As I write this it is 34 degrees outside and rising! I am sure everyone has their own story about this summer’s challenging heatwave, brown lawns, hosepipe bans, not sleeping etc. Mine is about our feathered friends. I looked out of the window on our staircase last week onto yet another dry and scorching day to see three small birds drinking and bathing in some water that had dripped into a ground floor gutter from an air conditioning unit and become trapped by debris. Several things came together here unexpectedly which worked to the advantage of the birds. Firstly, we get the gutters cleaned every winter but clearly there had been an unusual build-up of dry leaves and twigs. Secondly, I had noticed the water and almost decided to clear the leaves and let it drain away but something else came up and I never did. Thirdly we had invested several years ago in the air conditioning, more to improve the air quality in our house than for our current heatwaves - but very useful all the same – and now it was producing an unanticipated benefit as its drain flowed into the gutter. All these factors came together to provide an unexpected, serendipitous solution for the thirsty birds in the drought. We do also have a more conventional bird bath, but this more lateral solution seemed to work well and appeal to the birds.
In our professional working lives, we sometimes follow such rigid plans and patterns that there is little room or even appetite for recognising and allowing innovative and unusual solutions to come to our rescue even in difficult circumstances. This is particularly true rather ironically if you are, for example, an experienced senior commercial or corporate lawyer going around the loop on an IT service contract or share purchase agreement for the umpteenth time. It is so easy to end up in the same stale arguments about limits of liability or vendor warranties. If a junior lawyer less immersed in the “normal” way of doing things tentatively proposes a different solution how often is this simply overlooked because they don’t have the requisite gravitas or experience?
Perhaps the classic example of this conundrum dates back to 1939 when a statistics graduate student George Dantzig at UC Berkeley arrived late to class and copied down two problems he thought were set as homework. He went home and while he found them difficult eventually solved the equations and handed them in – to the enormous surprise of his professor. They were not homework at all but two famous unsolved problems in statistical theory. It helped that the student never knew this was impossible and simply worked out the solutions. He succeeded because he did not have the preconceived belief that the problems were unsolvable.
AI proposes “Taking advantage of unexpected solutions requires dropping rigid assumptions, staying open to surprise, and rapidly testing ideas that initially look wrong or odd.” I found a book on this topic called The Art of Unexpected Solutions: Using Lateral Thinking to Find Breakthroughs by Paul Sloane – “this powerful guide reveals how openness to surprise can spark breakthroughs and redefine your approach to problem-solving. By taking risks and learning from unintended outcomes, you'll find unconventional solutions that drive innovation and set you apart from the competition.”
See also this Indeed article Creative problem solving: unlocking innovation in the workplace which proposes (perhaps paradoxically) that “Creative problem solving involves a structured process that encourages innovative thinking to find unique solutions to challenge.” It then suggests that after identifying and understanding the actual problem “the next step is to turn these issues into creative challenges. This means framing your questions to encourage ideas and suggestions.” Then you can generate and implement the ideas. Not rocket science but we often simply don’t do this in the heat of the moment.
However, this is more than just being innovative and “creative” as discussed in my blog last year The Creative Professional. It is about having the ability to “think laterally” to solve a problem. The concept of lateral thinking was originally coined by the Maltese physician and commentator Edward de Bono in 1967 in his book The Use of Lateral Thinking where he describe this ability to solve problems by imagining solutions that logic alone cannot reach, which matters most when standard playbooks (or thinking) stop working. In another book Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity he explains this quite subtle but clear distinction. “Lateral thinking is closely related to creativity. But whereas creativity is too often only the description of a result, lateral thinking is the description of a process. One can only admire a result but one can learn to use a process”. I was privileged to attend a talk he gave at the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London where he illustrated different ways of thinking with examples. When English drivers see a traffic light going from green to orange and then red, they slow down and stop. Italian drivers when they see the lights changing speed up to get through! He explained how the perspective on topics can change and drive solutions.
See this BetterUp article What is lateral thinking? 7 techniques to encourage creative ideas which cites Edward de Bono – “He proposed lateral thinking as a new way to move past our cognitive biases and be more inventive:
It proposes techniques to encourage this approach including ask why, consider all the alternatives, invite external stimuli and mind mapping (breaking a problem into smaller pieces). It concludes “Lateral thinking leads to more creative collaboration and greater innovation. You could also uncover inefficiencies in your business you never knew were there.”
Sometimes the solution to a problem requires this sort of "out of the box" lateral thinking as opposed to a more conventional approach. An Alaskan telecoms company once had a difficult operational challenge - its telegraph lines became covered with snow every winter and eventually collapsed. It summonsed all its managers to brainstorm the problem, and they were encouraged to say what they thought no matter how far-fetched or ridiculous it might appear. One attendee jokingly said they should get a grizzly bear to go from post to post shaking the snow off. "How can we make a bear move?" asked somebody else. "Drive it along with a helicopter." came the reply. And then they realised the answer to their conundrum: fly a helicopter low along the lines and let the wind created by its rotors blow the snow off. Later engineers even developed helicopter-mounted devices that mechanically vibrated or brushed the lines to knock the ice loose.
"You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper." — Edward de Bono.
“If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." — Henry Ford.
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." — Albert Einstein.
In our professional working lives, we sometimes follow such rigid plans and patterns that there is little room or even appetite for recognising and allowing innovative and unusual solutions to come to our rescue even in difficult circumstances. This is particularly true rather ironically if you are, for example, an experienced senior commercial or corporate lawyer going around the loop on an IT service contract or share purchase agreement for the umpteenth time. It is so easy to end up in the same stale arguments about limits of liability or vendor warranties. If a junior lawyer less immersed in the “normal” way of doing things tentatively proposes a different solution how often is this simply overlooked because they don’t have the requisite gravitas or experience?
Perhaps the classic example of this conundrum dates back to 1939 when a statistics graduate student George Dantzig at UC Berkeley arrived late to class and copied down two problems he thought were set as homework. He went home and while he found them difficult eventually solved the equations and handed them in – to the enormous surprise of his professor. They were not homework at all but two famous unsolved problems in statistical theory. It helped that the student never knew this was impossible and simply worked out the solutions. He succeeded because he did not have the preconceived belief that the problems were unsolvable.
AI proposes “Taking advantage of unexpected solutions requires dropping rigid assumptions, staying open to surprise, and rapidly testing ideas that initially look wrong or odd.” I found a book on this topic called The Art of Unexpected Solutions: Using Lateral Thinking to Find Breakthroughs by Paul Sloane – “this powerful guide reveals how openness to surprise can spark breakthroughs and redefine your approach to problem-solving. By taking risks and learning from unintended outcomes, you'll find unconventional solutions that drive innovation and set you apart from the competition.”
See also this Indeed article Creative problem solving: unlocking innovation in the workplace which proposes (perhaps paradoxically) that “Creative problem solving involves a structured process that encourages innovative thinking to find unique solutions to challenge.” It then suggests that after identifying and understanding the actual problem “the next step is to turn these issues into creative challenges. This means framing your questions to encourage ideas and suggestions.” Then you can generate and implement the ideas. Not rocket science but we often simply don’t do this in the heat of the moment.
However, this is more than just being innovative and “creative” as discussed in my blog last year The Creative Professional. It is about having the ability to “think laterally” to solve a problem. The concept of lateral thinking was originally coined by the Maltese physician and commentator Edward de Bono in 1967 in his book The Use of Lateral Thinking where he describe this ability to solve problems by imagining solutions that logic alone cannot reach, which matters most when standard playbooks (or thinking) stop working. In another book Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity he explains this quite subtle but clear distinction. “Lateral thinking is closely related to creativity. But whereas creativity is too often only the description of a result, lateral thinking is the description of a process. One can only admire a result but one can learn to use a process”. I was privileged to attend a talk he gave at the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London where he illustrated different ways of thinking with examples. When English drivers see a traffic light going from green to orange and then red, they slow down and stop. Italian drivers when they see the lights changing speed up to get through! He explained how the perspective on topics can change and drive solutions.
See this BetterUp article What is lateral thinking? 7 techniques to encourage creative ideas which cites Edward de Bono – “He proposed lateral thinking as a new way to move past our cognitive biases and be more inventive:
- Vertical thinking, the opposite of lateral thinking according to de Bono, is reason-based. You gather all available data and move sequentially from one step to the next until you reach a logical conclusion. This is what he says the human brain does naturally.
- Lateral thinking instead combines imagination and intuition. You consciously try to generate ideas and scenarios that imagine uncertainties outside the information you already have. It places more importance on the ideas themselves and doesn’t dwell on the outcome until later.”
It proposes techniques to encourage this approach including ask why, consider all the alternatives, invite external stimuli and mind mapping (breaking a problem into smaller pieces). It concludes “Lateral thinking leads to more creative collaboration and greater innovation. You could also uncover inefficiencies in your business you never knew were there.”
Sometimes the solution to a problem requires this sort of "out of the box" lateral thinking as opposed to a more conventional approach. An Alaskan telecoms company once had a difficult operational challenge - its telegraph lines became covered with snow every winter and eventually collapsed. It summonsed all its managers to brainstorm the problem, and they were encouraged to say what they thought no matter how far-fetched or ridiculous it might appear. One attendee jokingly said they should get a grizzly bear to go from post to post shaking the snow off. "How can we make a bear move?" asked somebody else. "Drive it along with a helicopter." came the reply. And then they realised the answer to their conundrum: fly a helicopter low along the lines and let the wind created by its rotors blow the snow off. Later engineers even developed helicopter-mounted devices that mechanically vibrated or brushed the lines to knock the ice loose.
"You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper." — Edward de Bono.
“If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." — Henry Ford.
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." — Albert Einstein.
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