no time to think at all. I suspect that's why they like mission statements and strategic planning sessions -- they are forced, briefly, to get above the day-to-day crises of operation and think about what they are doing and should be doing and how and why to do it. Unfortunately, these often turn into rushed, uninformed, sterile exercises that are totally disconnected from what's actually happening in the organizations -- because the people who participate in these exercises don't have time to find out what's really going on (and generally, no one on the front lines is foolish enough to tell them).
The result is that these organizations become completely dysfunctional. A few overpaid people make uninformed, thoughtless decisions and impose them on front-line people who must then find workarounds so they can continue to do their jobs reasonably effectively despite what they are told to do by management (usually ignorantly), told to achieve by management (usually unrealistically), and told to provide to management (usually pointlessly)."
The efficiency of photocopier is one of the culprits here too, which has obsolesced/cut out our time to think.
Before the copier machine, people had more time to read, reflect and ponder issues. Now we just have stacks of photocopied papers in our inbox that we never have time to get back to and read, because the next urgent fire gets thrown in our lap.
A half hour a week of directed, on-demand thinking (i.e using de Bono's lateral thinking skills, concept challenge, PO or provocative operation, random word etc) goes a long way to alleviate this dilemma.
This addresses the bigger question:
Why are some people better thinkers then others? Is thinking an art? A gift? Just plain luck or chance? Or in fact, is thinking a skill that can be learned, practiced and applied to all facets of life from idea generation, evaluation, writing better essays or term papers, proposals, white papers to preventing or resolving conflicts and disputes from personal relationships to social crises, addressing leadership issues or even entrepreneurship.
David reminds us:
"Thinking is a skill, and like any skill it takes considerable and continuous practice. My sense is that those of us who are paid to think are mostly pretty rusty at doing it. It's a holistic skill in many senses: it entails both deductive and inductive reasoning. It synthesizes conscious and subconscious knowledge. It requires recalling and drawing on a lot of ideas and information from many different sources. It entails imagining, opening oneself up to and carefully considering novel approaches, perspectives and alternatives. It requires digestion, perception, provocation, attention, and avoiding preconception.
Many of us do puzzles or play games of intellectual skill to try to exercise our brains so we can continue to think effectively. But that's not really thinking practice -- these exercises are generally pretty prescriptive.Real practice involves using everything you know and everything you can do well, and sometimes things you do not so well. It requires stretching, challenging yourself. It's hard work. And it takes time. There's a reason why some of our best thinking comes after we've 'slept on it' -- consciously or subconsciously we are finally investing time in thinking"
How many readers here know about lateral thinking or have been taught thinking skills in school?
If not, you've been shortchanged by the education system and should ask for your money back !!!
See my next post tomorrow: Smart decisions: when just to sleep on it is good enough
© 2005-2007
Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "
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.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"- old Japanese proverb
".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." - H. Mumford Jones
"Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought." A. Einstein
"Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are showstoppers..." Walter Derzko
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
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