A creative approach to school business management?

Across the country, school staff are saving money and spending less time in meetings with the help of some lateral thinking. All schools are under pressure to find new and better ways to increase overall performance. Whether it’s cutting costs, meeting targets or developing new services, fresh ideas are in constant demand.

Some schools are finding inspiration by training their staff in Dr Edward de Bono’s creative and constructive thinking methods: the Six Thinking Hats and CoRT. But before you can think about ‘getting staff to be creative’, it is important to understand what true creativity is. Bob Rawlinson, Chief Exec. of the Edward de Bono Foundation UK, defines it as follows:

Creativity means ‘designing the way forward’: that creativity is needed for change, improvement and ideas, and that without creativity there is only repetition and routine. In, fact creativity is as close to the heart of business as you can get.

The de Bono methods have been helping industry around the world for decades.

Xerox said after the training:

Using the de Bono techniques, we have achieved in a day what would have taken a week.

J.P. Morgan advised that the training reduced their meeting times by 75%!

Coopers and Lybrand calculated the business savings:

Using de Bono’s techniques, an organisation of 100 people saving an hour a week per person by running more effective meetings could save £250,000 per annum.

The idea of the Six Thinking Hats is about training the brain to think creatively about problem-solving. Dr Edward de Bono believes that

The quality of your thinking will determine the quality of your future.

In schools, as in businesses, the Six Hats can be used as a tool to help people clarify their thinking and move towards a more productive and collaborative model of decision making.

The techniques aren’t only for managers and administrators. An increasing number of headteachers are using the de Bono training for classroom staff – and for the children in the classrooms as well. Janet Newman, Headteacher at Ashbrook School, says:

I continue to be inspired by how the de Bono thinking tools help our children think both constructively and creatively, also working together to achieve much more than they could do by themselves.

MMU are working with the Edward de Bono Foundation UK to deliver a two day Thinking and Creativity course into schools: for more details about the course content, please contact the Centre for Innovation and Enterprise on 0800 027 1410, or email cie.didsbury@mmu.ac.uk

For more information about the de Bono Foundation and its work, see www.debonofoundation.co.uk