"Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem no longer exists"
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Problems often persist because they are framed in a way that generates them. Edward de Bono, a pioneer of lateral thinking, argues that difficulty is not only in the facts but in the vantage point. Shift the frame, and the constraints you thought were fixed become optional; a path emerges that makes the earlier struggle irrelevant.
De Bono distinguished vertical thinking, which digs deeper within a chosen line, from lateral thinking, which moves sideways to find a different line altogether. His methods, from provocation to random entry and the Six Thinking Hats, were designed to break fixation and force a relook at assumptions. The classic nine-dot puzzle illustrates the idea: the instruction to connect all dots without lifting the pen seems impossible until you realize the supposed boundary of the square was never part of the rules. The problem dissolves when the frame expands.
Psychology echoes this insight. Functional fixedness and confirmation bias keep us locked in familiar representations. Insight often arrives not from more effort but from re-representation: seeing the same elements organized under a new concept. Ask whether the goal is defined too narrowly, whether a constraint is self-imposed, whether the unit of analysis is wrong.
Everyday examples make this concrete. A price war feels unavoidable until you redefine competition around service or community, where price becomes one component rather than the battlefield. A scheduling conflict disappears when you switch from synchronous meetings to asynchronous updates. A stalemated negotiation loosens when the question shifts from dividing a fixed pie to enlarging it by trading on differing preferences.
The practical habit is to treat the frame as a design choice. List assumptions as hypotheses to be tested. Try the opposite, remove the most obvious element, or ask what the problem would be if it were easy. Often the right course of action does not need to be discovered through struggle; it becomes visible the moment the lens changes.
De Bono distinguished vertical thinking, which digs deeper within a chosen line, from lateral thinking, which moves sideways to find a different line altogether. His methods, from provocation to random entry and the Six Thinking Hats, were designed to break fixation and force a relook at assumptions. The classic nine-dot puzzle illustrates the idea: the instruction to connect all dots without lifting the pen seems impossible until you realize the supposed boundary of the square was never part of the rules. The problem dissolves when the frame expands.
Psychology echoes this insight. Functional fixedness and confirmation bias keep us locked in familiar representations. Insight often arrives not from more effort but from re-representation: seeing the same elements organized under a new concept. Ask whether the goal is defined too narrowly, whether a constraint is self-imposed, whether the unit of analysis is wrong.
Everyday examples make this concrete. A price war feels unavoidable until you redefine competition around service or community, where price becomes one component rather than the battlefield. A scheduling conflict disappears when you switch from synchronous meetings to asynchronous updates. A stalemated negotiation loosens when the question shifts from dividing a fixed pie to enlarging it by trading on differing preferences.
The practical habit is to treat the frame as a design choice. List assumptions as hypotheses to be tested. Try the opposite, remove the most obvious element, or ask what the problem would be if it were easy. Often the right course of action does not need to be discovered through struggle; it becomes visible the moment the lens changes.
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| Topic | Wisdom |
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