One of my heroes has always been Edward de Bono.
He’s the man who coined the phrase ‘lateral thinking’.
Lateral thinking is the truest kind of creative thinking.
What most of us do is vertical thinking.
We have a thought, and see if it gets agreement.
If it does, we build on that thought.
Then we see if that thought gets more agreement.
If it does, we build another thought on that thought.
And we keep building, thought on thought.
As long as we get agreement.
We never go anywhere really fresh, because we have to get agreement for every incremental thought.
De Bono maintained that the problem with our thinking was that we were limited by a yes/no response.
We offer up a thought, and someone will either say yes or no.
If our thought is recognisably sensible, they say yes, and we carry on thinking in that line.
If our thought isn’t recognizably sensible, they say no.
And we stop, abandon that route and look elsewhere.
So actually we are using thinking as a means of seeking approval.
Not for exploration or discovery.
He said what was needed was a third response.
One that would encourage exploration of ideas that weren’t recognizably sensible yet.
One that would stimulate thinking without judgement.
He called this response ‘PO’.
Short for ‘possible’.
And this response would mean “Well this thought doesn’t make sense yet. But let’s see where it goes, how far we can push it, how much juice there is in it, before we make a decision.”
This encourages thinking as a process of discovery rather than ticking boxes.
It almost demands that your start point is something that would seem ridiculous according to conventional thinking.
You see the mind is a machine for coming up with answers.
The mind’s job is to make sense of things.
So if we start off with a sensible answer there really isn’t anywhere creative left to go.
But suppose we start off with something absolutely ridiculous.
Then, as the mind tries to make sense of it, some really interesting things might crop up.
That’s why we need PO.
To give us the space to be ridiculous before it gets killed by the need to be predictably sensible.
So that’s the theory, how would it work in the real world?
Well, for instance, one evening at the agency we were sitting around working on the Third World debt crisis.
This is a crisis brought about by the world’s banks, not governments.
To solve it, the banks would have to write off their debts.
How could we make the banks want to write off their debts?
How could we even get the message into the banks?
We had no client and no money.
Plus which there’s no media inside the banks.
We were stuck in a rut and we couldn’t see a way out.
The previous week we’d been to a de Bono lecture, so we thought we’d try his technique.
One of the guys said, “PO: you could get the Royal Mint to print on every tenth coin ‘Give This Coin To The Third World”.
Now, on the face of it, that’s a ridiculous statement.
The Royal Mint wouldn’t do it.
But under the rules of PO, creativity demands you see if you can develop the thought.
So we said, “Maybe not metal coins, but banks use paper money, and we could print on that ourselves.”
Then we said, “Yes, and paper money is actually a medium that gets inside the banks to virtually every employee.”
Then, better yet, we found out it was illegal.
If currency is defaced it has to be taken out of circulation and replaced.
This is not something the banks do lightly.
Forms are filled in, in triplicate.
Then more forms are filled in, in triplicate.
And then more forms are sent off into all the various parts of the banks with the message that was on the money reproducing itself as it goes.
So that’s a truly viral media.
We went to Rymans the stationers, and bought little printing kits.
We made up stamps saying, STOP YOUR BANK KILLING CHILDREN – CANCEL THE THIRD WORLD DEBT.
And we began printing it on our money.
Knowing that each bank note we spent would now help spread the message through the banks.
Reproducing itself many times.
Did it work?
PO.
RSS Feed
Twitter
Email
Definitely an idea worth spreading. Would the retailers take the money though? One can but try.
Never been a problem John.
I just hand it over face down.
If anyone comments, it was on it when I got it.
The big problem with vertical thinking
is that we take the message we want to deliver
and while building that thought-on-thought structure
we can get really far from the actual message.
All based on agreement.
So when the final result reaches the consumers,
they have to take all the way back to the initial message.
It’s not difficult, since it’s nothing unexpected,
BUT IT TAKES TIME.
In a way that is anything but entertaining.
Lateral thinking obliges US, the creatives/strategists
to find unexpected connections
that lead to the message we want to deliver.
So the final result is a direct
but surprising way of delivering the message itself,
it is an INSTANT message that the viewer receives.
And it’s also entertaining.
It is essential to remember
that we only have access to the viewers’ MINDS,
not to their TIME.
Here’s a story I think is famous in corporate circles:
This company was having problems with ice on the power lines and was trying to find a solution to the problem. One person, apparently speaking the first thing that popped into their mind said, “Why don’t we get the bears to climb the poles and knock the ice off!” Silly suggestion yet no one shot it down. Instead, they asked, “How do you suppose we get them to climb the poles in the first place?” Another person said, “Bears like honey” and another, “Put honey pots at the top of the poles” Everyone listened, nobody stopped the flow of what seemed like meaningless and time wasting ideas.
“How do we get the pots on the poles?” another asked. Different suggestions floated around the room when someone said, “Why not put them there with a helicopter?” “If we used a helicopter, the pots wouldn’t stay, they’d shake the poles”
Ah ha! They found a solution by flying a helicopter close to the pole, they would shake loose the ice and their problem was solved. And it all started with a couple of bears.
Goes back to what you were saying about not limiting ourselves to yes/no and to encourage thinking as a process of discovery.
Dave, there’s a show on at Tate Modern at the mo of this brilliant Brazilian conceptual artist, Cildo Meireles. He was doing conceptual art in the ‘60s and ’70s when Damien Hirst was still in short trousers. Lots of it is political protest stuff – he did some interesting things including making up these $0 bills which he put into circulation. And to protest against American imperialism, he attacked Coca Cola. He knew that the classic glass Coke bottles were bought, drunk, returned and put back into circulation. So made up little transfers with political rants on them, stuck them on the bottles which then went back into circulation. Well worth checking out if you get time, but unfortunately Sunday’s the last day.
Info here: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/cildomeireles/about.shtm
Thanks for the heads up on the Tate, Ant, will check it out on Sunday before the the big match!
John - make sure you go into the ‘Volatile’ room. I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you what’s in there…but be prepared to be seriously disorientated. By the way, please check the show’s still on on Sunday…the website says until 11 January but I’m not sure if that means Saturday or Sunday is the last day.
nice… we entered this idea (using money as the medium) into youngguns last year as part of the global current creative brief and we didn’t make finalist. nice to see that it’s been used for the good - money is a great medium to use to communicate as no-one ignores it!
And if you go to the Mereiles you can only get the full experience of the volatile room if you’re not wearing tights, which I’m sure won’t be a problem for John.
Funny you should say that Ben, having just come back from running…
I love the idea of printing words on banknotes. However, I do hope you’re not still targeting the UK banks themselves. They transferred all their Third World Debt, some years ago now, to the World Bank, which is ultimately run by governments.
Raymond Chan.
I think that’s a great story and illustrates the point exactly. thanks a lot.
Hi Scamp.
Actually the information I have is that the banks transferred most of the debt to what are known as ‘vulture funds’.
People who buy the debt from the banks at, say, 20p in the £ and then reclaim the full amount from the Third World.
So the banks solve the problem of their bad publicity, but they certainly haven’t helped solve the crisis at all.
Which, by the way, Unicef estimate is directly responsible for half a million deaths of children, under age 5, every year.
Would a referee have disallowed Mereiles’ inventiveness? For a brief moment I was back in the volatile room!
Either way, the banks no longer own any third world debt. So why are you trying to influence them? It’s like pleading with Ken Bates not to sell Drogba. He don’t own Chelsea any more. Nothing he can do.
Scamp.
Check the post again, everything is in the past tense.
The last two lines may be relevant to your assertion that the banks divested themselves of the debt.
Yeah, the post is in the past tense. But your comment number 2 implies you’re still passing the money around?
Scamp, forgive me for intruding, I love you’re blog, but I think you’re being a little trivial.
I only realised as I was about to spend the £10 note on something that it had been stamped on! But I quickly took a picture…
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6479/note003.jpg
I thought it was a brilliant idea…Good job!
That’s terrific Lydia.
Thanks so much for sending it.
It’s so nice to know it’s actually workingf.
Now that’s got SHARK’S TEETH written all over it!