Parallel thinking is taught through the Six Thinking Hats course.  This course offers a productive, disciplined approach to running meetings, communication, and reporting.  It is a designed stimulant for creativity.  The Six Thinking Hats is simple and effective.  It works well as an individual tool as well as a methodology to keep team meetings on track.  It delivers particular advantage when adopted as part of your corporate or organizational culture.

This course will teach you to:

·         look at problems, decisions, and opportunities systematically,

·         use Parallel Thinking as a group or team to generate better ideas, involve the entire team, and move efficiently to solutions

·         understand and address feelings openly and keep them from disguising themselves as logic

·         identify opportunities where others see only problems

·         determine how your decision making process stacks up against your organization's core values

·         think clearly, objectively, and more productively than before

·         stimulate new ideas through a disciplined approach

·         make thorough evaluations

·         lead more productive meetings

·         better prepare for negotiations

·         organize and focus the thinking process

·         GET RESULTS!

The Six Thinking Hats provide us a tool to separate elements of thinking and use them in parallel.

The White Hat:  Information known and needed--and how we might get it.

The Red Hat:  Feelings, hunches, and intuition--and the freedom gained by detaching logical baggage from our feelings.

The Yellow Hat:  Values, feasibility, and benefits; why something might work-- weighing this information against your core values.

The Black Hat:  Difficulties and dangers; where things might go wrong--

The Green Hat:  Alternatives and creativity-a preview of Lateral Thinking Tools that provide a disciplined approach to truly    think out of the box.

The Blue Hat:  Managing the thinking process--thinking about thinking.

One and two day training courses are available.  Meeting productivity relies heavily on the facilitator.  Even an established team wastes time in meetings if the facilitation falters.  Stop letting one or two people monopolize the meetings.  Get productive input from your entire team.  Know where you are in your meeting or evaluation process.  

Lateral Thinking uses unique, apparently illogical methods to solve problems and seek opportunities even when no problems exist.  Lateral thinking provides a process for creativity on demand.  It provides tools for immediate use that rapidly produce results.  For years many people believed that only the "rebels" could be creative.  This course demonstrates that through focus and discipline, everyone can be creative.  These tools work for individuals and groups. They can be used as part of a formal creative process or inserted into a meeting or discussion when the new ideas and directions you set out to achieve are the same collection of usual suspects you came up with during the last meeting.

Select and Define the Focus

·         Area

·         Purpose

Use the Lateral Tools

• Alternatives
• Challenge
• Random Entry
• Provocation

Capture your efforts and put your output to work

• Harvest
• Treatment

If you are tired of looking at the same 5 or 6 approaches to every problem or if you work in a culture that is too busy to be creative, this course is for you.  The next time someone asks you to think out of the box, use the tools that get you there quickly and provide you with multiple solutions!  Learn how to use a formal creative session to get new ideas from your entire team, competency, or workforce.  Lateral Thinking is a two-day training course.  A Lateral Thinking workbook and certificate of completion are provided to each participant.  The workbook is great for note taking, contains numerous exercises for immediate hands on experience, and has templates for using your newly acquired thinking tools as soon as you complete the course.

The Course in Creativity combines a one or two day Six Thinking Hats course with the two day Lateral Thinking course. For in house training, a fifth day may be added with the instructor facilitating specific issues within your organization's meetings.  If you are ready for a bold change in the way you and your organization think, and if you want the savings of taking both of these revolutionary courses together, then the Course in Creativity is your best alternative.