Think Better

Tim Hurson

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Part 1. Why think better
 “Imagination is the beginning of creation: you
imagine what you desire, you will what you
imagine, and at last you create what you will.”
George Bernard Shaw
 In 1969 Peter Druker coined the term knowledge
economy in his book The Age of Discontinuity. (9)
 The ability to think better will soon become the
most significant competitive advantage… (10)
 Caterpillar experiment (14)
 “It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s
what you know that ain’t so.” Will Rogers.
 Most of the time your brain is involved in just one
of three activities: distraction (monkey mind),
reaction (gator mind), or following well-worn
patterns (The elephant’s Tether)
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Part 1. Why think better
 Cerebral cortex, called higher order thinking…
but despite its enormous power and potential,
it turnout that may have a lot less influence on
the way you behave (20) … the other two
parts of your brain – the more primitive parts –
are the limbic system, sometimes called the
mammalian brain, and the stem brain.
 The limbic system is concerned primarily with
generating emotional responses to sensory
input. (21)
 The stem brain, an even more primitive
structure, processes and reacts to sensory 3
input.
Part 2. PRODUCTIVE THINKING IN
PRINCIPLE
 Wetheimer (Gestalt):what we perceived is not
simply the sum of the things that stimulate our
senses but semthing different…(37)
 “Good is enemy of great” Jim Collins
 Reproductive thinking is a way to generate what is
known (kaizen); it aims for efficiency. Productive
thinking is a way to generate the new; it aims for
insight (tenkaizen).
 Productive thinking consists in two distinct thinking
skills: creative thinking and critical…(45)
 Creative thinking: generative, expansive,
nonjudmental.
 Critical thinking: analytic, judmental and selective. 4
Part 2. PRODUCTIVE THINKING IN
PRINCIPLE
 Staying in the question means being okay with the
ambiguos. Being okay with ambiguity means being
open to the possible. (55)
 …we no rush to answers but to hang back, to keep
questioning even when answers seem obvious.
 Necker Cube, discovered in 1832 by Swiss Louis
Albert Necker.
 Walter Mischel has demonstrated that we tend to
classify people according to certain fundamental
character traits, or cognitive prototypes, rather
than seeing them as complex personalities with
highly variable behaviors that depend on the
situations they are in, their moods, their states of
health, and so on.. A kind of “reducing valve” (59)
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Part 2. PRODUCTIVE THINKING IN
PRINCIPLE
 Satisficing: proposed in 1950s by Herbert Simon. It
describes the condition of being so uncomfortable
with an unresolved or problem state that we jump
to the first answer to puts us put of our misery.
Once we land on that answer, we tend to stick to
it. (63)
 Alex Osborn, who invented the concept of
brainstorming in 1941, developed a list of four
essential rules for an effective brainstorming
sesssion:
 Freewheeling is welcomed. The wilder the idea, the
better; it’s easier to tame down than to think up
 Quantity is wanted. The greater the number of ideas,
the more the likelihood of useful ideas.
 Combination and improvement are sought. In 6
addition to contributing ideas of their own, participants
should suggest how the ideas of others can be turned
Part 2. PRODUCTIVE THINKING IN
PRINCIPLE
 Bad brainstorming is binary; ideas are either
good or bad. God brainstorming is full of
maybes. (74)
 Kenosis (self-emptying): you must empty
yourself before you can fill yourself again.

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3. PRODUCTIVE THINKING IN THEORY
1. What’s going on?
A. What’s the itch?
B. What’s the impact?
C. What’s the information?

D. Who’s involved?
E. What’s the Vision?
2. What’s success?
3. What’s the Question? Catalytic Question
4. Generate Answers
5. Forge the solution
A. Evaluate most promising 4. ideas = success criteria
B. Once you have chosen the idea, stress-test, improve
an refine
6. Align resources 8
3. PRODUCTIVE THINKING IN THEORY
A. List the action steps required to completed the
solutions
B. Identify people who support or obstacles.
C. Each action step has someone accountable for
its completion
D. Put the steps in order
E. Identify additional action steps needed to
acquire the resources for each step and assign
accountabilities
F. Identify and record observable outcomes