EDWARD DE BONO'S MESSAGE
29nd June 1997

"If you teach them the skills of fishing - they eat for ever."

I have just returned from Christchurch, New Zealand and am back in Australia. At my seminar in Christchurch the local Council sent 500 people.

Christchurch has won many awards both national and international as a very well run city. The mayoress, Vicki Buck, is in her third term and is very capable indeed and dynamic. The day after the seminar I held a workshop with many of the elected people from the Council to look at local problems.

As may be expected a few local people declared themselves outraged that the Council should be spending money on developing the skills of it people. I should add that through a special deal the participants from the Council were paying between one fifth and one quarter of the normal rate paid by business participants.

If someone is hungary and you give them a fish they eat for a day. If you give them ten fish they eat for ten days. If you teach them the skills of fishing (or fish farming) they eat for ever.

The development of people skills is probably the most important investment any organisation could make. If your Council and its employees are looking after you, you should want them to be as creative thinkers as they could possibly be. That is how costs are saved, initiatives are made and matters simplified.

To begrudge spending on skill development is unbelievably stupid. That is democracy at its most incompetent.

The seminar and workshop went ahead.

Leading up to 1984 the Olympic Games nearly came to an end because (after losses at Montreal in 1976) no city would host the Games. The Games continue today because they were saved by Peter Ueberroth developing new concepts for the Los Angeles Games.

In an interview in the Washington Post, Peter Ueberroth tells how he generated the new ideas through the use of lateral thinking. He had first learned this through a talk I had given to the YPO in Boca Raton in 1975.

Gordon Moyes once told me that the idea for the very successful Wesley Centre in Sydney (it cost $300 million) was triggered by his attendance at a seminar I had given to Olivetti in Sydney.

Those are some huge returns on an investment in developing thinking skills!!

Edward de Bono
28th June 1997
Australia