Here comes the end of our first module on communication skills, and we are now entering the second module on creativity and innovation. Yesterday I did not attend the class as I need to attend an interview. Luckily I managed to catch up today, with our speaker Prof. Barjoyai Bardai, who has graduated from Harvard University, taught us about creative thinking techniques.
The first session of the class was on six thinking hats. This thinking tool was initially invented by Edward de Bono, which is a powerful technique used to scrutinize decisions from various perspectives. It is very useful in everyday's life, especially at work, as it forces us to thinking out of the box and move outside of our habitual thinking style so that we can gain a better overview of a particular situation.
The six thinking hats are:
White Hat: focuses on known facts and information
Red Hat: focuses on feelings, emotions and intuition
Yellow Hat: focuses on positive perspectives and benefits as to why something may work
Black Hat: focuses on negative perspectives and problems that may arise as to why something may not work
Green Hat: focuses on ideas and solutions by unleashing our creativity
Blue Hat: focuses on the system and action plans to make things work
Additionally, our trainer added the seventh thinking hat:
Grey Hat: focuses on spiritual intelligence (or spiritual quotient, SQ), which is claimed to be the ultimate intelligence
He told us the usefulness of these thinking hats when solving complex solutions from different perspectives. There are several benefits, such as allowing one to voice out his/her opinion without risk, result in thinking creatively, better decision making and improve communication. By applying this tool, decisions can be made and actions can be carried out with more ambitious plans, better execution skills and backup with good contingency planning without neglecting public sensitivity.
The second part of the class placed emphasis on reverse engineering. This is how reverse engineering works: Imagine our problem in reverse to change a positive situation into a negative one to allow us to look into situations or obstacles from different angles. This activity was really very useful to all of us as it helps us to nudge our thinking and allow us to unleash our creative juices.
Today's class was truly stimulating. It was one of the most rewarding classes I have ever attended as it can be virtually applied in every facet of our lives at all levels of organization and at all times. A bring-home message for me today is: Creativity is not an innate talent, rather it can be learned!
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