There was this old horse that pulled a buggy around a park by where my grandparents used to live. I remember looking at him and noticing that he had been fit with blinders that didn’t let him look to his sides; day after day this horse was led through the same streets with only a view of the road that lie ahead.
Not that I’m comparing anyone to our equine friend; but when it comes to our problem solving skills, we have a lot in common with our four legged friend’s view of the World. Nothing to the sides; eyes fixed to the front on the same old road.
Lateral thinking is concerned with perceptions; stepping away from how we normally approach problems. Have you ever heard of the expression: “Thinking Outside of the Box”? It’s a perfect description of how lateral thinking works.
Once we find a path to solving a problem we frequently stick to those existing ideas and approaches. This way of doing things creates a sense of certainty and uniformity of changing situations. By the same token, it makes it hard for us to think that there’s more than one way to skin a cat; when it comes to creative thinking we find ourselves being pulled back to our familiar patterns of doing things.
How do we sidestep our one-track mindsets?
Edward de Bono, a leading proponent of lateral thinking, says that we can use a technique called challenging. He states that: “Even in the simplest of situations there are many things to be challenged. There are aspects of the actual situation. Then there are the many concepts that are implicit in the situation. Then there is our ‘current thinking ‘about the actual situation.” To give an example, we might challenge something as simple of us going to the Supermarket, which may lead to new ways of how we buy groceries or pay for them.
There are a lot of things like this that we take for granted, de Bono proposes that we need to ask ourselves the three whys:
Why/A: this stands for ‘Alternatives’. We challenge uniqueness. Is this really the only way to do it? What alternatives might there be?
Why/B: this stands for ‘Because’. What are the reasons we do it this way? Are these reasons still valid? Can we escape from these reasons? Sometimes the reasons are historic and are no longer valid.
Why/C: this stands for ‘Cut’. Can we cut this? do we need to do this at all? What would happen if we simply dropped it?
Sometimes creative thinking doesn’t come from pulling new ideas out of the blue, but rather from looking at familiar concepts with different eyes and asking yourself, could there be something else behind this?
