Possibility

Edward de Bono says:

Educational establishments totally underestimate the importance of "possibility." 

Two thousand years ago, China was far ahead of the West in science and technology. They had rockets and gunpowder. Had China continued at the same rate of progress, then today China would easily have been the dominant power in the world. 

What happened? What brought progress to a halt? 

The Chinese scholars started to believe you could move from "fact to fact." So they never developed the messy business of possibility (hypothesis, etc.). As a result, progress came to a dead end. 

Exactly the same sort of thing is happening in the world today. Because of the excellence of computers, people are starting to believe that all you need to do is to collect data and analyze it. This will give you your decisions, your policies and your strategies. It is an extremely dangerous situation, which will bring progress to a halt. There is a huge need for creativity to interpret data in different ways; to combine data to design value delivery; to know where to look for data; to form hypotheses and speculations, etc., etc. 

I have held academic positions at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard. I have to say that at each of these wonderful institutions the amount of time spent on the fundamental importance of possibility was zero. 

Our culture and habits of thinking insist that we always move towards certainty. We need to pay equal attention to possibility.

Creativity Workout: 62 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas

Leadership

There is so much leadership blah, blah, blah (snake oil) and then there is Peter Drucker.

Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. 

Nothing better prepares the ground for such leadership than a spirit of management that confirms in the day-to-day practices of the organization strict principles of conduct and responsibility, high standards of performance, and respect for individuals and their work. 

Peter Drucker with Joseph A. Maciariello, Management, Revised Edition

More of Drucker's thoughts on leadership

Why Great Leaders Are in Short Supply

Spencer Stuart's Tom Neff, the dean of CEO Executive Search, puts it baldly: "We are experiencing a demand for new types of skills and sacrifices in C-level executives that many are not prepared to bring to the table."

tlnkwleadership

Practical Thinking

Recognition rightness is very important because it is really the basis of all action.
As soon as you can recognize a situation you can take appropriate action.
If you cannot recognize a situation then you have to try and understand it.
This means looking at it in different ways or breaking it down into simpler parts until at last you do come upon something you can recognize.
Understanding is simply the search for recognition rightness.
Edward de Bono