Frameworks for thinking

The assumed answer is 'yes' because that is part of our definition of intelligence. An intelligent person is someone who seems more capable of thinking than other people.

Yet in my experience across a very wide range of people (from Downs Syndrome youngsters to Nobel price laureates; from four year olds to ninety year olds; from illiterate miner in South Africa to senior executive in the world's largest companies etc.) the obvious answer is not true.

There is analysis. This is the ability to understand t things. Certainly, intelligence, understanding and analysis do seem to go together. Yet someone may be very good at analysis and yet poor at design thinking or operational thinking. This is the thinking involved in making things happen. With 'design' you put thinking together to deliver a desired value. Excellence at analysis does not mean excellence at design. Some countries teach philosophy as part of the school curriculum. The intention is very good because the intention is to teach thinking. But philosophy teaches analysis not design thinking.

There is information. Intelligent people understand and absorb information more readily. So they tend to have more information to play with. Often the right information is a substitute for thinking. Intelligent people working in a field pick up the idiom of the field and become capable if juggling information in that field. The result can be a powerful new idea. But take that same mind and apply it to a totally new field and the generalised skill of thinking is not there.

Driving a car

Intelligence is like the horsepower of a car. This also includes all the other engineering. So intelligence is a 'potential' (which may be determined by the speed of transmission along the neurones in the brain). Thinking is like the 'skill' with which the car is driven. The driver of the fast car may, in time, acquire the skill needed to control the fast car. But this is not the same as 'driving skill' in its broad sense of reacting to conditions and other road users.

Thinking and intelligence do overlap in the area of understanding but can diverge in other areas. For example, an intelligent person may take up a view on a subject. This view may be determined by personal experience, emotions and even prejudice, The intelligence is the used to defend this view. The greater the intelligence the better the defence of the particular view. This is not good thinking. Good thinking would involve exploration of the subject, the

generation of alternative views, listening to the views of others, considering the context and purpose of the thinking - and then designing a way forward. Defence of a point of view, no matter how brilliant, is not enough.

Intentions and frameworks

There are general habits and intentions which good thinkers are supposed to have. These might include: considering all factors, generating alternatives, listening to others, defining the objective. While these may exist as intentions they are not necessarily used.

I once asked a group of 250 top women executives if it would be a good idea to pay women fifteen percent more than men for doing exactly the same job. Eighty six percent thought it an excellent ideas (and about time too!) I then asked the group to so a C&S. This is one of the simple attention directing tools we use in primary schools. It means directing attention to immediate consequences, short term consequences, medium term consequences and eventually long term consequences. In small groups the executives 'did a C&S'. As a result those in favour of the idea dropped from eighty six percent to fifteen percent. Yet each one of those people would have claimed that as a senior executive she looked at consequences all the time.

Paradoxically, it is the artificiality of the C&S tool that gives it power.

In a platinum min in South Africa there had been two hundred and ten fights every month between seven tribes working there. Susan Mackie and colleagues taught thinking to these completely illiterate miners who had never been to school for even one day. As a result the fights dropped from two hundred and ten to just four.

The attention directing tool of 'OPV' (Other People Views) forced workers to make an effort to understand the thinking of the other party. Fights simply dissolved.

Attitudes and intentions are very weak. Specific operating tools - even if they seem artificial - and much stronger. A task is defined and then carried out. The thinker carries out the task and then reacts to the improved perception.

According to David Perking of Harvard, ninety percent of the errors of thinking are errors of perception. According to Goedel's theorem you can never logically prove the starting point of your logic. The starting point is arbitrary perception. That is ehy perception is so important. That is why 'attention directing tools' are so powerful (for full information see www.debono.org)

Argument

For two thousand and for hundred years we have been happy with argument as a way of exploring a subject. We use argument in government, in the

courts of law and in business discussions. It is a crude, primitive and inefficient way of exploring a subject.

Argument is about case making and not about exploring a subject. In argument you have to start with a position. In exploration you end with a position. Argument does not design a way forward. Argument is about winning and losing a rampant egos. That is why many year ago I designed the 'parallel thinking' of Six Thinking Hats.

The Six Hats method is now widely used. It can reduce meeting time from thirty two days to two. One company saved twenty million dollars in the first year of use. Juries in the USA are starting to use the system and reaching unanimous decisions very quickly.

Some months ago I was told by a Nobel prize winner in economics that the week before he was attending a top economics meeting in Washington and they were using the 'Hats.' Last week in New Zealand a woman told me that she had been teaching the hats in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (the most underdeveloped region). They told her the method had changed their lives.

There is a huge amount that can be done to improve human thinking. Intelligence, information and analysis are not enough.