Lateral Thinking

by Edward de Bono

  Possible subjects for discussion might include:

  Advantages of saving against spending.

  Advantages of attack rather than defence in sport.

  Knowing where to find information.

  Why do fights start?

  Should people do exactly what they want to?

  The design of shoes.

  Possible random words might include:

  Fishing line.

  Bus ticket.

  Motor car horn.

  Eggcup.

  7. Concept reuniting. PO can be used to put together again things that have been divided up into separate concepts. PO can be used to remove labels and extract information from pigeonholes. In order to put across this function of PO one takes concepts which have been created by a division (or which have created each other by implication) and puts them together by means of PO. Such paired concepts are presented to the class in the same way as juxtapositions were presented and the ideas arising from this presentation are examined and compared. In this instance it is better if the students individually list their ideas so that when these are read out at the end they can appreciate the usefulness of the procedure.

  Possible examples might include:

  Soldiers po civilians.

  Flexible po rigid.

  Attacker po defender.

  Order po chaos.

  Liquid po solid.

  Teacher po student.

  Up po down.

  Day po night.

  North po south.

  Right po wrong.

  Male po female.

  8. In addition to reacting to the juxtapositions and paired concepts provided for them the students can be asked to generate their own juxtapositions and paired concepts. Suggestions for these are collected on slips of paper and then a selection of these is fed back to the students for their reaction. The simple exercise of generating such juxtapositions and paired concepts is itself very useful in making clear this particular use of PO.

  Protection and rescue

  This function of PO is used to delay judgement. In effect it is used to delay rejection for that is the only sort of judgement which would remove an idea from consideration. PO may be used to protect an idea before it has been judged or it may be used to bring back into consideration an idea which has already been judged and rejected. In practice PO is attracted by the NO label. Whenever the NO label is used it is a direct indication of the current frame of reference against which every judgement must be made. By temporarily overriding the rejection with PO one is really reexamining the frame of reference itself.

  9. A discussion is started between two students or between the teacher and a student. The discussion continues until either one or the other uses a NO rejection. At that point PO is used to overcome the rejection and the rejected statement is considered in itself to see what ideas it can trigger off.

  Possible subjects for discussion might include:

  Should people be encouraged to live in the country or in towns?

  Does a welfare state encourage people to be lazy?

  Is changing fashion in clothes a good thing?

  How much should one do for oneself and how much should one pay other people to do for one?

  Are classroom lessons too long?

  A discussion might go something as follows:

  TEACHER: People should be encouraged to live in the country because towns are not healthy.

  STUDENT: Towns are not healthy. PO towns are healthy. Towns could be healthy with better planning and better traffic control. Perhaps towns could be more healthy mentally because of more social interaction.

  TEACHER: Towns would have better health services because they would be more centralized and communication would be better.

  10. A subject is selected and the students are asked to think of all the negative things they can say about that subject These are listed and then some of them are reexamined using PO. Quite obviously the number of negative things one can say about something is infinite. For instance about an apple one could say: ‘It is not black. It is not purple. It is not mauve etc. It is not an orange. It is not a tomato etc.’ In practice one would simply ignore that sort of list or pick out of it certain items. For instance ‘An apple is not a tomato’ could lead to the following idea: ‘In some languages the word for tomato is derived from that for apple. In Italian a tomato is called a golden apple. In Sweden the word for an orange is derived from the word for an apple.’ To avoid this sort of thing it is probably better to deal with abstract concepts or with functions rather than objects.

  Possible subjects might include:

  Work.

  Freedom.

  Duty.

  Truth.

  Obedience.

  Boredom.

  General comment on the use of PO

  After the initial practice sessions in which the use of PO is obviously excessive and artificial one moves on to the more natural use of PO in ordinary discussion sessions. It is up to the teacher to use PO now and again to indicate how it should be used. The other important point is to watch how the students react to PO when it is used either by other students or by the teacher himself. An inappropriate reaction to PO indicates that the function of PO has not been understood. It is more important to emphasize the correct reaction to PO than the correct use of it. Someone who knows how to react appropriately to PO will also know how to use it appropriately.

  The one sided use of PO

  PO is a device for use in one’s own thinking and reacting as well as in communication with other people. In fact it is probably of more use in enabling one to use lateral thinking oneself than in allowing the use of lateral thinking in group discussions. This private use of PO obviously does not depend on other people understanding its function. In communication however it may come about that one person uses PO and the other person has no idea what it means. In that case one does not desist from using PO but explains what it means. Simple ways of explaining what PO means have been described earlier in this chapter. If in difficulty one could always say that it was a special form of ‘suppose’.

  Summary

  PO is a language device with which to carry out lateral thinking. PO is an insight tool since it enables one to use information in a way that encourages escape from the established patterns and insight restructuring into new ones. PO performs a special function that it is impossible to perform adequately in language without PO. Other ways of carrying out this function are cumbersome, weak and ineffective. The more skill and practice one invests in the use of PO the more effective it becomes. It is not language that makes PO necessary but the mechanism of mind.

  Blocked by openness 21

  I knew the town quite well but I had to ask for instructions as to how to get to this particular restaurant The instructions were easy to follow as the route was made up of three segments with each of which I was familiar for each of them involved some obvious landmark. The segments had been made familiar by ordinary driving around the town. One day some friends set out for the restaurant from the same place as myself and at the same time. But they got there long before I did. I asked them if they had driven quickly but they denied this. Then I asked them what route they had taken. They explained and it was obvious that they had taken a short cut as shown below.

  A small side turning had led them directly to the restaurant while I was making an unnecessary detour through the centre of the town. My own route had always seemed satisfactory so I had never looked for a shorter one. Nor had I ever been aware that there was a shorter one. I had driven past the small side turning each time but had never explored it because there had been no reason to explore it. And without exploring it I could never have found out how useful it was. My original instructions had been in terms of large well-known segments of route, cliché segments, because that is the easiest way to give instructions. There had never been any reason to break off along one of these cliché segments. There are three ways in which thinking can be blocked. These three ways
are shown diagrammatically.

  1. One is blocked by a gap. One cannot proceed further because the road runs out. One needs to find more road or to construct a bridge across the river. This is equivalent to having to look around for more information or having to generate some by experiment.

  2. One is blocked by there being something in the way. Here there is a definite obstacle which bars progress. In order to go on one has to find a way of removing the obstacle or getting round it. Once this has been done progress is easy because the road is there. One can concentrate one’s problem solving efforts on overcoming the block.

  3. One is blocked because there is nothing in the way. The road is smooth and clear and so one goes shooting past the important side turning unaware that it is even there. Here a particular way of looking at things leads one straight past a better way of looking at them. Because the first way is adequate one does not even consider that there might be another way — let alone look for it.

  This third type of block is what happens when one is blocked by the adequate, blocked by openness. Trying to avoid this sort of block is what lateral thinking is all about. Instead of proceeding with the patterns that have been established on the memory surface of mind one tries to find short cats to restructure the patterns. Like the route in the restaurant story the established patterns have been constructed out of familiar cliché segments. Even when the patterns are adequate this cannot exclude there being very much more effective patterns.

  If things are put together in a certain way to give one pattern then this prevents them being put together in another way to give a different pattern. One way of arranging the three pieces shown overleaf excludes the other way. There is an exclusivity about patterns. Nevertheless a satisfactory pattern cannot preclude the possibility of there being a different and better arrangement. The trouble is that the different and better arrangement does not arise from the current pattern but arises instead of it. There is no logical reason to look for a better way of doing something if there is already an adequate way. Adequate is always good enough. It is interesting that in our thinking we have developed methods for dealing with things that are wrong but no methods for dealing with things that are right. When something is wrong we explore further. When something is right our thinking comes to a halt That is why we need lateral thinking to break through this adequacy block and restructure patterns even when there is no need to do so.

  The difficulty with being blocked by openness is that there is no indication as to where the block has occurred. It might have occurred anywhere along the apparently correct pathway. Two types of branching pattern are shown on p. 235. In the first type there is a definite change of direction at each branch point. One has either to go right or left. This means that one is always aware of the branch points. In the second type of branching pattern the branches stem off a straight trunk. If you go along the main pathway you may not even be aware that there was a side branch or a choice point. One is blocked by the openness of the main pathway.

  If one comes to a dead end in the first type of branching system one goes back to the branch point and tries the other branch. This can be done again and again for each branch point. But in the second type of branching pattern when one comes to a dead end one cannot just go back to the preceding branch point because one does not even know where the branch points are since one has never had to pause and make a choice at them.

  Cliché patterns strung together constitute the trunk of a straight branching system. As one proceeds smoothly along them one is not even aware that there are possible side turnings. So when one comes to a dead end one does not know where to go.

  A plastic piece is shown overleaf. Another plastic piece is provided and the task is to arrange them both together to give a simple shape that would be easy to describe. The arrangement is obvious as shown. A further piece is added and once again the arrangement is obvious. When a fourth piece is added there is difficulty in fitting them all together. The original placing of the second piece so that it nestled in the angle of the first piece is such an obvious pattern that it becomes a cliché. And as a cliché one wants to use it, not disrupt it. This makes the final solution difficult since the small piece has to be placed in quite a different position.

  Cliché patterns are satisfactory established patterns which are very useful and which do a good job. They can be used in three ways:

  1. For communication. It is easier to explain a situation in terms of cliché patterns than to devise new patterns.

  2. One picks out a cliché pattern more easily than other patterns from an environment that offers several alternative patterns.

  3. Given only part of a pattern one elaborates this part to a whole pattern — but a cliché whole.

  I was having lunch one day in a university cafeteria when I noticed sitting at another table a student with very long hair and a delicate, sensitive face. As I looked at the student I thought to myself that here was a person whose sex could not be determined by appearance. It was several minutes before I suddenly noticed that the student had a long straggling moustache! In my mind I had gone at once from the long hair and delicate face to the

  assumption that the student might be a girl and so I had never noticed the moustache. So it is in picking out cliché patterns that one is not even aware that alternative patterns could just as easily have been picked out.

  If an ordinary letter is partially hidden under a piece of paper one elaborates the pattern to give the standard letter. Letters are cliché patterns and one only needs a hint in order to be able to elaborate the rest of the letter. It is easy enough to recognize letters in this way because one knows all the possibilities to begin with and also one knows that the pattern must be a letter. But suppose the patterns were not all letters but completely different patterns which were covered up so that the exposed bits did look like letters? One would elaborate the expected cliché pattern and one would be wrong. Or suppose that one did not know the shape of all the letters? The same thing would happen. In real life one is always elaborating patterns as if they could only be standard cliché patterns.

  This process of being blocked by openness is very prevalent in thinking. In a way it is the basis of thinking for thinking has to make guesses and assumptions based on past experience. Useful as it is, the process has definite disadvantages especially in terms of new ideas and of bringing patterns up to date. This process of being blocked by openness is at the very centre of the need for lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is an attempt to find alternative pathways, an attempt to put things together in a new way, no matter how adequate the old way appears to be.

  Practice

  The sole intention of this practice session is not to practise any technique but to illustrate the phenomenon of being blocked by openness. This is done by showing how easy it is to be satisfied by what seems to be a satisfactory explanation.

  1. Stories, anecdotes, jokes. The students are invited to think of examples of the process of being blocked by adequacy. The examples may be from their own experience or else incidents they have heard about. The teacher can note down these incidents and add them to his own stockpile of material for future occasions. In any case the teacher may already have collected examples of this sort and can use them to illustrate what is wanted. e.g. I had a guest staying in my, house. After the guest had left I found that the reading lamp would not work. I checked the bulb and I checked the fuse but still the lamp would not work. I was just about to dismantle the plug when it occurred to me that the guest might have switched off the lamp by the switch on the lamp base and not the wall switch which is what I usually did. This in fact was what had happened.

  2. The students are shown parts of a picture or else a picture with parts obscured by a cardboard sheet. They are asked to decide what the picture is all about. They are encouraged to jump to conclusions before the rest of the picture is revealed.

  3. The use of blanks. The students are asked to write a short passage on some theme and then to go
over to passage striking out any word which would make the theme obvious. The passage is then rewritten with ‘blank’ substituted for such words. Alter natively the students can just write the passage and then the teacher strikes out the revealing words and puts ‘blank’ instead. A third way to do it is to take a passage from a newspaper and magazine and treat it in the same way. It is best to give the students an example of what is wanted before asking them to provide such passages. The blanked out passage is then read out to the rest of the students who are asked firstly to decide what the passage is about and then to try to fill in the individual blanks. This is done as an individual effort by each student and at the end the results are compared.

  An example of this sort of passage might be: ‘He stood by the side of blank and every time a blank approached he would raise his arm and blank. It was some time before he eventually got blank and even so that did not take blank.’

  In this passage the blank refers to anything that has been left out. It is important to point out that this need not apply to a single word but could be used for a group of words. Thus the phrase, ‘get anywhere’ would be replaced by blank just as would be the word ‘car’.

  Description/problem solving/design 22

  The previous section was about being blocked by openness. It dealt with the way adequate established patterns prevented the development of patterns that made better use of the available information. Normally one is only taught to think about things until one gets an adequate answer. One goes on exploring while things are unsatisfactory but as soon as they become satisfactory one stops. And yet there may be an answer or an arrangement of information that is far better than the adequate one. All this is part of the first aspect of lateral thinking. This first aspect is to create an awareness of the limitations of established patterns. Such established patterns can do three things: