MY CAREER: ‘Teaching the world to think laterally’
Posted on August 3rd, 2007 by MichaelMELBOURNE: Saturday, 28 July 2007
The Saturday Age, MY CAREER section, Page 6
MARCELLA BIDINOST: The writings of Edward de Bono fascinated the young Michael Hewitt-Gleeson. Now, aged 60, he is principal of the School of Thinking, which he founded with de Bono …
I WAS halfway through a marketing degree at RMIT when, at the age of 20, I was called up for national service in Vietnam. I was sent on an amazing 22-week leadership training program in Scheyville (west of Sydney) in 1967. Tim Fischer, Jeff Kennett and head of natural health company Marcus Blackmore also did this training.
When I returned from Vietnam and while I was working part-time in the air force, an education officer gave me a book by Edward de Bono, author of Lateral Thinking . I started raving about it to everyone and when I learned de Bono was coming to Australia, I paid $500, a lot of money in 1973, to attend his seminar in Melbourne. By that point, I was hooked.
My idea was to combine the army training technology with De Bono’s CoRT syllabus for thinking.
I offered to work with de Bono free, so we met in New York and soon enough founded the School of Thinking together. I stayed in the States for 14 years.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I read this article in ‘The Age’, which is what lead me here. Thank-you.
August 13th, 2007 at 1:47 am
I still admire the ethics of thinking being ‘free’ in both monetary and cognitive affects.
That so many influential people and organisations have worked with lateral thinking methods shows how much it is acknowledged that we need to change and/or expand our approach to thinking!