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Meetings take up a lot of time. They can be a drain on your time and your organisation's resources. Meetings become more about activity than productive outcomes. We have been working with a number of teams to improve their effectiveness in meetings. Below are some of the strategies that have made a difference.
Strategy 1 - For each agenda item, place a thinking verb in front, for example generate ideas, make a decision, share information. Determining the thinking outcome helps you to prepare for the agenda item and gets the team thinking in the same direction instead of one person trying to find out more, another wanting to solve a problem, another generating ideas etc which leads to debate and often taking the team off the task. E-mail: mail@debono.org for a thinking verb list.
Hello, I have been asked a few times what is Waterlogic. It is a very useful visual system for solving complex problems.
de Bono: "We need to be able to take things in at a glance. We need to know where to focus attention. Reading through narrative data is far too slow and cumbersome. Visual devices such as pie-charts are useful in illustrating data but is not the same as displaying data. A pie-chart will illustrate relative proportions but will not itself put the pie-chart in context. What we need is complete data, including context, at a glance. This needs to go beyond diagrams with lots of arrows. Some such diagrams are more difficult to understand than narrative data."
The 'flowscapes from the book 'WATER LOGIC' illustrate perpetual maps but again do not display data as such.
When approaching a complex problem, it is often difficult fo keep in mind the many factors involved and to retain a clear view of how they relate to one another. In the book Waterlogic de Bono puts forward a new method for problem solving.
De Bono contends that traditional logic is static, based on the solid foundations of 'is' and identity. In contrast to this traditional 'rock logic', he proposes 'water logic' which is based on 'to' and the flow of the mind: "What does this lead to?" as opposed to "What is...?" This new logic is surprisingly easy to learn and use, and results in a visual 'flowscape', which allows you to lay our and then look at your thinking.
This is a story about life. Starting, growing, and living.
In 1997, the de Bono Institute was born out of the generosity of the Andrews Foundation and the vision of Max Dumais. It started life with a mission to teach thinking to as broad a community as possible, through research, education and consulting. It reached out to business, schools and organisations of a vastly different type.
It used the de Bono tools, methodologies and framework to empower those it taught in the wonders of thinking on a higher level. It was named the de Bono Institute after its founder and inspiration, Dr Edward de Bono.
In its rush to spread the news and share its vision, it did not realise that it had outgrown its clothes and now bursting its seams needed a new wardrobe. In those early days of conception and childhood, it did not know how much its direction would change.
The direction was to split the institute into two separate entities:
The de Bono Institute a non for profit organization dedicatedthe education of the students in schools. Commissions research and development of Edward de Bono’s work in education. de Bono Plus a commercial organisation. Undertakes research, development, consulting and facilitation for programs and projects focusing on creativity, design thinking and innovation
We now have new clothes that fit our spirit. We are ready to change another world.
