How to be a better thinker

“Thinking is the operating skill with which intelligence acts upon experience.” — Edward de Bono

There’s a prevailing myth that being intelligent is the equivalent to being a good thinker. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the two concepts, one that often leads to poor decision-making and bad outcomes.

Edward de Bono, renowned author, consultant, psychologist and advocate of teaching thinking as a subject in schools, says:

One of the biggest faults of thinking is its use to back up an opinion that has already been formed. This is one form of the intelligence trap, because highly intelligent people suffer from it more than others. If you know you are right and can easily demonstrate this to others, why explore the topic from other points of view?

Think about a recurrent disagreement you have with someone you know. Whenever you engage with this person on this topic, you both argue and push your point across. Talking seems to do nothing but increasingly entrench both of you in your respective opinions, and everything that's said seems to be in service of your point of view. Eventually, the argument ends out of sheer burnout or surrender. You move on, but the next time it happens, it's the exact same cycle.

Probably not conducive to a healthy relationship long term.

In the business world, poor thinking can lead to just as disastrous results. Giant, dominant multinational companies have crumbled at the helm of leaders who were caught in subpar thinking loops and an obstinacy to exploring alternative solutions. 

Take a look at Blackberry. Once the Apple of the world, Blackberry fell into obscurity due to failure to adapt, stubbornness to assess the competition, and lack of consumer insight. Much could be written on the subject, but one might say that poor thinking and the resulting lack of foresight drove the reason that led the former giant to now hold only 0.3% of the smartphone market today.

Better thinking leads to better problem solving. It allows us to be more effective in our work. Companies with better thinkers at the helm tend to be more adaptable and anti-fragile to shifts and changes in the market, competitors and new technologies.

The good news is, good thinking can be taught. Lateral thinking is the term for how this can be done systematically and pragmatically.

Is it better thinking just a matter of practice?

Let’s take the example of a secretary who types with two fingers for the better part of 60 years. Despite doing the same thing day in day out for her entire life, at no point does she become a better typist for it.

Take the same secretary and put her in a touch typing course, even later in life. Through illumination of a superior method and sustained application, she would become a better typist with increased speed and accuracy.

This simple example speaks to the importance of paying direct attention to the practice and tools of thinking if we are to get better at it.

What if we had a tool that helped us bypass our judgement and emotional reactivity to a topic, and in doing so letting us break out of our pre-conceived paradigms and patterns, generate new ideas and solve challenging problems in new and different ways?

It's not only possible, but the tools you can use to do so are deceptively simple. One of those tools is the PMI tool, which I'll go into below.

PMI: Pluses, Minuses, Interesting

P stands for Plus or the positive points.

M stands for Minus or the negative points.

I stands for Interesting or interesting points.

The simpleness of the PMI tool belies its effectiveness. It is an attention-directing tool. In performing a PMI, you deliberately direct your attention first toward the Plus points, then the Minus points, and then the Interesting points.

In using a tool like the PMI, we’re able to insert a small but critical gap between our brain’s reception of information and our reaction to it.

Let’s put this into practice.

You are tasked with teaching thinking skills to a group of 30 young elementary school boys. At the start of the lesson, you ask them to tell you what they think about the idea of receiving $20 a week, just for going to school.

The boys love this idea, and immediately start excitedly sharing what they’d do with the extra $20 — buying candy, toys, games, etc.

You then explain the PMI tool, get them to divide up into groups and apply this tool to the $20 suggestion.

You may get results like the below.

Positives

• Having more money will allow the boys to purchase fun things
• Truancy may drop due to boys being more incentivized to attend class
• The money will give boys of lower socio-economic status slightly more financial means

Minuses

• Bigger boys may beat up the smaller boys and take the money
• Parents may no longer give the boys presents or pocket money
• Teachers at the school would get paid less if the school’s budget was being used towards this end
• Conflicts may arise around how much each age and grade level would receive in terms of payment
• Money may be conflated with learning leading to lower value placed on learning

Interesting

• Interesting to see if school marks would go up, down or stay the same
• Interesting to see if the money would keep kids coming to school, or if the value would fade with time
• Interesting to see what lifelong money habits would arise in the children as a result of 'free handouts' being given

de Bono actually did this exercise with a real life group of school boys. While initially 30 out of the 30 boys thought this was a great idea, 29 of them actually reversed their thinking afterward and disliked it afterward. This was with no intervention on deBono's part or judgement, but simply having the boys perform this exercise amongst themselves.

The PMI is only one of many thinking tools, and its utility lies in its potential. The core difference in using such a tool is that emotions are now applied after the exploration vs. before and in doing so preventing exploration — allowing all of us to reach enrichment through exploration, rather than restriction through judgement.

So next time when asked to make a decision at work, or share your view on an important matter, consider doing a PMI first. The difference going off the first thing that comes to your head and taking a moment can mean everything. I'd love to hear the results.