EDWARD DE BONO'S MESSAGE
23rd March 1998

"Thinking Clubs 10"

The final notes on Thinking Clubs. I shall return to the subject from time to time. My messages will now revert to the more usual style.

Thinking Clubs (10)

Real life has people in it. This is a bit unfortunate because it messes up the neat thinking that can be done with problems that contain no people. Problems in school textbooks are relatively easy because all the information is available and any people involved do as they are told. Not so in real life where people can be unpredictable, complex, difficult and downright perverse.

So there is a big need for an 'attention directing tool' which looks exactly at people. At least if you look in the direction involved and try to guess at their thinking you will be much better off than if you try to ignore them.

The tool is simply an O.P.V. which stands for Other People's Views. There are several examples of conflicts which have been aborted because each party asks the other party to "do an O.P.V.". Susan Mackie reports from South Africa how a quarrel between locomotive drivers at the bottom of a platinum mine was dissolved in this way.

In a sense doing an O.P.V. is like trying to understand the other person's logic bubble.

There are two steps:

1. Who are the other people involved? There is a need to list these. There may even be three rings. The inner ring of those directly involved. The middle ring of those indirectly involved. The outer ring of those who might ultimately be affected in some way.

2. What is the 'thinking' of those involved. This may include their fear and anticipation of 'what might happen' and it may also include their reaction to what has already happened. Thinking is here taken in the broadest sense to include feelings. The possible 'values' of the other people involved can also be spelled out.

Like all attention directing tools, the O.P.V. is very simple to use but very powerful if used formally, deliberately and thoroughly.

Here are some suggested items on which the O.P.V. can be practised. Both steps are required in both cases.

1. All school exams are abolished.

2. Fat people pay more tax.

3. The price of petrol is doubled.

4. Those who vote for the losing party in an election pay 10 percent less tax than those who vote for the winners (this item has been included before but is repeated here with the O.P.V. tool).

5. Alchohol is found to be very beneficial for health.

6. It becomes possible to freeze human bodies for unfreezing at a later date.

7. Long term prisoners are given a pension on leaving prison.

8. Violence on TV is taxed. So for every killing shown a tax is paid each time.

Edward de Bono
22nd March 1998