EDWARD DE BONO'S MESSAGE
13th July 1998

Mission Statement

When I was in New Zealand recently, Graeme Allen asked me why there was not, somewhere, an overview of my "mission". The reason is that missions sound pompous and I prefer that people should infer a mission from my various works. Nevertheless, Graeme had a point so I am laying out below some sort of statement. This will be greatly improved over time.

1. The future of the human race and the world will depend on the quality of our thinking.

2. At present our thinking habits and methods do not make anything like the full use of the potential of our intelligence, knowledge and experience.

3. . The general level of thinking is remarkably low. Education has done a very poor job in this respect.

4. Thinking is a skill that can be taught directly in its own right. There is now experience with the direct teaching of thinking to thousands of youngsters and adults from four years old upwards. This is across a wide range of intelligences and cultures in many countries.

5. Traditional habits of thinking are concerned with judgement and the identification of standard situations. We then apply the standard solution to the standard situation. This thinking is concerned with finding out "what is". We are quite good at it and it is valuable. But it is not enough in a changing world.

6. We are not at all good at the "what can be" aspect of thinking. This covers design, creative thinking and constructive thinking. This sort of thinking is essential in a changing world.

7. Creativity is a mathematical necessity in any self-organising information system like the human mind. Otherwise we remain locked in to particular sequences of experience.

8. Creativity is a skill that can be taught. There are formal methods which can be used deliberately.

9. At the end the methods of thinking must be simple, practical and effective. They must be capable of being used by four year olds and senior executives. They should be taught in every school. Nothing is more important for society than the teaching of constructive thinking skills to all youngsters.

10. Thinking is the ultimate human resource. We need to do much more about it. We can do much more about it. But we need to want to do more about it.

    Edward de Bono
    in Australia
    12th July 1998