lateral thinking skills

8/2/2019 Lateral Thinking Skills

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LATERAL THINKING SKILLS

Lateral thinking, is the ability to think creatively, or "outside the box" as it is sometimesreferred to in business, to use your inspiration and imagination to solve problems by looking atthem from unexpected perspectives. Lateral thinking involves discarding the obvious, leaving

behind traditional modes of thought, and throwing away preconceptions.

It's very important in careers such asadvertising,marketing, themediaandartanddesign

where you may get questions in the selection process along the lines of "Write down one

hundred ways to use a brick/paperclip", but it can also be of value in the jobhunting process

itself.

Lateral thinking in the jobhunting process

A number of graduates have tried the old and hackneyed methods of trying to gain the selector's

attention, such as enclosing a tea bag with their application, so that the selector could take a

break to have a cup of tea before reading it. Others have send their CV to newspapers in amagazine format, but below are a couple of truly original approaches:

A graduate had been trying to get intoinvestment

banking, but without success and had exhausted all the

normal routes. As a last resort, he had 100 postcard-sized

CVs printed. He then went round the "Square Mile" in the

City, where all the main financial organisations in London

are located and proceeded to place one of these CVsunder the windscreen of every Rolls Royce and top of the

range BMW and Mercedes he came across. Next day, hehad several 'phone calls offering him interviews from the

senior executives whom the cars belonged to. Note that

we are not advocating this approach: one graduate

jobseeker put up 200 poster sized CVs around Hull andended up being fined for bill posting!

A student wanted to become a traineejournaliston her local newspaper. She decided tocarefully analyse the content of the paper and compared it with similar local papers. She

conducted a small survey of readers' opinions on the paper by interviewing passers-by in the citycentre. Using this information, she drew up a list of possible changes to the paper, wrote asample article to show what she had in mind and sent these to the editor. The editor invited her in

to discuss her suggestions - they had a long discussion and the next vacancy that arose was

offered to her without competition.

One New York graduate who wished to work in a top advertising agency Googled the names of

the creative directors of these agencies and then spent just six dollars on a set of Google ads that
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were triggered when the directors searched for their own names. The adverts said "Hey, (creative

directors name), Googling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too" Of the five directors hetargeted, four gave him an interview and two offered him a job.

For more examples of lateral thinking in jobhunting see ourCreative Careers Search page

Lateral Thinking Quiz

The following questions will test your ability to think laterally. If you get more than 50% of

these right you're certainly strong on your lateral thinking skills (or maybe you're just

good at quizzes!)

1. A graduate applying for pilot training with a major airline was asked what he would do if,after a long-haul flight to Sydney, he met the captain wearing a dress in the hotel bar.

What would you do?2. What can you hold in your right hand, but not in your left?3. If you have two coins totaling 11p, and one of the coins is not a penny, what are the two

coins?4. How many animals of each species did

Moses take into the Ark?

5. A man built a rectangular house, each sidehaving a southern view. He spotted a bear.

What colour was the bear?6. If you were alone in a deserted house at

night, and there was an oil lamp, a candle

and firewood and you only have one

match, which would you light first?7. What can you put in a wooden box that

would make it lighter? The more of them

you put in the lighter it becomes, yet thebox stays empty.

8. Which side of a cat contains the most hair?9. The 60th and 62nd British Prime Ministers of the UK had the same mother and father,

but were not brothers. How do you account for this?

10.How many birthdays does a typicalwoman have?

Jackie Stewart, three times WorldChampion Formula One racing

driver had undiagnosed dyslexia and

was unable to complete his school

education. He said: When youvegot dyslexia and you find something

youre good at, you put more into itthan anyone else; you cant think the

way of the clever folk, so yourealways thinking out of the box."

"The fear of making a mistake, of

risking an error, or of being told you

are wrong is constantly with us. And

thats a shame. Making mistakes is

not the same thing as being creative,

but if you are not willing to make

mistakes, then it is impossible to be

truly creative. I f your state of mind
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11.Why can't a man living in Canterbury beburied west of the River Stour?

12.Divide 40 by half and add ten. What is theanswer?

13.To the nearest cubic centimetre, how muchsoil is there in a 3m x 2m x 2m hole?14.Is it legal for a man to marry his widow'ssister?

15.If you drove a coach leaving Canterburywith 35 passengers, dropped off 6 and

picked up 2 at Faversham, picked up 9

more at Sittingbourne, dropped off 3 atChatham, and then drove on to arrive in

London 40 minutes later, what would the

name of the driver be?

16.A woman lives on the tenth floor of ablock of flats. Every morning she takes thelift down to the ground floor and goes to

work. In the evening, she gets into the lift,and, if there is someone else in the lift she

goes back to her floor directly. Otherwise,

she goes to the eighth floor and walks uptwo flights of stairs to her flat. How do

you explain this?

17.A window cleaner is cleaning the windowson the 25th floor of a skyscraper, when heslips and falls. He is not wearing a safety

harness and nothing slows his fall, yet he suffered no injuries. Explain.

18.The band of stars across the night sky is called the "...... Way"?19.Yogurt is made from fermented ........20.What do cows drink?21.A farmer has 15 cows, all but 8 die. How

many does he have left?

is coming from a place of fear and

risk avoidance, then you will always

settle for the safe solutionsthesolutions already applied many

times before.

Failing is fine, necessary in fact. Butavoiding experimentation or riskespecially out of fear of what others

may thinkis something that will

gnaw at your gut more than any

ephemeral failure. A failure is in the

past. Its done and over. In fact, it

doesnt exist. But worrying about

what might be if or what

might have been if I had are

pieces of baggage you carry arounddaily. Theyre heavy, and theyll killyour creative spirit. Take chances

and stretch yourself. Youre onlyhere on this planet once, and for a

very short time at that. Why not just

see how gifted you are?"

Daniel Garr -Presentation Zen

I once visited a major

pharmaceutical company to discuss

their graduate recruitment formarketing. They told me that one of

the key attributes they looked for

was Helicopter Ability: the abilityto soar above a problem and to seeall aspects of it, to stand back and

see the bigger picture, the wood

rather than the trees. Creativity

involves being able to think outside

the box to find solutions to
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22.If a red house is made of red bricks, and ablue house is made of blue bricks, what isa green house made of?

23.In what sport are the shoes made of metal?24.The Zorganian Republic has some very

strange customs. Couples only wish tohave female children as only females can inherit the family's wealth, so if they have a

male child they keep having more children until they have a girl. If they have a girl, they

stop having children. What is the ratio of girls to boys in Zorgania?25.If a plane crashes on the Italian/Swiss border, where do you bury the survivors?26.If the hour hand of a clock moves 1/60th of a degree every minute, how many degrees

will it move in an hour?27.How many hands does the clock of Big Ben have?28.How many degrees are there between clock hands at 3.15 pm?29.How many times do the hands of a clock overlap in 24 hours?30.John's mother has 3 children, one is named April, one is named May. What is the third

one named?31.You are running in a race. You overtake the second person. What position are you in?32.In the same race, if you overtake the last person, then you are in what position?33.A cowboy rode into town on Friday, spent one night there, and left on Friday. How do

you account for this?

34.How can you throw a ball as hard as you can, and make it stop and return to you, withouthitting anything and with nothing attached to it?

35.Using just ONE straight cut, how can you cut a rectangular cake into two equal partswhen a rectangular piece has already been removed from it?

36.A man went into a store to buy an item. He asked the assistant:"How much does it cost for one?"

The assistant replied 2 pounds, Sir"

"And how much for 10?"

The assistant replied "4""How much for 100?"

He got the reply "6"

What was the man buying?37.A man and his son were in a car crash. The father was killed and the son was taken to

hospital with serious injuries. The examining doctor exclaims: "But, this is my son!".

How can this be?

38.There are 23 football teams playing in a knockout competition. What is the least numberof matches they need to play to decide the winner?

39.Sarah's father has five daughters. The oldest is called Lala, the next Lele, the third Lili,the fourth Lolo. What is the fifth daughter's name?

40.You have to choose between three rooms.The first is full of raging fires

The second is full of tigers that havent eaten in 3 years.The third is full of assassins with loaded machine guns.

Which room should you choose?

unpredictable problems. This needslogic and analysis, but also the

ability to see the big-picture and this

involves a creative mind.


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41.Three of the glasses below are filled with orange juice and the other three are empty. Bymoving just one glass, can you arrange the glasses so that the full and empty glassesalternate?

42.Name three consecutive days in English without using the words Tuesday, Thursday, orSaturday

43.What's unusual about this paragraph? Just how quicklyyou can find out what is so funny about it. It looks fairly

ordinary and plain that you might think nothing is

wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It ishighly curious though. Study it and think about it, butyou still may not find anything odd. But if you work at

it a bit, you could just find out.

44.Join all the 9 dots on the right using four straight linesor less, without lifting your pen and without tracing thesame line more than once. Do copy this onto paper if

you wish to make it easier.

One student, desperate to get intoadvertising,had been rejected by the main London agencies,

so he decided to try a different approach. He

bought some pink envelopes and a small bottle of

expensive perfume. He placed his CV in the

envelopes and wrote "Private" on the outside. He

liberally sprinkled the envelopes with scent and

posted them to the senior agency partner in
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several of the biggest agencies. When it arrived, nobody dared to open the letters and the

graduate was offered several interviews - presumably for his daring. Note that, we don't

recommend this approach!

Answers:

1. Offer to buy her a drink! The captain was ofcourse a woman. Manyairlinesare now hot onequal opportunities and a candidate who had

difficulty envisaging that an airline captain might

be female would not go very far!2. Your left hand, forearm or elbow.3. 10p and 1p - the other coin can be a penny!4. None. NOAH built the Ark5. White. Only at the North Pole can all four walls

be facing South.

6. The match!7. Holes8. The outside9. Churchill was Prime Minister twice, from 1940 to

45 and from 1951 to 55.

10.One11.Because he is still alive .

12.90. Dividing by half is the same as multiplying by2.

13.None - it's a hole!14.No - because he's dead15.YOU are the driver!16.The woman is of small stature and couldn't reach

the upper lift buttons.

17.He was cleaning the inside of the windows.18.Milky Way19.

Milk20.Water. After the previous two questions, did you answer milk?

21.Eight22.Glass23.Horse racing; or other horse sports24.About 1 to 1. Any birth will always have a 50% chance of being

male or female.25.You don't bury survivors!

Most of the above are what we call"Insight puzzles". Research by

Schooler and Melcher (University

of California)found that people

who wrote down the puzzles and

tried to solve them on paper were

on average 30% less likely to

come up with the right solutionthan those who didn't write it down

and just solved them in their heads.

Writing down the puzzles invokes

the use of the left side of our brain

which deals with verbal and

logical (algorithmic) reasoning,

rather than the right side which

deals with visual and creative(heuristic) thinking.

These puzzles tend to requirecreative rather than logical

reasoning to solve them, so we need

to use right brain thinking.
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26.One27.Eight: there are four faces to the clock of Big Ben (see the picture to the right)28.Not zero degrees as you might at first think. The minute hand will be at 15 minutes (90

degrees clockwise from vertical) but the hour hand will have progressed to one quarter of

the distance between 3 pm and 4 pm. Each hour represents 30 degrees (360 / 12), so one

quarter of an hour equals 7.5 degrees. So the minute hand will be at 97.5 degrees: a 7.5degree difference between the hands.

29.22: the minute hand will go round the dial 24 times, but the hour hand will also completetwo circuits. 24 minus 2 equals 22.

30.John31.If you overtake the second person then you become second.32.You can't overtake the last person in a race!33.His horse was named Friday.34.Go outside and throw it upwards.35.Cut it horizontally half way up (i.e. parallel to the top) . See

right

36.House numbers.37.The doctor was his mother. Going full circle, this is verysimilar to the first question.

38.In a knockout competition, every team except the winner is defeated once and once only,so the number of matches is one less than the number of teams in this case 23-1 = 22.

39.Sarah.40.The second room. Tigers that havent eaten in three years are dead!41.Pour the juice from the second glass into the fifth.42.Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.43.The letter e doesn't appear once in the paragraph.44.Here is one possible solution. Of course you have

to go beyond the boundaries of the square of dots

to solve this.

Out of interest this particular puzzle is where theexpression "to think outside the box" originally

came from.

Score

Over 35. You are a true lateral thinking Guru. Edward De Bono would be proud of you.Or maybe you are the man himself.

28 to 34. Very good. 21 to 27. Quite good. 15 to 20. Average. Under 15 - watch The Matrix, The Simpsons and Dr Who a few more times.


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The final test!

Pick one of the following cards:

When you have chosen your card, focus carefully on it and keep it clearly in your mind for

15 seconds.

Once you have done this scroll down to the bottom of

the page.

Creative thinking is not a talent, it is

a skill that can be learnt.

Edward de Bono

Intelligence is something we areborn with. Thinking is a skill that

must be learned.

Edward de Bono

Innovation distinguishes between a

leader and a follower

Steve Jobs (founder of Apple)

Genius is one percent inspirationand ninety-nine percent

perspiration.

Edison

The great composers did not set to


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Here are some web sites which will allow you to

take lateral thinking further.

For some more logic problems see ourCaseInterviews page

Timed verbal logical reasoning test Creative Careers Search Page- how to network

effectively.

Institute of Practitioners in AdvertisingDiagonal Thinking Self-assessment Tool

IPA Copywriting Test The most difficult application forms Can creativity be taught? Edward De Bono: the "inventor" of lateral

thinking

www.edwdebono.com/debono/lateral.htm

Your card has been removed!

work because they were inspired but

became inspired because they were

working.

Ari Kiev

An essential aspect of creativity is

not being afraid to fail.

Edwin Land

Imagination is more important than

knowledge. For while knowledge

defines all we currently know and

understand, imagination points to

all we might yet discover and

create.

Albert Einstein

Inventions dont come in Eurekamoments: they are the consequence

of experts absorbing themselves for

so long in their field that they

become pregnant with creative

energy: deep immersion in an area

of expertise.

Bounce, by Michael Syed
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