MESSAGE FOR WEEK BEGINNING 5th February 2001

..mediadishonesty.com.....

I was at the ninth International Thinking Conference in Auckland, New Zealand. A lot of philosophising about thinking and descriptions of thinking processes. Not much about practical operating tools. Most people were trying to teach our current thinking habits. But that is not enough. We need to teach methods that are better and more powerful than our current thinking. For example the parallel thinking of the Six Hats method is more constructive and gives a better exploration of a subject than argument./font>

At a business forum I said that women were not always good entrepreneurs because they lacked aggression and stupidity. This was reported in the New Zealand Herald - with banner headlines - that I said women lacked aggression and STABILITY!! Not surprisingly many women took offence. The error was pointed out to the newspaper which was most reluctant to publish a correction at all. Eventually they did publish a tiny correction which bore no relationship at all to the initial display. So this is another item to go into mediadishonesty.com (in due course). If you know that you have made a serious and damaging mistake you do have a responsibility to put it right at once and properly.

Edward de Bono nmt
4th February 2001
Fort Lauderdale