Armaghan Saqib

Too often, when facing a problem or crisis, we start thinking that we don’t have more choices. This thinking, sometime, can lead to depression and possibly to failure. The lateral thinking law “proof is no more than the lack of imagination” says that if we can’t find any alternative, it is not because we have run out of alternatives or possibilities but because our imagination is limited.

There is always an alternate, possibility or choice which we are not able to think of at that particular moment.

APC is another thinking tool created by Edward deBono. APC stands for “alternatives, possibilities and choices”. I consider it one of the most useful tool for my own use and have benefited a lot by its regular application. Doing an “APC” forces you to consciously put some effort to look for alternatives. (It is an “attention directing” thinking tool.)

As with other thinking tools, initially you practice APC on trivial matters or fun situations. Once you get more comfortable you can start using it in your daily routine.

To learn and practice this tool, you write down any alternatives for a particular situation or action on a piece of paper. Discipline for thinking tools requires you to do this exercise within a pre-defined time period, mostly within 1-3 minutes.

During this practice you don’t allow your judgment to come into your thinking. You just keep thinking what are the other possibilities and list them. Once you have a list of possibilities, you can apply your judgment to select the appropriate one.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kretyen/2628104710/

Creative pause is perhaps the simplest creativity tool. Instead of jumping to a response immediately you deliberately pause your thinking for few seconds or a minute. The purpose of this pause is to break the default functionality of our brain to jump to a conclusion immediately.

During this pause you let the inputs fully register with you. You may also do basic APC (alternatives, possibilities and choices) but it is not necessary. The very act of creative pause will help you to land on a new idea instead of getting trapped in our usual way of thinking.

I must point out that though creative pause looks easy but it is not. You require a lot of discipline to break the habit of jumping to a conclusion immediately and pause for few seconds before doing so.

In our usual thinking practices we are not very particular about the consequence of our decisions in long term. Immediate future is what we always think. (Stock market is a good example of our short term thinking)

With C & S we think of Consequences and Sequels of a particular action or decision in four time zones: (1) Immediate, (2) short-term, (3), medium-term and (4) long Term. The exact period of these time zones depends upon the current situation of action.

For example when deciding to eat junk food C&S time zones can be ‘right now’, ‘tomorrow’, ’1 month’, ’1 year’. Thinking about joining a university C&S time zones can be ‘right now’, ’6 months’, ’4 years’, ’20 years’.

Please note:

• C & S aims to make it easier for you to think in long term.
• All C & S results are speculative because no one knows future.

C & S on facebook usage in business and personal life can be something like this:

Immediate (up to 2 years):

Every one is crazy to join and take advantage of it. Benefits are over-stated by everyone. Businesses and consultancies are being built to teach facebook. A lot of books are being written about facebook. Personal use is soaring thus further fueling its popularity.

A few businesses are prospering by taking advantage of facebook capabilities. A lot more have yet to figure out how to use it for profit. Even more business are hesitant to use it fearing the leakage of trade secrets, customer information and user feed back.

Employees are addicted and spending lot more time. People prefer it over traditional online marketing tools like mailing lists, forums and newsletters.

Short term (2 – 5 years):

Facebook is still popular but people are much more relaxed about its benefits and know its limitations. Everyone knows how to use it. Social media teaching/consulting business is down. People are now considering it as one of the tool rather than the only tool. Some unpleasant events due to privacy leaks have made some people skeptic of its value. People now make sure their kids don’t use it unsupervised. More tools are available to check the credibility of people which you can use before accepting a ‘friend request’.

The traditional online marketing tools (mailing lists, forums, newsletters) are gaining a spot again. Personal use is stable or declining after people are realizing facebook is not the replacement for the real life socializing. Facebook has become more of a communication medium rather than a social place to meet.

People are posting serious updates now. Status messages like ‘whats on the lunch’ and ‘whats the mood’ are now frowned upon. Everyone is tired of all quotable quotes posted on facebook but no one voices his opposition.

Applications and tools, which help you to minimize your facebook time, are thriving. Most facebook interactions are from a desktop client (Outlook, Thunderbird or something similar.)

Medium term (5 – 10 years):

Facebook is popular but in a different way. New facebook features have made it possible to add all sort of new widgets and design elements to personalize your business presence just like a web page. No one pays anyone (except designers) to use social media for their business. A large number of free themes are available which can be installed with a point and click.

A competitor of facebook has become popular. This new competitor offers very strong privacy control for your friends lists. People are using more and more of traditional online tools (mailing lists, forums, newsletters.) Google is able to break into facebook market with a simpler tool and a built-in client in its chrome browser.

Long term (10 – 20 years):

There are a number of technologies which are better and simpler to manage your social interactions than facebook. Facebook still exists but usage is declining fast. People are predicting its fate. Google’s ‘facebook’ is stable.

People use facebook (or similar tools) on their smart phones (everyone has one now) only. Smart phones have innovative advertising models which have attracted facebook advertisers. Traditional online tools (web-pages, forums, mailing lists, blogs) are still recording stable growth.

There are other new things to get addicted to.

Exercises: Do C & S on following situations:

• Selecting a school for your kid’s education.
• Joining a university for your further education.
• Eating pizza every day.

Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sprengben/4486555712/

Consider All Factors (or CAF) is another attention directing thinking tool. CAF is used to scan our experience when confronting a new situation similar to a past one.

Our usual attitude of considering possible factors is not helpful. We may leave out important factors or even forget completely. ‘Doing a CAF’ forces us to do concrete effort to look back to our experiences.

While doing a CAF we keep thinking what we may have forgotten. This ensures we consider as many factors as possible. As with other thinking tools we allow 2-5 minutes to do this scan.

Another important aspect of doing CAF is that we are not trying to judge or evaluate at this stage. We are just in the scan mode. The evaluation aspect comes later with another tool C&S. (consequences and sequels.)

For example when buying a used laptop we may consider:

1. size of screen, scratches, dead pixels
2. weight, dimensions
3. heat emitted during use
4. memory, hard disk (capacity), accessories (card reader, microphone, camera etc.)
5. things which can be upgraded (ram, hard disk)
6. battery life
7. availability of new battery and other spares
8. reviews on Internet
9. brand
10. bag
11. cd or dvd writer
12. months/years in use
13. any remaining warranty
14. device drivers availability
15. bundled operating system

Or when applying for a job, we may do the following CAF:

1. salary/allowances
2. medical coverage
3. insurance
4. bonuses
5. other contract terms/termination notice period
6. learning opportunities
7. stated work time and actual work time
8. travel time from home to office and office to home
9. daily traveling expenses
10. means to reach the job place
11. small business, family owned, corporation, multi-national
12. contract or permanent
13. opportunities to grow and learn
14. good will and brand recognition of the employer
15. job title you will be assigned
16. corporate ethics
17. traveling/field work involved
18. lunch time, availability, arrangement

As an exercise, do a CAF on changing your current job, profession or business. Time allowed: 6 minutes max.

I have mentioned Dr. Edward de Bono‘s lateral thinking tools many times here. These tools direct your attention to a particular aspect of thinking by asking you to do PMI (plus, minus, interesting), APC (alternatives, possibilities and choices), OPV (other people views) etc.

People often ask what is the big deal with these tools? Any good thinker can look into pros and cons and can identify alternatives without knowing about these tools. So why thinking tools?

It is true good thinkers can do all the good thinking without thinking tools. But good thinkers are rare and asking to do a particular kind of thinking all the time without a mnemonic is difficult if not impossible. And kids love thinking tools.

Thinking tools make it formal and simpler to ask anyone (or yourself) to do a particular kind of thinking. Asking everyone to do PMI in a meeting saves a lot of time. People will know that a good PMI includes equal emphasis on plus, minus as well as interesting aspects.

Without PMI we may favor ‘plus’ or ‘minus’ (whatever our past experience suggests).

Most of us have made life changing decisions in a matter of minutes or even seconds. Just scan your past and you will find many examples. This happened because we were forced to do that due to unexpected turn of events. This also means that we are capable of making good decisions in the shortest possible time.

But in our day to day life, we keep thinking over and over again about small issues. Thinking time can span days or even months. This has one huge problem: we keep postponing the real action.

The time discipline of thinking tools liberates you from this thinking rut. You are asked to practice a particular tool (PMI for example) within 1-5 minutes. With some practices, you brain adopts this discipline for your day to day thinking and helps you become a doer rather than a philosopher.

There are times when, despite all your intelligence and experience, you make a really big blunder and then keep regretting it for a long time. You are just bewildered how on earth you did that. But it has happened and now get over it. And you have a big company.

Why this happens? This is not stupidity. This is due to the way our brain works as a pattern making and pattern matching system. All new incoming information is matched to existing brain patterns. A particular sequence of events can trigger a potentially unfavorable pattern in our brain. A con artist can use his skills to make our brain’s pattern matching system work to his advantage.

Edward de Bono’s thinking tools can help you to cut across existing brain patterns instead of matching these. The three important tools to help you in tricky situations are APC, CAF and PMI.

APC stands for alternatives, possibilities and choices.
CAF stands for consider all factors.
PMI stands for plus, minus, interesting.

To apply each tool, you list as many points as possible within 1 – 3 minutes without bringing your judgment into the thinking process. Spend some time on practicing these tools with a paper and a pencil. Simplicity of these tools and few days of practice will make it possible for you to use these in real life situations without much effort.

Let us avoid the next big blunder.

(Photo credit: lolsnaps.com)

Examine Both Sides (or E.B.S for short) is a simplified form of O.P.V which involves you and the other person’s (or group) thinking. For the duration of this tool application, you put yourself in the shoes of the other party and try to read his mind. As with O.P.V you are not trying what the other party should think but what he or she is thinking based upon his wishes and environment.

Practicing this tool is same as practicing other thinking tools. You set a time limit (2-5 minutes) and write down first your thinking and then other persons’ thinking.

Practicing this tool before a job interview or a business deal can increase your success rate. You understand the other side better and you prepare better.

A small business owner, I have worked with, is extremely good at doing E.B.S. His employees always remark that when they go to him for something he would already know what they were going to discuss or demand. So he always has counter arguments (or a solution) ready.

With E.B.S you are not forced to think humbly or cruelly. You just do your best possible effort to examine the thinking of both parties involved.

Exercises:

1. Your spouse wants you to go for a morning walk. You prefer to stay at home to study a book. Examine both sides and write down the thoughts of both parties (you and your spouse)
2. Your brother (who is also your business partner) wants to do aggressive marketing to get new customers. You want to focus on satisfying existing customers. Do an E.B.S.
3. You want your son (or daughter) to read books. He (or she) wants to watch moves or play video games. Do an E.B.S.

Attention directing thinking tool OPV stands for ‘Other People’s Views‘. To practice this tool in a given situation;

1. List the people involved or affected by a particular situation or thinking.
2. List the views of each person involved. For this put yourself in each person’s shoes and imagine what he thinks.

As with any thinking exercise, time allowed for this is very short from 3-5 minutes (or bit more if the list of people involved is bit longer)

Note that with OPV you do not list what other people should think, but what they will think on their own. You are not trying to impose your thinking, you are trying to read their minds.

Exercises:

1. You are owner of a business. Your organization provides free lunch to all staff. You are thinking to discontinue this free lunch. Do an OPV. (List the people affected and what they will think)
2. You are tired of your job which is getting you nowhere in future. You just decide to take risk, quit your job and spend a year to build your own business or find a new job. Do an OPV for your wife, father, mother and a close friend.
3. Your employer stops the free medical care because a number of people were misusing it. Do an OPV for employees who were misusing it and for those who were fair.

Floating black balls on water surface; a novel idea to stop sunlight reaching towards a huge open water reservoir. Amazing.