Our new Police Commissioner is quite a positive man .
Somewhere he read about Edward De Bono and lateral thinking.
He was told it would help greatly to solve complex problems. And
as per the Police Commissioner nothing was as complex as solving the intricate problems related to crime. Why not seek Mr De Bono’s help for this. So he took an appointment with him and before that he asked his assistants to read some of his books and give him the gist of those. They were asked to read "The uses of lateral thinking" , "The thinking hats", "The action shoes", and "PO-beyond yes and no"- the new tool for thinking.
Here is a brief summary of their reports as they reached me.
The DCP who was asked to enquire about the thinking hats reported as follows. “Sir it completely goes against the police norms and ethics where we are asked to wear the police caps, a symbol of our dignity and honour. Whenever any superior officer visits us, we wear our caps and we are asked and even reprimanded if the caps are missing .Here in the thinking hats series we are supposed to wear six differently coloured hats depending upon different thinking modes . So we have to carry all those hats to all our meetings including our own khakhi caps. And it is confusing to think which hat to wear while asking questions? If I want information have to wear white ones. The black ones if I have to disagree with others. Yellow ones if I am positive. and so on different coloured hats as per the purpose at hand. And these will have to be incorporated into our training courses for it to become our second nature. And God help those who are colour blind.”
The action shoes DCP reported . “Sir, our regulations specify black military type shoes at all times. In the series action shoes six types of different shoes are suggested. As far as hats are concerned we might even be able to carry the different hats in a carry bag to any meeting, I am not saying it is very convenient but it is feasible but carrying these shoes and changing them for different purposes is very impractical and foolish. We are police personnel and our duty often calls for on the spur of the moment action and then to wait to change our shoes as per the action that comes to our mind I would say would only make the police a laughing stock. "Give me the Grey ones I have to go exploring." "Give me the orange ones it is an emergency." "Give me the pink slippers the lady needs compassion." Oh sir! we would make mockery of police action and the media
would have a gala time at our cost.”
A third officer reported“ Sir, we have only about 30 lines and can take only 30 calls at a time and any call after 30 we a have to keep the caller on hold for the call to be taken later . Would that qualify for later(el) thinking? Or most of the time we have hardly time to think. We have to act fast or the criminal would get away. It is later that we think about all aspects of the case. Would that also come under later(el) thinking? We should ask this great man
Edward De Bono about this?”
“PO is very difficult to explain. Usually in a murder case we catch the suspect and look for the motive and/or see any motive and look for the one who benefits. We catch the monkey and expect his tail to be there . Here we catch the tail and expect the monkey to be there at the other end of the tail . If he cuts the tail and runs away we are left holding the tail. This is what I could understand of PO-very complex sir.”
When all these issues were raised before Mr De Bono He literally (or should we say laterally) excused himself.
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