Dr. Edward de Bono, the world’s leading authority on conceptual thinking as the driver of organizational innovation, strategic leadership, individual creativity, and problem-solving, says we too often confuse wisdom and cleverness. We concentrate on cleverness and neglect wisdom because we believe that you have to be ancient to be wise. Cleverness has to do with solving complex puzzles and technical matters. Wisdom is what we need to think about the ordinary matters of everyday life, from the smallest decisions we make to the very largest.
He goes on to say that on the whole, our thinking is rather poor, short-sighted, and egocentric. In most cases, we believe that judgment and argument are sufficient. In a rapidly changing world, we are finding that our thinking is inadequate to meet the demands put upon it.
Exhorting people to take a balanced view is not very effective. The exhortation wears off almost at once. Most people claim to take a balanced view all the time. In practice, they do not!
So what can we do to improve our thought process, especially when we have no doubt about a situation and have instantly decided that we like something or do not like it?
PMI is a brainstorming, decision making, and critical thinking tool. It is used to encourage the examination of ideas, concepts, and experiences from more than one perspective.
P stands for Plus or the good points of a situation or idea.
M stands for Minus or the bad points of a situation or idea.
I stands for the Interesting points.
PMI is an attention-directing tool. You deliberately direct your attention first toward the Plus points, then toward the Minus points, and finally toward the Interesting points. This is done in a very deliberate and disciplined manner over a short period of time, 2 to 3 minutes in all.
Carrying out the process is quite easy. What is not easy is to direct attention deliberately in one direction after another when your prejudices have already decided for you what you should feel about an idea. It is the will to look in a direction that is important. The challenge then is to find as many P or M or I points as you can. In the end, you can use your emotions and feelings to make a decision about something, instead of being applied before and so preventing exploration.