Lateral Thinking
How good a thinker you are!
Here’s a little story to test how good you are at thinking!
Many years ago, a merchant in London, had the misfortune to owe a huge sum to a mean moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the merchant’s beautiful, young daughter. He proposed a bargain. He said he would cancel the merchant’s debt if he could have the girl instead.
Both the merchant and his daughter were horrified at the suggestion. So the cunning moneylender proposed that they let Providence decide the matter. He told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag, then the girl would have to pick out one of the pebbles. If she chose the black pebble, she would become his wife, and her father’s debt would be canceled. If she chose the white pebble, she would stay with her father, and the debt would still be canceled. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail, and she would starve. Reluctantly, the merchant agreed. They were standing on a pebble-strewn path in the merchant’s garden as they talked, and the moneylender stooped down to pick up the two pebbles. As he did, the girl, sharp-eyed with fright, noticed he picked up two black pebbles and put them into the money bag (he wasn’t taking any chances.) He then asked the girl to pick out the pebble that was to decide her fate and that of her father.
Imagine that you are standing on that path in the merchant’s garden. What would you have done if you had been the girl? If you had to advise her, what would you have advised her to do?
What type of thinking would you use to solve the problem?
You may think that careful logical analysis must solve the problem if there is a solution. This type of thinking is straightforward vertical thinking. The other type of thinking is lateral thinking.
Image: Henry & Co
Vertical thinkers are usually not much help to a girl in this situation. If you were to examine the way they would analyze it, there are three possibilities:
The girl should refuse to take a pebble.
The girl should show that there are two black pebbles in the bag and expose the moneylender as a cheat.
The girl should take a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order to save her father from prison.
None of the suggestions is very helpful, for if the girl does take a pebble, then she has to marry the moneylender. If not, her father goes to prison.
Solution:
The girl in the story put her hand into the money bag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall to the path where it was immediately lost among all the others. “Oh how clumsy of me,” she said. “but never mind. If you look into the bag, you will be able to tell which pebble I took by the color of the one that is remaining.”
Since the remaining pebble is, of course, black, it must be assumed that she has taken the white pebble, since the moneylender dare not admit his dishonesty.
That’s what’s called lateral thinking. It not only solves problems, but it also improves the situation.
It is a well-established yet always surprising bit of knowledge that the answer to even most pressing problem (provided, of course that it lies within the realm of human solution) is usually at hand. It requires, however, a different kind of insight to see it.
What is Lateral Thinking?
Lateral thinking was first coined by Dr. Edward de Bono in 1967, who is a pioneer in Brain Training and Nobel Prize nominee in 2005. When one can not find a solution to a problem through deductive or logical reasoning, it is called lateral thinking. Simply put, it is the ability to come up with an original answer to an arduous undertaking.
Dr. de Bono describes lateral thinking as “a set of processes that provides a deliberate, systematic way of thinking creatively that results in innovative thinking in a repeatable manner.” Whereas critical thinking is mainly focused on “judging the true value of statements and seeking errors,” lateral thinking is more about the "movement value of statements and ideas.” When you employ this type of thinking, you move from one known idea to creating new ideas.
Dr. de Bono has defined four main categories of lateral thinking tools:
Idea-generating tools: break free your current thinking patterns from their usual pathways.
Focus tools: open your mind to new possibilities in the search for new ideas.
Harvest tools: help maximize value is received from the idea-generating output.
Treatment tools: ground the creativity process by making wild ideas and make them fit the real-world constraints, resources, and support.
“If you haven't heard of Edward de Bono or of Lateral Thinking, perhaps you have been too busy thinking in conventional ways.”
Forbes Magazine
How to make lateral thinking work for you?
According to Dr. de Bono, lateral thinking can be used in three situations.
In Solving Problems: Lateral thinking can be used to discover alternative ways of defining the problem and starting to think about it in a broader sense. We can train our brains to be more naturally creative and discover better solutions to known problems.
In Finding New Approaches: The best possible way of doing things in life or business is not likely the best. We either have created a particular way of doing things ourselves or have been told to do so (i.e., when joining a new company). In such cases, most probably, there are other ways to do those activities more effectively and efficiently. That is where the techniques from Lateral Thinking come into the practice to find new approaches to improve ourselves and achieve our business goals.
In Innovation And Inventions: On occasions, Inventors and Creatives will need to focus their creativity towards the process of Invention, which could be thinking from a “blank page” state, not improving the current product/service. Thus, Lateral Thinking helps thinkers to solve a problem that is not yet known by selecting their starting point.
Everyone has the capability to add transformational value through lateral thinking to what they do, especially in times of crisis. Since coronavirus took over the world, many businesses stopped functioning and went in a hibernation mood. However, a Portland dance club approached the pandemic situation differently and took advantage of its infrastructure to renovate the business model. They pivoted to a food delivery service called "Boober Eats." Shon Boulden the owner of Lucky Devil Lounge and now the new owner of Boober Eats said that they are now a delivery service company. Shon managed to find an innovative approach to solve the current social distancing challenge without much damage to the business. In the new business model, he changed the security guards to drivers, dancers to food delivery, half-busy cooks to full-time cooks, and bartenders to customer service to attend calls and update social media.
Paul Sloane, business strategist and author of the book Think Like an Innovator, in an article published on The Telegraph on the 6th of April 2020, says: “……Every recession creates a sea change in behaviour, and there are opportunities for nimble, agile companies. We saw that in 2008 with companies that switched from selling software to selling software-as-a-service, like Salesforce.” He continues by stating that it is worth using lateral thinking techniques to puzzle out what the “new” world might look like after the crisis. Meanwhile, Phil Jones, Brother UK’s managing director, shares how he uses lateral thinking to find solutions to the current problems: “So I use a tool called a priority matrix. It’s a simple nine-by-nine grid, where I rank problems by whether they’re easy, medium or hard to solve, and by how important they are to the company. It means my brain isn’t overwhelmed.”
Do not let the acquired wisdom stand in your way! You should be able to adapt to the changing world and look way beyond what is your default.
In conclusion, we need different types of approaches to solve problems. As Albert Einstein said: “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” That is why lateral thinking techniques have been developed to assist us to overcome our natural proclivity of being 'locked' into patterns and permit us to be creative on demand. So the next time you come across a problem, why not using lateral thinking to find a solution.
Sources: Earl Nightingale, Forbes Magazine, Dr. de Bono’s Website, Telegraph Media Group