While the health crisis period brought its share of difficulties and uncertainties, it also highlighted employees’ ability to demonstrate adaptability, and even creativity, to maintain their activity. Childcare shifts, setting up a “home-made” workspace, implementing new habits for leading remote teams, renewing business development techniques... All these strategies reflected their ability to view a situation differently when conditions required it. These changes in every area, at a sustained pace, profoundly transformed our ways of working, and above all our ability to show creativity and adaptability in the search for solutions. The question we can wisely ask ourselves is how to analyze and sustain the lessons learned from this lockdown period.

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Finding solutions through lateral thinking

Developed in 1967 by Edward De Bono, lateral thinking is a problem-solving technique. In short, the author invites participants to consider a problem from new angles, other than their usual, binary approach, “for” or “against.”

Indeed, in a traditional approach, the human mind tends to solve difficulties in light of past experiences. In other words, we build our responses based on what we have already experienced. While this way of thinking reassures individuals, it also favors antagonistic pathways rooted in confrontation. Consequence: when it comes to exploring a topic or creating new solutions, discussions tend to be reductive.

With lateral thinking, De Bono neutralizes our familiar thinking systems in favor of potentially more effective synergy. Indeed, thanks to his method, he manages to combine the strength of several minds to solve a problem by considering the situation within the same dynamic.

Applying it concretely with De Bono’s 6 hats

To help participants align around a common lateral-thinking mode, De Bono brings them together around a structured method that mobilizes collective intelligence. Hats of different colors represent different thinking styles. As the workshop progresses, the hats follow one another, inviting participants to direct their creativity in one direction or another.

De Bono thus identifies 6 types of reflection:

• white represents concrete, factual, and neutral thinking

• red, true to itself, evokes emotions that may be irrational

• yellow symbolizes the search for opportunity, for the best option

• black focuses more on risks and limits

• green, like rich and lush nature, refers to boundless creativity

• finally, blue is linked to organization, time management, and logistics

At the end of the sequences, participants will have identified their dominant colors and been able to approach problem-solving methods different from those they usually use.

At Seven, we have adapted the tool by using 6 pairs of glasses, each characterizing our way of seeing and understanding the world. Participants in our training course Defining your communicator profile discover the characteristics of their own glasses and learn to identify those of their counterparts. The goal is to improve the quality of interactions within an organization.

Why use Bono’s glasses?

To simplify the thinker’s task

On the one hand, it helps simplify the thinker’s task by enabling them to solve problems. Instead of having to deal with everything at once (emotions, logic, information, hope, or creativity), the thinker can consider each thing separately. For example, rather than using logic to disguise an emotion, they can speak about an emotion under the red hat, without needing to justify themselves.

To change an individual’s behavior

On the other hand, it enables a change in behavior toward a situation or a person. If someone in a meeting is deliberately critical, they can be asked to remove their black hat. This is what is called meta-communicating, that is, communicating not about the substance of what is being said, but about the way of communicating itself. This makes it possible to address the topic without hurting the ego of the person wearing the black glasses. And above all, to return to the black hat later in the discussion and to the risks and limits of the situation. With practice, simply mentioning one hat or another can even become a kind of shared code, a language among the different participants.

Taking ownership of Bono’s theory

During lockdown, and even if the experience was not lived with full knowledge of the theory, meta-communicating, that is to say, many employees were thus led to change their stance. Indeed, circumstances forced them to be creative, to take limits into account, to organize differently, and to manage their emotions, in order to continue carrying out their missions.

Now, it is important for managers and employees to take ownership of Edward De Bono’s theory in order to understand and master creativity techniques, so as to be able to intentionally face the next wave of uncertainties and new developments they will encounter.