lateral thinking

I learned a new activity that I use to promote probing and asking the right questions. which is Lateral Thinking. According to Wikipedia:

Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician, and writer. He defines Lateral Thinking as methods of thinking concerned with changing concepts and perception. For example:

It took two hours for two men to dig a hole five feet deep. How deep would it have been if ten men had dug the hole for two hours?

The answer appears to be 25 feet deep. This answer assumes that the thinker has followed a simple mathematical relationship suggested by the description given, but we can generate some lateral thinking ideas about what affects the size of the hole which may lead to different answers:

• A hole may need to be of a certain size or shape so digging might stop early at a required depth.
• The deeper a hole is, the more effort is required to dig it, since waste soil needs to be lifted higher to the ground level. There is a limit to how deep a hole can be dug by manpower without use of ladders or hoists for soil removal, and 25 feet is beyond this limit.
• Deeper soil layers may be harder to dig out, or we may hit bedrock or the water table.
• Each man digging needs space to use a shovel.
• It is possible that with more people working on a project, each person may become less efficient due to increased opportunity for distraction, the assumption he can slack off, more people to talk to, etc.
• More men could work in shifts to dig faster for longer.
• There are more men but are there more shovels?
• The two hours dug by ten men may be under different weather conditions than the two hours dug by two men.
  • Rain could flood the hole to prevent digging.
  • Temperature conditions may freeze the men before they finish.
• Would we rather have 5 holes each 5 feet deep?
• The two men may be an engineering crew with digging machinery.
• What if one man in each group is a manager who will not actually dig?
• The extra eight men might not be strong enough to dig, or much stronger than the first two.

The most useful ideas listed above are outside the simple mathematics implied by the question. Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.
Techniques that apply lateral thinking to problems are characterised by the shifting of thinking patterns away from entrenched or predictable thinking to new or unexpected ideas. A new idea that is the result of lateral thinking is not always a helpful one, but when a good idea is discovered in this way it is usually obvious in hindsight, which is a feature lateral thinking shares with a joke.
Lateral Thinking and Problem Solving. Edward de Bono points out that the term problem solving implies that there is a problem to respond to and that it can be resolved. That eliminates situations where there is no problem or a problem exists that cannot be resolved. It is logical to think about making a good situation, that has no problems, into a better situation. Some times a problem cannot be solved by removing its cause.

We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.

- (Edward de Bono)

Lateral thinking can be used to help in solving problems but can also be used for much more.
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Some links that I might use:

Two Minute Mysteries -==- Lateral Thinking Puzzles -==- More Puzzles