Today 400 members joined VPSCIN Chair and Dept of Transport Secretary, Jim Betts in welcoming Edward de Bono back to the VPSCIN stage to talk about techniques the public sector can apply to become more innovative.
Dr de Bono commenced by describing a historical background to the way we think. This has been handed down from the “Greek Gang Of Three”: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates advocated the use of language as a means to understand the world. Plato encouraged us all to seek out underlying “truth”. Aristotle believed in drawing distinctions - seeing the world in black and white rather than shades of grey. Together they gave us a system of thought that today underpins our law, government and society.
The whole purpose of this type of thinking is to point out error and find fault. If we can remove errors, it is assumed, then we have the truth. Finding and pointing out error has been the basis of Western thinking for 2,400 years. Hence our obsession with problem-solving.
He then described how the brain functions as a asymmetric patterning system and how it is this lack of symmetry which gives rise to both creativity and humour. It is this same characteristic that makes it difficult for linear thinkers to understand that very different types of thinking are required for consistent and serious creativity.
Good new ideas and innovations are always logical in hindsight, however they cannot be seen with foresight without new and novel ways of thinking that go beyond the traditional argument, logic and criticism that dominate our thinking. These types of thinking are referred to by Dr de Bono as EBNE (excellent but not enough).
Innovation in Government cannot come from policy papers and plans but rather from a far more fundamental shift in the way we think. Bureaucratic mindsets based solely around assumptions of cause and effect, logic, criticism, risk and argument need to be complemented with increasing levels of design thinking which move us away from talking and planning ad infinitum to a level of Operacy in which we do things and make things happen based on our design thinking.
Many of the now famous tools for design thinking that have been developed by Dr de Bono over the years were briefly described, including the Lateral Thinking tools, Challenge, Concept Extraction, Provocation and Random Entry and the multiple perspective parallel thinking of the Six Thinking Hats.
The session was exceptionally well received and participant feedback can be seen by clicking here.
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