Trivia Mania - Pogi Problems Joint Operation

It's really amazing how the internet works. At one moment, we were strangers lurking around posting content on each of our Facebook pages. With luck, we would get a lot of likes and spark a discussion, or a heated debate perhaps. Sometimes we would joke around, post funny pictures, or even troll some commenters. We were strangers, unknown to one another, with only the internet as the common denominator. Two hundred strangers were brought about by one goal: to help our fellow countrymen.

Looking back, we thought it was an ambitious campaign. We realized that gathering volunteers from our Facebook pages to help in repacking and helping with the relief operations for the victims of Super Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) would be a difficult endeavor. This is the internet after all. These fans of us, who enjoy the information overload from Trivia Mania and the witty "banat" from Pogi Problems, would have difficulty coming together as one coherent group.

Most of the admins and some fans

But still, we managed.

Last November 16, in cooperation with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), we, the students and yuppie admins of Trivia Mania and Pogi problems gathered these 200 strangers from Manila, Pampanga, Rizal, Laguna, Cavite, and others to an overnight volunteer work at the NROC warehouse of DSWD at Pasay City.

With only ourselves, our used clothes and food to be donated (and some cookies, spaghetti, sandwiches, coffee and snacks, of course), we assembled at the SM Mall of Asia and met with our volunteers, some as young as 16 years old. We chatted for awhile until the appointed time, by which we went to the NROC warehouse by batch.

We weren't particularly organized because of the overwhelming number of people who heeded our call (We were genuinely surprised!). Most of the girls were in the assembly line, sorting and repacking the relief goods, while the guys, working up their muscles, carried and loaded the goods into the cargo trucks. These guys were strangers. The people they worked for were strangers. But after this, after all the events of the many hours in between five in the afternoon and five in the morning, we came out as friends.

We started as pages who aimed to inform and to entertain. We grew as a family, and extended further as a community of internet citizens. This was our first community event, and we hope, the first of many to come. We assure you that we will continue finding ways to set a great example to our generation. And to the future too, of course.

We are the "Pagasa ng Bayan" after all.

Some pictures from the last operation:

Lord Vaughn, Uchi and Sponge Boy resting after lifting goods

int mint and the fans working together 

Admins and Volunteers resting around 12 midnight

The MVP boys having a little chat while resting

List of volunteers:

The list of names below are the members who confirmed their attendance to our coordinators in the event, all names listed here are with us during the event from 8pm onwards.

(To be updated)

Thinking Method: Six Thinking Hats

How do you get time for creative thinking? How can you ask someone to make some creative effort? How do you stop someone from being persistently negative? How do you encourage people to look at the benefits of an idea? How do you express your intuition and gut feeling in a serious meeting?

Used with well-defined and explicit Return On Investment success in corporations worldwide, Six Thinking Hats is a simple, effective parallel thinking process that helps people be more productive, focused, and mindfully involved. A powerful tool set, which once learned can be applied immediately!

You and your team members can learn how to separate thinking into six clear functions and roles. Each thinking role is identified with a colored symbolic "thinking hat." By mentally wearing and switching "hats," you can easily focus or redirect thoughts, the conversation, or the meeting.

For the sake of completeness I shall give a simple overview of the method here:

WHITE HAT

Think of white paper, which is neutral and carries information. The white hat has to do with data and information.

• What information do we have here?
• What information is missing?
• What information would we like to have?
• How are we going to get the information?

When you ask for a white hat thinking at a meeting you are asking those present to put aside the proposals and arguments and to focus directly on the information. For the moment everyone at the meeting looks to see what information is available, what is needed, and how it might be obtained. 

YELLOW HAT

Think of sunshine. The yellow hat is for optimism and the logical view of things. The yellow hat looks for feasibility and how something can be done. The yellow hat looks for benefits—they must be logically based.

• This might work if we moved the production plant nearer to the customers.
• The benefit would come from repeat purchases.
• The high cost of energy would make everyone more energy efficient.

The black hat is much more natural than the yellow hat because we need to avoid mistakes and danger for survival. Yellow hat thinking often requires deliberate effort. Benefits aren't always immediately obvious and we might have to search for them. Every creative idea deserves some yellow hat attention.

BLACK HAT

Think of a stern judge wearing black robes who come down heavily on wrongdoers. The black hat is the caution hat. The black hat prevents us from making mistakes, doing silly things, and doing things which might be illegal. The black hat is for critical judgment. The black hat points out why something cannot be done. The black hat points out why something will not be profitable.

• The regulations do not permit us to do that.
• We do not have the production capacity to meet that order.
• When we tried a higher price, the sales fell off.
• He has no experience in export management.

Mistakes can be disastrous. No one wants to make mistakes or do silly things. So the black hat is very valuable. It is the most used hat and possibly the most useful hat. At the same time it is very easy to overuse the black hat. Some people feel that it is enough to be cautious and negative and that if you prevent all mistakes then everything will be fine. It is easy to kill creative ideas with early negativity. Wine is fine but overuse of alcohol can turn you into an alcoholic. It is the same with the black hat. The hat is very valuable but overuse of it can be a problem. 

RED HAT

Think of red and fire and warmth. The red hat has to do with feelings, intuitions, hunches, and emotions. In a serious meeting you are not supposed to put forward your emotions, but people do this by distinguishing their emotions as logic. The red hat gives people permission to put forward their feelings and intuitions without apology, without explanation, and without any need to justify them.

• Putting on my red hat, this is what I feel about the subject.
• My gut-feeling is that it will not work.
• I don't like the way this is being done.
• My intuition tells me that prices will fall soon.

Because the red hat signals feelings as such, they can come into the discussion without pretending to be anything else. Intuition may be a composite judgment based on years of experience in the field and may be very valuable even if the reason behind the intuition cannot be spelled out consciously. It should also be said that intuition is not always right, and it can be wrong. It is sometimes valuable to get feelings out into the open.

GREEN HAT

Think of vegetation and rich growth. The green hat is for creative thinking. The green hat is for new ideas. The green hat is for additional alternatives. The green hat is for putting forward possibilities and hypotheses. The green hat covers provocation and movement. The green hat requires creative effort.

• We need some new ideas here.
• Are there any additional alternatives?
• Could we do this in a different way?
• Could there be another explanation?

The green hat makes it possible to ask for creative effort. The green hat makes time and space available for creative thinking. Even if no creative ideas are forthcoming, the green hat asks for the creative effort.

BLUE HAT

Think of the sky and an overview. The blue hat is for the process control. The blue hat thinks about the thinking being used. The blue hat sets the agenda for thinking. The blue hat suggests the next step in the thinking. The blue hat can ask for other hats. The blue hat asks for summaries, conclusions, decisions. The blue hat can comment on the thinking being used. 

• We have spent far too much time in looking for someone to blame.
• Could we have a summary of your views?
• I think we should take a look at the priorities.
• I suggest we try some green hat thinking to get some new ideas.

The blue hat is usually used by the chairperson or the organizer of the meeting, but other participants can put forward suggestions. The blue hat is for organizing and controlling the thinking process so that it becomes more productive. The blue hat is for thinking about thinking.

INSTEAD OF ARGUMENT

The Western tradition or argument insists that we try to move forward by means of position taking and judgment. "A" has a point of view and "B" disagrees. The ensuing argument is supposed to give adequate exploration of the subject. Too often the protagonists get locked into their positions and become more interested in winning or losing the argument than in exploring the subject. 

The six hats method allows you to get right away from the argument in order to get a more productive discussion. Both "A" and "B" can wear the black hat at the same time to find out the dangers. Both "A" and "B" can wear the yellow hat to explore the benefits. Both  "A" and "B" can wear the green hat to open up possibilities. Instead of adversarial thinking, there is cooperative exploration. That is why the method has been so eagerly up by those who have to run meetings. At last, there is a way of breaking free from the traditional argument system.

Thinking Method: The PMI Approach (Part 2 of 2)

Scan

The CoRT method of De Bono is sometimes called ‘spectacles method’. If a person is short-sighted and you give that person the appropriate spectacles then the person will be able to see more broadly and more clearly. The person’s reactions will then be suited to this better view. The person can still apply exactly the same value system as was used before — but now it is applied to a better view. The thinking tools, like PMI, perform the function of the spectacles in allowing us to see more clearly and more broadly. We then react to what we see.

One thirteen-year-old girl told how at first she thought the PMI was very artificial since she already knew what she felt about a subject. She then told how, when she had, nevertheless, put points down under P and M and I, she found herself reacting to what she had put down and her feelings changed. That is exactly what one would hope to achieve. Once an idea has been thought and put down under any of the headings, that idea cannot be ‘unthought’ and it will come to influence the final decision.

On one occasion (refer to part 1) one boy said that for yellow cars it would be a ‘Plus’ point that they would need to be kept cleaner. Another boy declared that the cleanliness was actually a ‘Minus’ point since he ‘had to clean his Dad’s car’. Both were right. The boy who saw the cleanliness point when looking in the Plus direction was correct. The boy who saw the cleanliness point when looking in the Minus direction was also correct. In the PMI we are not looking at the values that reside within the point itself. It is not a value judgment. We look to see what points are to be seen when we look in one direction or another. This difference is vitally important. 

One girl looks towards the south and sees a church spire. Another girl in a different part of the countryside looks towards the north and sees the same church spire. Is the church a north church or a south church? Clearly it is both. It is exactly the same with the PMI. ‘P’ represents a scanning direction in the same way ‘north’ does. We look in that direction and see what we see, we note what we see. Then look in the next direction. The intention is solely to scan effectively — not to assign values.

Some people would ask whether it is in order to go through the points as they arise and then to judge each one and dump it in a category box called ‘Plus’ or a box called ‘Minus’ or another one called ‘Interesting’. This is quite wrong and defeats the whole purpose of the PMI. To judge the points as they arise is a judgment exercise. To look in one direction after another is a scanning exercise. It is even conceivable that the chemistry of the brain is slightly different when we set out to look in a ‘Plus’ or positive direction from what it might be when we look in the ‘Minus’ or negative direction. 

Because it illustrates scanning so well, the PMI is almost miniature thinking course just by itself.

Interesting

The ‘i' or Interesting element of the PMI has several functions. It can collect all those points and comments which are neither positive nor negative. (It might be noted that if a particular point is seen both in the P and in the M direction it is quite in order to include it under both headings.) The ‘I' also encourages the deliberate habit of exploring a matter outside the judgment framework to see what is interesting about the idea or what it leads to. A simple phrase which is useful for carrying through this I scan is: 'It would be interesting to see if…' The thinker is thereby encouraged to expand the idea rather than just to treat it as static.

Another aspect of the ‘I' direction is to see if the idea leads to another idea. The 'movement value' is on another topic discussed by De Bono under Lateral Thinking. (Will be posting soon)

Finally the ‘I’ trains the mind to react to the interest inherent in an idea and not just to judgment feelings about the idea. A thinker should be able to say: ‘I do not like your idea but there are interesting aspects to it…' It is a common enough experience that this sort of reaction is highly unusual.

Use of the PMI

Many people would claim to do the PMI anyway. This is possibly true for those situations about which there is a great deal of indecision. But that is not the main purpose of the PMI. On the contrary, the PMI should most especially be used when we have no doubt about the situation but have instantly decided that we like it or do not like it (like the Sydney schoolboy’s reaction to the $5 a week). As a habit of mind, the PMI is specifically designed to force us to scan in those situations where otherwise we should deem scanning unnecessary.

For example, you can ask someone to ‘do a PMI’ when that person has summarily dismissed your suggestion as valueless. You can ask someone to ‘do a PMI’ when there seems to be a prejudged reaction to a situation. The PMI is useful because it is more oblique than direct disagreement or confrontation. In the PMI you are asking the person to exhibit his or her great intelligence in doing a scan of the subject. This is totally different from asking a person to reverse an opinion. Normally the person so asked is not afraid to do a PMI because he or she feels that this will only support the view that is already held.

De Bono one carried out an experiment with 140 senior executives. He divided them into two random groups according to the date of each person’s birthday (odd or even). He then gave each group a suggestion to consider and decide upon. One group got the suggestion of ‘a dated currency so that each year the currency would have the year on it and there might be exchange rates between these different dates’. The other group were asked to consider ‘that marriage be a five-year renewable contract’. The initial decisions were collected. The problems were now switched. This time the PMI was explained and each person was asked to do a PMI before making a decision. If everyone had been doing something of the sort in the first place no change would be expected (assuming the groups were random). But there was a change. Before the PMI 44% were in favor of the dated currency, but after the PMI only 11% were in favor. The opposite happened with the contract marriage suggestion: before the PMI 23% were in favor, but after the PMI this rose to 38%. 

Doing a PMI is not really the same thing as listing the ‘pros and cons’ which tends to be more of a judgment exercise. In addition the ‘Interest’ direction allows consideration of those matters which would not fall under either pro or con.

Two Steps

So instead of just reacting to the situation and then justifying the reaction, the thinker now goes through a two-step process. The first step is deliberately to carry out the PMI operation. The second step is to observe and react to what has been turned up by the PMI scan. It is not unlike preparing a map and then reacting to what is on the map.

Practice

Because the PMI seems so very simple, its effectiveness should not be underestimated. It can turn a fiercely emotional meeting from prejudice towards a consideration of the subject. Once perception is directed in a certain direction it cannot help but see, and once seen something cannot be unseen. 

The key is practice. Practice doing the PMI yourself and practice demanding it of others. It can become a simple shorthand instruction. The strangeness of the lettering is important in order to give focus. Mere exhortation to someone to look at the good points and bad points is much too weak to be effective.

For practice, a PMI can be done on each of the six practice items De Bono has listed below. Three minutes should be allowed for the whole PMI in each case. The items can be done on one’s own or in a small discussion group.

1. What do you think of the suggestion that everyone should wear a badge showing his or her mood?
2. Should every child adopt an old person to look after?
3. Are weekend prisons for young offenders a good idea?
4. Should everyone be allowed to indicate where they would like their taxes spent?
5. Should an internet connection contain a special program that does not permit violent videos to be shown?
6. Should cars be banned from city centers?