What Is It and Benefits

Usually in consulting, you’ll be informed to suppose creatively to get the most effective options to your purchasers. As well as, purchasers favor bringing in consultants to think about out of the field options they might not have considered themselves. That is the place lateral pondering is available in. Lateral pondering refers back to the capability to think about out of the field concepts that you could be not provide you with by means of linear / logical pondering.

This text will share extra about what lateral pondering is and how one can develop lateral pondering expertise.

What’s Lateral Pondering?

Chances are you’ll be asking your self “what’s lateral pondering?” Effectively, lateral pondering refers back to the capability to think about artistic options to issues. These options are sometimes not available by means of deductive reasoning or simple logic. Reasonably, the options are sometimes out of the field and artistic. Lateral pondering was first outlined by Edward de Bono in 1967 and is synonymous with artistic pondering.

Advantages of Lateral Pondering

Lateral pondering has a number of advantages, particularly within the company world. Instance advantages of lateral pondering within the company world embody:

• • Skill to create new and modern merchandise that clear up customers’ challenges
  • Skill to unravel issues extra successfully
  • Skill to find out new and artistic paths of progress for firms; that is notably related for firms that must pivot from their legacy enterprise fashions
  • Skill to think about “more practical mousetraps” for issues
  • Skill to enhance your decision-making course of by bringing extra concepts to the desk

Lateral Pondering Examples

There are a number of lateral pondering examples:

Netflix: Pivoting its enterprise mannequin to deal with web subscriptions versus video leases; Netflix is now one of many quickest rising firms, attracting prime international expertise, whereas Blockbuster is defunct

Human assets: Figuring out the way to react and retain prime expertise; as a substitute of simply specializing in perks like free meals and ping pong tables at work, HR departments deal with a wide range of methods to interact their workers. For instance, HR departments can look to ship best-in-class advantages, allow workers to volunteer for his or her favourite causes, and present workers the upward mobility of their jobs.

Linear vs. Lateral Pondering

Linear and lateral pondering differ fairly considerably. Linear pondering focuses on logical and deductive reasoning the place you go from one step to the opposite. Alternatively, lateral pondering focuses on discovering extra artistic, “out of the field” options to issues. For example, let’s say you’re employed in human assets and wish to enhance the retention of your workforce.

If you’re utilizing linear pondering, it’s possible you’ll method this drawback as follows:

Beforehand, we had greatest at school retention. Nevertheless, the retention charges have dropped to be under common. After we had greater retention charges, we supplied lots of worker perks like free lunches and ping pong tables at work. We should always add these perks again in, and we’ll get to our goal retention numbers

Alternatively, in case you are utilizing lateral pondering, it’s possible you’ll method this drawback as follows:

Our worker retention numbers are down. We used to have sturdy worker retention however even when giving perks, we noticed early indicators of workers leaving. We have to basically change how we take into consideration worker retention by understanding what’s most essential to our workers and what motivates them to work. For instance, our workers are very mission-oriented and, as such, we should always re-emphasize our firm’s mission and supply workers with extra volunteer hours.

Creating Lateral Pondering

Chances are you’ll be pondering, how can I develop lateral pondering expertise? Effectively, there are a number of methods to enhance your expertise:

• Pay attention to the biases in direction of utilizing linear pondering and when your concepts / options are extra linear
• Take into consideration various options and work out how too deal with conditions from one other angle
• Ask questions
• Apply, follow, and follow some extra

Lateral Pondering Expertise

There are a number of expertise you possibly can develop to enhance your lateral pondering expertise. Expertise you possibly can develop embody:

• • Flexibility, e.g., take into consideration how one can alter the answer set to see when you can provide you with various concepts
  • Position enjoying, e.g., take into consideration how a job mannequin would deal with the state of affairs, e.g., how would Steve Jobs take into consideration this
  • Creativity, e.g., how would the issue set change if I removed a selected constraint

Lateral Pondering Questions

There are a number of questions you possibly can ask to enhance your lateral pondering expertise. Lateral pondering questions embody:

• • What if …?
  • Why can’t this resolution work?
  • What if I didn’t have to fret about this particular constraint?

Conclusion

Lateral pondering refers back to the capability to think about artistic concepts to issues. These options are sometimes out of the field and should not available by means of linear pondering (e.g., transferring from level A to level B to level C). Lateral pondering is crucial when it’s essential remodel your online business mannequin. To develop lateral pondering expertise, it is very important proceed to push your self to think about various options to issues. Generally, it’s useful to place your self into totally different entrepreneur’s footwear and suppose how they’d have solved the issue. It’s also crucial to proceed to ask your self questions like what if we solved the answer this manner. Subsequently, lateral pondering is a key talent to develop to reach consulting.

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