A Meeting of Minds

De Bono’s part in our story began in February 1974, when he gave a seminar in Michael Hewitt-Gleeson’s home town of Melbourne. Unlike Eric Bienstock, Michael knew exactly who Edward de Bono was. He had first encountered the man’s radical and fascinating ideas when his military supervisor handed him two of de Bono’s early works—The 5-Day Course in Thinking and The Mechanism of Mind. Mechanism of Mind is out of print now; I know where I can get a copy, but I’ve heard enough about it to be sure my very little brain would fail to understand most of it. I have read dumbed-down summaries of the book’s basic concepts, and they have taxed my grey matter quite enough. De Bono once said that only two people ever fully understood the book. One, not surprisingly, was Michael Hewitt-Gleeson, and that was only after he had laboriously spoken every word of it into a tape recorder and played it back twelve times. (The other chap is Luis Alberto Machado, who was a government minister in Venezuela in the 1970s, but that’s another story). I don’t have time to read Mechanism of Mind twelve times, but that doesn’t mean I can’t benefit from the revolutionary insights that were de Bono’s premise, which formed the basis of all his subsequent work in the field of thinking.

The thing about the brain is that it likes to form patterns. It needs to do this because the world is a complex place, and in order to function we need to develop a set of automatic responses to it. If we didn’t, we’d spend every waking moment making the simplest decisions, such as what order to put on our clothes in the morning. Apparently there are so many possible sequences for dressing ourselves, and other quotidian activities, that if we considered them all before choosing one, there would literally be no time left over for the business of living. So when we get dressed, we save time by calling on stored patterns of garment-donning that have been built up over a lifetime. These patterns are etched like deep tracks into our minds and allow us to get through much of our day on automatic pilot. But a disadvantage of this is that we tend not to be able to find new ways of doing things. The tracks we use to navigate our daily lives are so entrenched that they blind us to the available alternatives. This short-sightedness, or tunnel vision, applies to not just simple daily activities, but to every aspect of living. This means we often have trouble solving problems, being creative and moving forward, or even just moving for its own sake (remember that definition of thinking). De Bono’s work is concerned with finding ways to break these patterns. Sometimes a side (lateral) path will take us to our destination more quickly, but we don’t notice that path until the road ahead is blocked and we are forced to look for an alternative. De Bono’s techniques deliberately create these road blocks, or provocations, which help us to find alternatives that provide better, hitherto unseen ways of reaching our goals.

Mechanism of Mind was published in 1969 – it was de Bono’s magnum opus, and laid down his contribution to the new field of cognitive science. Until now, Michael’s reading had taken the form of generalised research as he cast about looking for a future direction. De Bono’s book narrowed his focus, and although Michael knew he didn’t understand it all the first time he read it, he knew that it was ‘it’. When de Bono came to Melbourne in 1974, Michael didn’t hesitate to blow the last $500 of his army pay on his seminar.  The twenty-three year old Michael Gleeson, perhaps matured by his army experience but still reeking of youth, was the youngest audience member in a sea of suit-and-tied CEOs. De Bono was impressive. His presentation was calm and laid-back—very different from the business seminars presented by American experts who tried to excite their audiences with jingoistic talk about passion and winning. The content was meaty and backed by proper science, but presented in digestible, bite-sized pieces that neither overwhelmed nor patronised. That’s the positive spin, anyhow. When Michael’s father said it sounded like de Bono was selling snake oil, his enthusiastic son laughed it off. Michael believed he knew a good product when he saw it, and the man behind the message had the credentials and academic background that demanded he be taken seriously.

Despite being the only callow youth in a room bursting at the seams with top executives, Michael was bold enough to approach the master and ask, not for his autograph or some advice on lateral thinking, but if he’d like to have lunch. Apparently, de Bono was too polite to say no. He may have wondered what he could possibly have to talk about with this audacious young man, but was to be pleasantly surprised. During his time in the army, Michael had come up with a few ideas of his own that he was eager to share.

Eureka!

Michael has referred to his army training as a ‘$1million personal growth programme’. That was the cost, per man, of the officer training that Michael applied for after he was drafted. Known as ‘The Scheyville Experience’ this intensive military leadership programme was conducted at a place called Scheyville, near Windsor in New South Wales. I’d never heard of Scheyville before I began researching this story, and I still think the place has a sort of ‘Area 7’ mystique; what went on there was both bizarre and very expensive. The 154 day training schedule that Michael applied for was a day and night immersion experience, and many of the young men who came out of this sausage factory with a passing grade and their mental health intact went on to acquire impressive CVs. Lessons covered not only the theories of military science, but also leadership skills that could be applied to, and for, life. The course included advanced training in military history, military law, instructional techniques, strategic thinking and perceptual skills, counter-revolutionary warfare, communications, man management and leadership strategies, confidence and survival skills, military and social etiquette, diplomacy and tact. It’s a funny list. The last few items make it sound like a military charm school, and while Michael failed ‘tact’, you have probably guessed by now that the bits about thinking and training struck a chord.

When he joined the army, Michael had been surprised by the high calibre of military training, which was far superior to either school or business training. Military training has to be potent stuff – if it’s not, soldiers die unnecessarily. Well, you could say they die unnecessarily anyway, but the point is that soldiers have a threatening bottom line, and the better you train them, the better chance they have of staying alive. This was especially true in the Vietnam era, when new recruits were not gung-ho volunteers who had joined up in a spirit of  patriotism to defend the homeland from dark forces, but reluctant draftees with a bad attitude who only had to pass the most general health standards to be accepted by the army. The training had to work if it was going to turn this mob into a well-oiled fighting machine—and it did. In the army, Michael learned that good training can perform magic.

After he completed his tour of duty in Vietnam, Michael opted to transfer to the Royal Australian Air Force Reserve to fulfil the rest of his National Service obligation. But it wasn’t the glory of the wide blue yonder or those sexy flying suits that lured him to the RAAF; Michael wanted to begin passing on the knowledge and skills he had absorbed in his army training, and chose to become an instructor. In his five years with the RAAF, Michael served in a variety of teaching roles, including Squadron Chief Instructor, but the lessons he taught were not as valuable as the one he learned. Michael discovered that he was a brilliant teacher—one of the best the squadron ever had— and incidentally, that was a third party opinion, not an overgrown ego. But he hadn’t just discovered a skill; he had found his vocation. Now, Michael knew what he had to do when he left the armed forces permanently. As a natural and gifted teacher, he could teach anything. The only question left to answer was—what should he teach? In the books that Michael absorbed so thoroughly, de Bono had been talking about teaching thinking. You don’t have to be as brainy as these two men to see how the ‘Eureka!’ moment happened.

At the lunch that de Bono had to eat because he was too polite to say no, the nascent devotee and his guru-elect discovered that they shared many interests and ambitions. There was the great comfort and stimulation of finding somebody with whom you are naturally, effortlessly in sync. Michael discussed his background in training, and told de Bono about a product he had developed called the Career Acceleration Programme (CAP). CAP was a distillation of the training strategies that Michael had learned in the army and adapted for non-military applications. It was a generic train-the-trainer product although Michael had been using it to focus on the area of sales training.  CAP could be used to train anybody in any type of skill. Michael had already begun consulting to companies in Melbourne and installing CAP into their training operations. He had also considered how CAP could be used to teach thinking as a skill. De Bono paid Michael the supreme compliment of saying he liked his ideas, and the flattered young man was so surprised and excited that he offered to go to Cambridge and work for de Bono for nothing, despite having spent the last of his cash for the privilege of hearing the master speak. Well, you’d be silly to knock back an offer of slavery, so of course de Bono said, come on over.

Detour

That fateful lunch was in 1974, five-and-a-half years before Edward de Bono & Associates advertised for thinking instructors in the New York Times. Obviously, there was a detour. Prior to meeting de Bono, Michael had been invited to spend six months in the US with Fred Herman. Herman, along with de Bono and Thomas Harris (the author of I’m OK You’re OK, the classic text of transactional analysis), made up a short-list of potential gurus that Michael had been auditioning to help steer his nascent career. Herman was co-author of a book called Keep it Simple, Salesman, and is widely regarded as the greatest American sales-trainer of all time. His is also believed to be the only member of his profession ever to appear on the Johnny Carson Show. Herman’s invitation to work for him in Atlanta was too good to decline, so Michael laid out plans to arrive in Cambridge via the new world. But the new world turned out to be too exciting, too challenging, and too good for his career. After a stint in Atlanta with Herman, New York beckoned, and Michael took his CAP product to the big apple, where his career as a corporate trainer and consultant began to flourish.

Michael kept in touch with de Bono, however, and the two men continued to look for business opportunities that would exploit their respective talents. As we know, de Bono was keen to break into the lucrative US consulting market. In a letter to Michael dated 3 June 1978, he wrote that he regarded the US as:

‘…a very important market, and one I have been keeping in reserve for a serious marketing effort… There are indeed many avenues that can be explored if I do have someone in New York who knows what it is all about, is energetic, is a good marketing man and also able to teach lateral thinking.’

In 1978, Michael cooked up the idea that he should act as a sort of agent or rep for de Bono and sell him to CEOs of US companies as a ‘thinking strategy consultant’, using the contacts he had made through his own consulting work. The pair set up a joint venture, Edward de Bono & Associates Ltd., with de Bono as the major shareholder (60%) and Michael as managing director (40%). The problem with this scheme was the minor point that de Bono was 12,000 miles away on the other side of the Atlantic and virtually unknown in the US. After a year of trying to sell de Bono to Fortune 500 companies with little or no interest, it was time to give up and start again. Michael went back to the drawing board.

• Edward de Bono and Michael Hewitt-Gleeson in New York •

Sometime in 1978, at one of their regular breakfasts at The Algonquin in New York, de Bono showed Michael a ‘simple brochure’ that described a syllabus of sixty lessons designed to teach thinking skills. They were the CoRT lessons. CoRT stands for the Cognitive Research Trust, an entity which de Bono and others set up in Cambridge in 1971, to develop his methods into a schools programme. Because the CoRT material had originally been designed for schools, its presentation was humble. It was not a glossy brochure that hinted at slick corporate backing; it was more like the work sheets that teachers ran off the roneo machine in the 1960s and 70s, which filled the air with the intoxicating smell of fresh purple ink. De Bono said he had authored the material and that his brother was trying to distribute it through his company, Direct Education Services, but with little success.

Michael went back to the lab in his head where he was forever conjuring up new schemes and dreams for himself and de Bono to pursue. This time his thought experiments produced the equation: CoRT + CAP = a train-the-trainer project for teaching people to think. It was an elegant product—the CoRT lessons would form the syllabus and Michael’s train-the-trainer methods would be used to teach instructors. Michael put together a draft business plan and presented it to de Bono while he was on a stopover at JFK International Airport on 17 November 1979. A key idea in that business plan was the proposal that instead of doing the teaching themselves, Michael and de Bono should set up the school to train thinking instructors who could go into the field and do the teaching for them. This gave the business the potential for unlimited growth, and the idea was an immediate hit with Michael’s mentor. A very excited de Bono signed on the dotted line and told his protégé to go ahead. Never one to let the iron cool, Michael placed the ad in the New York Times that brought together 100-odd New Yorkers for an all-in brawl at the Statler Hotel one month later.

Buy, Buy, Buy!

The fight raged for about ten minutes. Michael thought the best thing to do was let the passion in the room cool naturally, while he remained aloof and tried to be an example of a better way to behave (while quietly becoming convinced that his latest venture was doomed before it had even begun). Finally there was silence. Michael asked everybody to take some air and reconvene in five minutes. The room emptied, and when it refilled later, about half the original crowd were present. This time things went well. The now-eager audience listened to the figures. The cost to become an instructor with Edward de Bono and Associates, Ltd. would be $500 per ten-week semester. This would buy two hours of in-house training per week and participants would be trained personally by Michael in the first seven lessons of CoRT Thinking. However, anybody who signed up that night would receive the honour of becoming a ‘Charter Member’ of the school, and could join for the very special price of $250. The programme would begin in January, and once completed, the freshly-minted trainers could charge $500 to teach their own students. Half of that $500 would go to Edward de Bono & Associates Ltd., but the instructors could keep the rest.

The basic company structure that Michael outlined at that meeting would have been familiar to much of his audience. In the 1970s, companies such as Amway, Mary Kay, Avon and Tupperware were rapidly becoming household names. They appealed to the Mr and Mrs of those households—citizens with no special talent or training and no investment capital could go into part-time business for themselves and dream of getting rich without having to answer to a boss. But multi-level marketing schemes don’t have an altogether squeaky-clean image. Many people are turned off by the quasi-religious information sessions designed to seduce naïve newcomers with the promises of easy money.  While it’s true that there are people who earn a good income from the direct selling of lipstick and loo cleaner, published statistics indicate that they are a tiny minority of less than 2%.

This new venture was in many ways to thinking, what Amway was to liquid cleanser. You saw the ad, you went to the information session where someone got you all excited about the product, you parted with some money, and then you went out into the field to flog your horse, hoping that it wasn’t already dead. But this venture was different from other direct marketing schemes in a key area. Michael talked about the way they planned to operate, the product that would be provided, and how an income could be generated for those who worked hard, but nothing whatsoever was promised – not money, not salvation, not even a good time. The only comfort for potential investors was the unconditional money-back guarantee. Strangely enough, this open-handed approach worked. For Eric, it was the lack of promises that made him believe he could trust Michael. And there was something else that made this direct, tell-me-like-it-is New Yorker on the mature side of thirty think this was potentially a good investment and not just a wicked wide-boy scam. It was the product, of course. Teaching thinking was such a good idea that Eric was sure it would make far more money than a scam ever could.

Five hundred dollars could buy a lot of Mary Kay cosmetics in 1979, but despite the hefty price tag, Michael had to duck to avoid being flattened by the charging herd of enthusiastic individuals waving cheques at him. It was too much for one man to handle—the school was understaffed before the first lesson had been conducted! Something made Michael grab Eric and appoint him on the spot as head trainer and money collector. He was a mathematician, so it made sense. It was also the beginning of what Eric describes as the most fun he has ever had in his professional life.

DO

The cheques were cashed and the lessons were booked. The school had started.

Now, it had to do something. And what it did, as the advert promised, was teach the CoRT skills to thinking instructors. The ad boasted that ‘Edward de Bono’s CORT THINKING Program is already being used by over two million people worldwide’. Despite this, Eric recalls that he saw only the brochure for CoRT 1 at that first information session. He was assured that there were indeed six sets of ten lessons, but little did Eric know that the flimsy brochure Michael handed around was all that he had, and that the rest of Edward’s package was ‘in the mail’. When the full package of CoRT lessons did finally arrive from London (one set getting lost on the way), Michael hurriedly redesigned the schoolroom-ish sheets of paper into something more worthy of his new business venture. He also had to alter them to incorporate the CAP techniques that would be the platform for teaching de Bono’s syllabus.

CAP, as we know, owed its genesis to the superlative training techniques Michael enjoyed (or endured) in the army. Two key elements of that training are: 1. training by numbers and 2. daily training. Training by numbers means taking an apparently impossible skill and breaking it down into small units, which you practice over and over again until you can do them in your sleep, then put them together again into a do-able skill. Daily training means keeping up a relentless, demanding schedule that must be signed off by someone more important than you. Together they spell boot camp. When CoRT married CAP, the process became paramount. You did lessons, but the content of those lessons was less important than the act of practicing them, again and again. It wasn’t about knowing, it was about doing. And it wasn’t always well-received.

Cabaret not schoolroom

Most schools occupy a disappointing example of industrial architecture that does little to comfort the senses but is at least a tangible thing with doors and windows and a street address. This new virtual school was more concept than concrete, and had to conduct its business in whatever rented room was available. In fact, the regular meetups were an important part of Michael’s formula, his Table Mood. He feels people think better around a table than they do in a school setting. He calls this setting ‘cabaret style”.

And so, SOT venues were deliberately chosen because they were fun and stimulating–from favourite local coffee shops to swish hotel function rooms–with regular classes held at The Barbizon Plaza, The Biltmore and New York Hilton. Table for six? Cabaret style! It was worth forking out for a course so you could spend a few hours every week in a warm and tastefully décor-ed environment. On arriving at the designated cafe, the student would find the room was always set-up with tables not rows of chairs facing the front like a schoolroom.

If several tables were set up each had six chairs. There was a pile of notebooks and pencils – so far so good. But on the instructor’s desk there would be a stopwatch and a bell. Hang on a minute… isn’t a stop watch more at home at a running track? Doesn’t a bell have something to do with boxing? Is this an exercise in thinking, or just exercise? Michael’s emphasis was to teach thinking as a skill not just philosophising. His military background had drilled into him that the best way to acquire virtuosity was by PRR – Practise. Repetition. Rehearsal. So each 59-minute course conducted around the tables of six was riddled with a series of 3-minute drills. This is where the stopwatch and bell demonstrated the SOT emphasis on skill not just knowledge.

The 59 Minute Course in Thinking

This was the basic SOT course. What it was, in fact, was just one of the many acronyms that populate this story. The students were about to learn the PMI. Have you ever had to make a difficult decision? Of course. And how do you do it? I think I can remember the first time somebody showed me how to get out a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle, and write the pros on one side and the cons on the other. Perhaps my father showed me, or maybe I learned it at school. I certainly remember learning debating at school, and having the strange but valuable experience of arguing for something I didn’t agree with, or against something I did agree with. For or against, good or bad, pro or con, plus or minus. There are different ways to express the concept, but they all have one feature in common—duality. What if there was a third option? Perhaps a shade of grey to this black-and-white way of organising the world? Yes, no or maybe. The word maybe doesn’t have a good reputation. It implies indecisiveness, sitting on the fence, a lack of commitment. But there are other ways to express that third option that sound more positive. How about good, bad or better? Or plus, minus and interesting? This last group provided the acronym that formed the first lesson in de Bono’s CoRT thinking programme–‘The PMI’.

It’s obvious what happens. You think of the plus points, minus points and interesting points about an idea. Say, that a marriage contract should last only five years, with an option to renew. Now, you might form an opinion on that very quickly. If you’re embroiled in an acrimonious divorce, complete with an impenetrable pre-nup, you probably think it’s a good idea. If you proposed to your sweetheart just last night, I expect you think it’s heretical. But you weren’t asked for an opinion. You were asked to think of plus points and minus points and interesting points about the idea. The interesting bit probably needs a bit of explaining. You could put things you’re not sure about in that category, or you could really stretch yourself and come up with responses that might lead to something bigger and better. This is where you put your ideas that might generate other ideas. When you ‘do a PMI’, you respond to an idea in a structured way that suspends prejudice and emotion. It’s about breadth of thought, not judgement. This means you may see the value in an idea that otherwise would have been quickly rejected, or discover problems with an idea that at first seemed attractive.

This is what the trainee thinking instructors did at their little tables. The teacher would read out a proposal, such as ‘Should all the seats be taken out of buses?’, then set the stopwatch running while the students tried to come up with as many plus, minus and interesting points as possible in the allotted five minutes. There were only three rules, but they were not negotiable. One—students must speak one at a time; two–no passing (if you pass, you won’t think); three–have fun, which meant you mustn’t critique each other. And it didn’t matter how sad or bad the points you came up with were. Forget the quality. At this stage it was all about quantity.

After three minutes, the instructor rang the bell, and all thinking stopped. The idea was radical; most people were surprised and some were shocked. There was no dull lecturing, no one was trying to be clever and there were no right or wrong answers. It was more like being in a gym than a classroom. But, just like working out at the gym, improvements came as the process went on. Ideas came more quickly, there were more of them, and they were more imaginative. The value of drilling became apparent—to achieve virtuosity in thinking you had to put in the hours, just as a dancer or a pastry chef or a yogi must to become a virtuoso of their art. After a few sessions, the shock wore off and the sceptics couldn’t wait to graduate, get their own bell, and start shocking their own students. Instructors loved their bells so much they personalised them with stickers and ribbons and other paraphernalia, and the bell became the school’s unofficial symbol. These days Michael still uses the bell but the stopwatch has been replaced by his iPhone.

The PMI was lesson one. More acronyms followed. Lesson two was CAF: ‘Consider All Factors’, which made sure that you took into account everything about the proposal. Lesson three was C&S: ‘Consequence and Sequel’, which encouraged the student to consider the immediate, short-, medium- and long-term consequences of the proposal. Lesson four was AGO: ‘Aims, Goals and Objectives’, which aimed to improve thinking by clarifying what the proposal was trying to achieve. Lesson five was FIP: ‘First Important Priorities’, a tool that helped to sort the thinking done so far, and determines the issues that should be dealt with first. Then there was APC: ‘Alternatives, Possibilities and Choices, which encouraged the user to look for and find more alternatives. The final lesson was OPV; ‘Other Point of View’, in which the student looked at what other people thought of the same proposal and tried to understand different perspectives. All of the lessons were conducted according to the same strict, timed format.

The stopwatch and bell were incongruous enough, but students also had to grapple with the idea of logging their hours. A notebook was provided for every student to record how many they spent practicing thinking. It was more like learning to fly. There was also homework. On the back of the four-page leaflets that set out the lessons, there was an ‘Action Commitment Planner’. You couldn’t just turn up in class, collect credit for the course and then promptly forget what you had learned, as so many of Eric’s students had done. First, you had to write down three important ideas you had gleaned from the session, which meant that you had to think of some. Then you had to promise to try out your new skills in the real world before the next lesson. And you couldn’t make vague promises to practice, or do better next time. You had to write down two commitments to action, including the day, time and place in which they would take place. You also had to nominate people with whom you would discuss your commitments—witnesses who could verify that you weren’t cheating. There was nowhere to hide.

Earl Jay Perel, a New York City teacher and writer, summed it up:

‘As a teacher of many years’ experience who has taken countless graduate courses in philosophy and more methods courses than I care to mention I must confess that the CoRT 1 seminars have forced on me the realization that I do very little real thinking, especially in my personal life. When it comes to the business of making real life decisions I was shocked to discover how totally impulsive I am in such situations.

It was shocking too to discover how painful it was for me to sit down and work out the Action Commitments required for homework because I just hated to think them through. Consequently, the CoRT 1 course is the best methods course I’ve ever taken because of the way it compelled me to organize and plan my thinking before making decisions.’

The new school was off to a flying start. The first training class was conducted on Saturday12 January 1980, and fifty students had the honour of graduating as Charter Members. Students sat no exams or tests to qualify as thinking instructors; the school’s currency was hours of training, and a full logbook earned them a passing grade.

The Official Launch – 25 Feb, 1980

With the first training programme well under way, it was time for an official launch. Students and supporters were invited to the Windsor Room at the Biltmore Hotel on Monday 25 February 1980, at 6.30pm, for the Official Launch of the new ‘Edward de Bono School of Thinking’. Guests were invited to bring a friend, but advised to book as seats were limited. Attendees could also sign up for a course that night and take advantage of a reduced tuition offer. The man who had given his name to the school would launch the school with an address entitled ‘Teaching Thinking: An idea whose time has come.’

• Below are some pics of Michael and Edward with guests at the launch •

From the beginning, de Bono was a mostly absent partner in the school that bore his name. Michael and de Bono had agreed to go ahead with the venture when Michael produced his business plan at JFK International Airport in November 1979. Later, after collecting his own thoughts on how the venture should proceed, de Bono responded with an eleven-page letter dated 3 January 1980. There de Bono stated that he thought the school’s name should be eponymous ‘to take full advantage of the asset, to prevent rip-offs … to keep it neutral, and to prevent break-aways from using the name.’ This is how Michael’s plan came to be called The Edward de Bono School of Thinking. While de Bono visited the US a few times each year to conduct seminars and lectures, the day-to-day running of the school, the promotional work and most of the creative development was done by Michael and his colleagues. However, any suggestions that de Bono made, either in person or by letter, would be carefully considered and usually adopted.

Eric at an SOT function with Edward on one of his New York visits. 

Sell, Sell, Sell

There’s a saying – ‘fake it till you make it.’ I use it all the time, and it could have been EDBSOT’s motto. In its publicity, the school was careful to give the impression that it was both successful and substantial. The warning of limited places at the official opening and special offer of discounted tuition made the school sound like a thriving enterprise, despite the fact that it was still just a rented room, a few bucks and a quality product. The product was in good shape–it just about sold itself—but it was still necessary to get the product to the people.

These days, you could spread the word about EDBSOT in about five minutes on Facebook™ or Twitter™, but things were a little different in the early 1980s. Personal computers were still primitive luxury items, and if you wanted a publicity flyer you had to stick a sheet of paper into a typewriter, do a bit of ‘formatting’ by underlining a few words and putting some others in capitals, then take your piece of paper down to the copy shop. The golf-ball typewriter had been invented, so Michael Gleeson did have a variety of fonts and other toys to play with when he ‘designed’ publicity material for the school, but everything still had an unsophisticated, home-made look. The local copy shop probably turned a record profit thanks to EDBSOT, and Michael and Eric became good friends with the staff. They both remember spending countless hours at the Xerox machine and going through box after box of staples as they put together thousands upon thousands of lesson sheets, pamphlets and flyers.

In February 1980, the copy shop ran off the school’s first newsletter. ‘February Notes’ announced the official opening, more opportunity meetings, as the information sessions were known, and another special price on tuition fees. Readers learned that Dr de Bono would be speaking at the Smithsonian Institute and conducting two-day seminars in New York and Newport Beach. He had recorded a television series on the world’s greatest thinkers, and his CoRT thinking programme was to be installed in schools in Venezuela (you know, that blob-shaped country at the top of South America). Apparently, he had also written the most-read article ever published by IBM’s ‘Think’ magazine. Wow! And there were other journalists and TV shows expressing interest in interviewing Dr de Bono. Amazing! But just a minute…exactly who or what was being promoted here? The school or de Bono? Well, promote de Bono and you promoted the school. After all, his name was on it.

The relentless promotion of this tiny but promising venture was vital. The newsletters gave substance to the concept, and even when there wasn’t a lot to report, they a made a great soapbox.

‘Why should I learn to think?’ asked an early promotional brochure.

‘Because’, the brochure answered itself, ‘thinking is the most important of all human skills. It underlies every other skill.’

‘What happens if I don’t learn to think?’

‘We get carried along by the emotions of the moment or habit or the thinking of others.’

‘But isn’t thinking really just a matter of intelligence?’

‘Absolutely not! Thinking is an operating skill that we use to make the most of our potential. In fact, high intelligence can be a block to effective thinking.’

‘Don’t we already learn thinking at school anyway?’

‘Not really… very little attention is paid to the deliberate teaching of thinking as a skill.’

Naturally, the next question was, ‘Where can I learn these thinking skills?’ No need to answer that one. It was a classic sales strategy—convince a potential customer that they have an unmet need, then show them how your product will fulfil that need. Usually, the next step is to write some fake feedback from imaginary satisfied customers. But EDBSOT didn’t have to do that.

From the beginning, EDBSOT delivered on its promises. Some of the feedback published in the March newsletter, only the second the school produced, was quite breathtaking:

 

‘…finally in the CoRT THINKING training I have had such an experience. It was simple, direct, and without pain. For the price of the training I have come away with two “priceless” principles:

1. The need to prove I am “right,” or that the other person is wrong keeps us in muddy thinking. To think clearly we must give up our attachment to our ego. (To learn this in ten easy lessons is a psychological phenomenon, or at least every therapists [sic] dream.)
2. Life, or the solutions to our problems, is simple. They just aren’t easy as long as we do not allow ourselves to see the possibilities and the alternatives.

This has indeed been a course in miracles.’

That astonishing praise was written by a woman named Barbara Glabman, who was a psychotherapist based in New York City and one of EDBSOT’s first graduates. There are two ‘wows’ in that quote. Barbara was a practicing psychotherapist, and yet she credited EDBSOT with providing the tools with which to accomplish her professional dream. The other ‘wow’ is the fact that she was one of EDBSOT’s first graduates. The school was still trying to get established and working out how to operate effectively, but was drawing results like this. It was the product, of course. It worked. At once. EDBSOT truly was teaching an operating skill that could change lives.

And there were many other satisfied customers. Augusto Rios, a teacher from the Bronx, used his new skills to help his family save $500 towards their first house. Got his money back in one month! Many students reported saving money. Others reported saving time. Some were saving both time and money. Another high school teacher, Bill Fiffick, was using the lessons to train the minds of his three bright young daughters–two PMIs convinced them that ‘investments’ in ski clothing were not as sensible as they first thought. Music therapist Jean Murai helped a friend in a personal crisis, who not only resolved the crisis but was able to sack her psychiatrist. EDBSOT was doing the work of head shrinkers all over New York City. Students who reported positive results from their training included entrepreneurs, educators, therapists, writers and many ordinary Americans who found the lessons helpful in their family life.

De Bono had predicted this broad appeal. In the letter he wrote to Michael on 3 January 1980, he listed what he thought would motivate people to enrol in EDBSOT. He saw its uses in ten key areas:

1. instructor use

2. home use

3. professional use

4. private use

5. hobby

6. skill and achievement

7. social/club

8. network

9. confidence

10. keeping up (as in with the Joneses)

The feedback from early students indicates that these predictions were accurate. The school did indeed have universal appeal. It was a widget with real value.

After completing the course, graduates were free to set up as thinking instructors in their own right and begin recruiting students. They ran their small operations wherever they could find the space—hotel function rooms, school classrooms, cafes and members’ homes all became schools of thinking. Initially, instructors charged their students a flat fee for the lessons, fifty per cent of which went to EDBSOT. Later the fee migrated to the materials, and after the school was well established an annual licensing fee was introduced. The Learn-to-Think-Club was another way for thinking instructors to generate income. These clubs were open to people who had completed the CoRT programme and wanted to meet regularly with fellow students to flex their newly-acquired thinking muscle. Membership cost $45 for four weeks, and the clubs were hosted by qualified EDBSOT instructors.

Throughout its life, EDBSOT had a loose organisational structure. Program coordinators and regional managers were appointed, but members in the field operated quite independently. This approach was unusual in the US, but it suited a growing organisation. There was room for everybody and members had the freedom to run their small operations however they saw fit. Sometimes instructors would be confused about some minor detail, such as which folder invoices should go in, or which logbook should be used for which lesson, but Michael and his colleagues always urged their field operators to sort out their dilemmas independently. After all, they were all skilled in the art of thinking, and should be able to find creative, no-fuss solutions to their problems. It made no sense for the boss to get power hungry and start micro-managing his underlings.

There were, of course, a few dissatisfied customers. EDBSOT offered no guarantees that graduates would make money from their investment, but some began to ask why the cash wasn’t rolling in. Perhaps their expectations were too high, or maybe they didn’t work hard enough at recruiting their own students. Whatever the reason, there were graduates who took advantage of the school’s money-back guarantee, and Eric’s bank account was leaner as a result. But it wasn’t always about the money. Many graduates chose not to set up as thinking instructors in their own right, but found the course enhanced their existing careers or helped them reap financial rewards through their businesses. Others valued the lessons as a personal development tool. You really couldn’t hope for a more altruistic MLM scheme.

Coast to Coast

In the spring of 1980, one of EDBSOT’s most important supporters arrived on the scene. Alex Noble is a writer and entrepreneur who holds a doctorate in jurisprudence in international law from Yale University, and is best described as one of EDBSOT’s co-founders. Unlike Eric, Alex was well-acquainted with de Bono’s work before she became involved with the school. In 1977, a friend handed her one of his early books on lateral thinking. Her first thought was ‘this guy looks interesting.’ He was interesting enough to send Alex straight to the local library, where she borrowed half -a-dozen more of de Bono’s books and powered through them. Afterwards, she decided that de Bono was more than interesting—he was incredible. But there was something she couldn’t understand—why wasn’t he well known in the US? Michael Hewitt-Gleeson has described Alex as ‘a formidable doer’, and having devoured those library books she immediately wrote to de Bono and offered to ‘put him on the map in my country’. It was not an idle boast; Alex had the necessary connections to do just that. Apart from being friends with ‘everybody west of the Mississippi’, she was a former journalist with many valuable contacts in the media. And, as she puts it, her middle name is ‘strategy’.

The bold approach paid off. Early in 1980, de Bono was scheduled to attend a conference near Alex’s home in Santa Barbara. He contacted her and suggested she come down to Long Beach so they could meet and discuss their mutual interests. At that stage, Alex’s motive was entrepreneurial. She had been thinking of publishing a workbook for writers using de Bono’s techniques, which she believed had synergy with the work she had been doing on creativity. But after talking with de Bono, everything changed. He happened to mention a guy called Michael Gleeson who was starting up a school to train thinking instructors in New York. There are moments in life when things just click, and this was one of them. Little did de Bono know that he had offered Alex the equivalent of catnip. She was on the next plane to New York, and when she met Michael another lifelong friendship began. The pair connected immediately on a personal level, and discovered a shared enthusiasm and sense of mission for the teaching of thinking. Alex completed her training as a thinking instructor over two weekend intensives, and although she was interested in EDBSOT primarily as a business opportunity, Alex discovered that she loved attending class and became both a firm supporter of the school and an energetic force that would ultimately be responsible for much of its success.

For the next four years, Alex made a full-time commitment to EDBSOT. Initially, her task was two-fold: put de Bono on the map in the US and get schools of thinking going on the west coast. Alex set herself up in a hotel room in New York, and after completing her training she spent the remainder of the spring and summer of 1980 promoting and supporting the school. A friend who worked in a nearby law firm loaned Alex an office every night, where she busied herself writing to magazines, plugging de Bono, his wonderful ideas and the coming revolution in thinking. Alex had connections at many important publications, including Omni, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times and even the magazine that boasted the highest circulation in the world— the Reader’s Digest. Alex was also responsible for giving the school a more professional image. She was horrified when she saw the home-made, black and white flyers that Michael and Eric were churning out and immediately set about giving them a makeover. She engaged a talented designer named Marty Neumeier who redesigned all of the school’s stationery and printed material.

By the autumn, Alex was ready to go back to Santa Barbara, where the first thing she did was call up 100 of her closest friends and get them all fired up about learning to think. She organised and hosted a week of thinking lessons, and can’t recall bad feedback from a single participant. While she was not interested in doing hands-on teaching with the school, Alex put in countless hours behind the scenes, creating a symphony of networking on behalf of EDBSOT. It was a strategy of saturation designed to spread the message as widely as possible, but some of the 100 ‘friends’ she called were more influential than others. David Thursdale was a skilled networker and film maker who loved de Bono’s products. He reached out to Pasadena socialite Mary-Jo Lewis, who just happened to be friends with Murray Gell-Mann and Paul MacCready. Gell-Mann is a noble prize winner who postulated the existence of Quarks, and was handily located at nearby Caltech in the 1980s. MacCready was the inventor of the Gossamer Albatross and the father of man-powered flight, who said of de Bono’s thinking classes:

‘I was amazed that something so simple and so much fun could be so quick and effective in developing a person’s “thinking muscle”. We all, as individuals and as caretakers of our precious earth, need these thinking skills.’

With luminaries like these supporting EDBSOT in California, its success was all but assured.

Meanwhile, back on the east coast, Michael Gleeson was practicing a more unconventional type of networking. In the early 1980s, New York was more firmly at the centre of the universe than the sun itself. It was the place to be, and the place to be in New York was Studio 54.

It seems odd to associate an increase in thinking power with the brain-cell destroying capacity of strobing disco lights, but the legendary nightclub is where Michael did most of his networking. He had an unconventional routine: 7pm to 9pm was for chores, 9pm to midnight was for sleeping, and then he would hit the dance floor at Studio 54, which he shared with kings, Kennedys and Warhols. He even remembers drinking a bottle of Dom Perignon in the DJ’s booth with Diana Ross. Okay, maybe this is name dropping, but once you got through the door at Studio 54, everybody was equal. It was a great leveller that allowed Michael to use the strategy of proximity to promote his work. If there are only six degrees of separation between you and me, there would only be two or three if we were both bopping on the dance floor at Studio 54 in the early 1980s. Michael met many influential people in the legendary nightclub who had the power to steer EDBSOT down the fast lane to success.

Talking the Talk

None of this clever networking, however, was a substitute for hitting the streets and taking the product to the people, and opportunity meetings remained a vital cog in EDBSOT’s publicity machine. Meetings were scheduled two or three times a month and were usually well attended, but sometimes Eric or Michael, or both of them, endured a long train journey to an upstate location only to find a solitary little old lady waiting to hear them speak. Eric recalls the opportunity meetings with affection, and remembers their good cop, bad cop routine. He introduced Michael, who wooed the audience with his considerable charm and demonstrated the simplicity and value of the thinking lessons. Then Eric took over and talked about the business side of things. Of course, there were times when the audience was reluctant to be charmed. Once, when Michael was talking about the need to take emotions out of thinking, a lady sitting in the front row, keeping company with numerous shopping bags interjected, ‘What do you mean by emotions?’ I’d have been left gaping, but Michael didn’t miss a beat. ‘What if I slap you?’ he asked, harnessing the irritation he must have felt. The audience gasped, and Michael was able to point to the emotion-based response filling the room.

Although their mission was to promote clear, unbiased thinking, Eric decided at one point that they needed to sell their product on emotion. To refine his technique, he went along to an est seminar to have a look at how the opposition did it. ‘Est’ was a personal development tool that flourished in the 1980s, and promised to open the gates of heaven for anyone willing to undergo the psychological trauma that underpinned its methods. But the movement had yet to make a really bad name for itself at the time that Eric went along to a seminar for a bit of corporate spying. He was taken aback. An audience of some 2,000 packed the hall. There was nothing but a lone bar stool on the empty stage, and when the speaker strode out and began to talk, unscripted, he had the audience spellbound for an hour and a half.  Eric told Michael afterwards, ‘We need more emotional excitement!’ The two men were always looking for new and better ways to sell their product, and it was worth a try. However, Eric remembers that when he took the stage and let it rip, est-style, the result was anything but electrifying.

Over time, two types of opportunity meetings were developed. One was a straightforward sales pitch, and the other took the audience through the ‘59-minute course in thinking’, which was actually a free lesson in the PMI. Graduates were recruited to conduct this second type of meeting, which gave the school’s founder more time to work on his plans to take over the world. Eric remembers that every time he visited Michael there would be a new chart mapping his latest scheme to grow the school. At the beginning of 1981, he declared that there would be twenty-five centres established across the US by the end of the year. The following year would see each centre coordinate the training of 10,000 CoRT instructors, to give a total of 250,000 nationwide. A $300 million dollar company was his modest target.

While Michael was busy playing the role of visionary, Eric performed the more prosaic functions of chief instructor and managing director. He eventually took responsibility for all the school’s logistics and administration, and it began to operate under the business name of Eric Bienstock and Associates. Eric’s apartment on East 78^th Street was also the school’s official premises, and it was his address and phone number that were printed on the constantly evolving brochures. Eric had a trustworthy doorman (made more trustworthy with generous Christmas tips), who was briefed never to tell visitors looking for EDBSOT that he lived there, lest the innocent subterfuge be discovered, and only hand out the school’s phone number. The doorman was so well briefed, in fact, that when the flesh and blood de Bono walked into the lobby one day, Eric received a call from the bamboozled doorman asking how Edward de Bono could possibly exist.

But having a somewhat shady street address was the least of the school’s worries. Time and money had to be poured into EDBSOT if it was going to become a sustainable, profitable business, but both commodities were in short supply. De Bono had enclosed a cheque for $2,000 made out to Edward de Bono and Associates with his letter of 3 January 1980, but that was quickly consumed by the copy shop. Apart from a few thousand dollars every now and then from Eric and Alex, the school was funded almost entirely by Michael Gleeson’s consulting work. Unfortunately, that income also had to fund and feed the consultant, whose suits were soon hanging on him and had to be held up by newly purchased braces. Eric felt compelled to invite his friend out for a meal every now and then to fatten him up, and remembers that Michael would invariably discover that he had neglected to transfer his wallet to the pocket of those now-baggy Savile Row trousers.

Eric remembers that Michael’s accidentally-on-purpose misplacement of the wallet was always done with a certain flair that could only leave him smiling. It was, and still is, impossible to be angry with a man who spreads his relentless optimism around you like a cloak of warm summer sunshine, and who you know would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it more than he did. Michael’s personal style accounts for much of EDBSOT’s success. His friendly, soft-sell approach, his humour and his reliable flair were among the school’s great strengths.

It may not have been an est-like empire, but the school was growing, and spreading well beyond New York City. Just five months after the official opening, schools were being established in Atlanta, Boston, New Orleans, Houston, Santa Barbara, Denver and Santa Monica. The movement was also crossing oceans, with plans afoot to open schools in South Africa and Switzerland. This rapid growth could be problematic, as some members had a well-meaning, but unsupportable enthusiasm for the product. Michael and Eric were bombarded with the demands of graduates who thought things should be done this way, or that way, and that such-and-such an idea was the one that would finally turn their little venture into a million dollar company. Suggestions were received graciously, with a promise that they would be tried when there was enough time and money to implement them. But the reality, which was well hidden from members, was that there was very little capital in EDBSOT, and Michael, Eric and Alex were filling every waking moment developing and promoting it. They had been careful, from the beginning, to make the school appear substantial, and they had succeeded. Soon, they weren’t faking it any more, they were making it. And they were getting noticed.

NOTICE

Michael and Eric clocked up thousands of miles travelling to and from opportunity meetings, and probably felled a whole forest with the home-made flyers they handed out at the bottom of the twin escalators at Grand Central Station—flyers that were sometimes read and usually trashed. But self-promotion wasn’t efficient. If you wanted to become a household name, you needed to be front page news, and the media would be the ultimate key to EDBSOT’s three-year journey to overnight success.

While Michael Gleeson was bopping away on the dance floor at Studio 54, Alex Noble was back in Santa Barbara unleashing her powerful propaganda weapons. She had a strategy. She would get EDBSOT and de Bono talked about in the media, then use this media interest to sell the business of learning to think to the community. This was a reverse strategy; normally it happens the other way around, with a trend germinating at grass roots level and getting noticed by the press after it has become well established. And it wasn’t something that just anybody could pull off, but Alex had the contacts, the press credentials and the necessary imagination to whip up a media storm about EDBSOT and its honourable mission of teaching people to think. It was Alex who was responsible for bagging most, and the most important, of EDBSOT’s press coverage.

Tuesday 20 May 1980 was a red letter day for EDBSOT supporters. As they sat down with their morning coffee, they had the very great pleasure of opening a copy of News World and reading about themselves. It was the first press coverage the school had received, and was just the beginning of an abiding media interest. The article spent most of its column inches on de Bono, and asked why his theories, in common use across so much of the globe, were not being deployed in the US. ‘Evidently,’ the article said, ‘we’ve been waiting for de Bono’s apostle, Michael Gleeson, who last November established America’s first Edward de Bono School of Thinking here in New York and whose goal it is to train 1 per cent of the population by 1983’. The article went on to talk a little bit about thinking as an operating skill, then somehow swerved into religion and thinking, with Michael suggesting to the journalist that God cannot have a sense of humour, because to have a sense of humour you must be capable of being surprised. And God knows everything, so nothing can surprise Him. Poor guy.

The first major newspaper to report on EDBSOT was the Wall Street Journal, which gave a full page to de Bono and his marvellous, if slightly odd, ideas in February 1981. The headline asked, ‘What Does a Nation Do If It’s Out to Win a Nobel Prize or Two? If It’s Venezuela, It Sets Up A Cabinet Post to Oversee Bettering Its Citizens’ IQs’. In 1979, one Luis Machado of Venezuela (the other guy who understood Mechanism of Mind) had persuaded his president that de Bono’s CoRT tools should be taught to every child in the country, and was given a government ministry to do just that. This had caught the imagination of the journalist, who was paranoid about the US getting beaten by a third world country in any kind of endeavour, however quirky. The apparently doubtful journalist compared Venezuela’s Minister of State for the Development of Human Intelligence to Don Quixote, and described his aim to improve the intelligence of Venezuela’s school children by teaching them to think as so much tilting at windmills. Sceptical reactions like this, which fail to understand the concept of thinking as an operating skill, are not uncommon. The article gave two paragraphs to de Bono’s methods, featured a peculiar black and white drawing of his head that made him look sort of Venezuelan, and failed to mention the New York school that bore his name.

It got better, however. A month later the Rocky Mountain News really got a handle on this whole learn-to-think business and how valuable it might be. In the article published on 28 March 1981, A. Michael Gleeson was back to plain Michael Gleeson, but had lost none of his enthusiasm with his first initial. The journalist reported that the first seminar of the de Bono method ever held in Denver would be taking place that weekend. Michael would be there, along with directors of the local branch of the school, John Andrews and Harvey Castro. The article made a nice forum for Michael’s preoccupation with analogies. He likened the de Bono method to learning karate: ‘…in a fight, the karate expert doesn’t flail around, reacting with fear or anger, he simply implements his skills to emerge from the predicament.’ I like that one (and I’ve heard a few). It gives us a real feel of what it might be like to have superior thinking skills that allow us meet life’s challenges with equanimity and emerge from the fray without a single hair out of place. The article went on to quote one of Michael’s catch-phrases—that worry is the absence of thinking—and to re-assure its readers that CoRT instructors are ‘far from being a cult-like group to train people to think in a particular way’ and that in fact they ‘don’t tell anyone what to think.’

The high mountain air must have given the journalist a clear head, because he understood how thinking, as an operating skill, is different from common or garden brain static. He could also see the sense and value of a school t that teaches people how to think, not what to think and, unlike many people, never suspected a hidden agenda. When I began researching this story and told people I was completing the lessons that make up today’s online, pro-Bono version of the School of Thinking, most of them suspected it was some sort of cult or brain washing enterprise. People also had trouble getting their head around the fact that I was not being told what to think, and instead, being encouraged and taught to think for myself. And almost everybody flatly refused to believe it was free. ‘But you pay at the end, of course,’ they would say with a knowing smile, perhaps implying that I would pay with my sanity. If the School of Thinking has an image problem, it’s the fact that it does kind of sound too good to be true. It is true, however, as it was back in the early 1980s, when the school had to rent its rooms by the hour. Soon, however, it would build its very own house of bricks. Enter the Coursebook.

Bricks and Mortar

In one of their vintage home-made flyers, printed some time in 1981, EDBSOT asked itself yet another question, ‘What is the “Learn-to-Think Coursebook”?’ It replied,

‘The Learn-to-Think Coursebook is the programmed book which enables an individual to learn and practice the CoRT Thinking Skills. Since the Coursebook is programmed, it can be used on its own, or as a workbook for the Learn to Think Club.’

What a pity that Michael hadn’t learned his lesson about using Australian spelling in promotional material. Note that program is spelled programme, as it was on many thousands of earlier flyers that consequently had to go in the rubbish, or trash, to use the American. But things were looking a lot more professional now. The roneoed sheets that had first crossed the Atlantic in the mail, occasionally getting lost, had matured into a solid object that you could pick up and hold with both hands. Inside those solid covers readers found the things you’d expect from a real book – a Preface, an Introduction, and all sorts of scintillating material written by de Bono and Michael Gleeson. And then there was information about the school’s philosophy, the method, how to start a Learn-to-Think Club at work, at school or at home, and the many advantages that could flow to anyone who undertook the lessons diligently. Most importantly, however, readers found the CoRT tools that made up the EDBSOT syllabus laid out in all their glory on page after gorgeous page. It was a textbook and a propaganda weapon all rolled into one.

There’s nothing quite like an object. EDBSOT devotees took to calling the Coursebook the brick—it was a sign that the school had truly arrived, and was no longer just a good idea waiting to happen. Now, when instructors went out into the field to promote the school and grow their individual enterprises, they could riffle through the book’s generous 245 pages, instead of trying to sell the concept on a lick, a promise, and a pamphlet or two. EDBSOT’s ‘Feedback’ newsletter, which by 1982 had a fortnightly circulation of 4–5,000, reported that the initial offer of the Coursebook through the mail in November 1981, drew a 12% response rate. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but given that mail drops average a response rate of 1–3%, it becomes quite staggering.

The Coursebook also marks a milestone in Michael career, for it was co-authored not by Dr Edward de Bono and Michael Hewitt-Gleeson but by Dr Edward de Bono and Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson. So much more impressive.

Michael had earned the title of Doctor of Philosophy in January 1981 and had, in fact, been working hard for three years on the research and writing of his PhD, while simultaneously trying to launch EDBSOT. Michael’s dissertation was entitled ‘Reassessing the Axioms of Traditional Selling or Salesmanship, with the Deliberate Application of Lateral Thinking and a Field Experiment Demonstrating the New System’. That was a long and fancy way of saying that it was about Newsell, Michael’s radical new theory of selling, which we will meet again later in this story. The doctorate was completed under the auspices of International College, which was established in Los Angeles in 1970 under authorisation of the California State Department of Education as a ‘university without walls’ with its highly acclaimed tutorial model.

True to its motto, In Vestigiis Institutorum Antiquorum–In the Footsteps of Ancient Principles–the International College academically evolved from the one-on-one method of the very first  universities, where a student was intimately paired with an illustrious and outstanding tutor in their particular field. The Master and the Apprentice! The Teacher and the Apostle! The Thought-Leader and The Successor!

Just imagine being chosen to sit and and study violin technique with Sir Yehudi Menuhin or to explore and create in the art of poetry with Anais Nin!

This elite faculty boasted an extraordinary coterie of famous tutors including Leonard Bernstein, Buckminster Fuller, Anais Nin, Yehudi Menuhin, Louis Leakey and Cambridge Don, Edward de Bono.

Michael’s personal tutor was Professor Edward de Bono of Cambridge University. Professor de Bono personally wrote to the Dean of the College recommending Michael’s admission to be paired to study and research with him for the world’s first Doctor of Lateral Thinking in the emerging field of Cognitive Science. On 17 August, 1978 Dr de Bono wrote: What particularly interests me is Michael’s proposal to test theoretical constructs in a very practical manner in his field work. Dr Hewitt-Gleeson’s PhD project was to test the Theory of Lateral Thinking in a difficult application–the art and science of selling–and see if he could develop a new approach. The research program included the official participation of 24 New York City hospitals and over 40,000 hospital employees and required extensive field travel for research, interviews and meetings with Professor de Bono in New York, California, Texas, Canada and London. The results of Michael’s PhD project received international media attention including a full page in The New York Times and the front page of The Wall Street Journal. It subsequently became the subject of a best-selling book in the US, the UK, Singapore and Australia.

Michael’s external examiner was Emeritus Professor George Gallup. George Gallup was the world famous inventor of market research and the Gallup Poll at Princeton. In his External Examiner’s report Dr Gallup wrote: NewSell is the first new strategy for selling in fifty years. You have presented a new approach to a very old subject with proof that your ideas do work. There are parallels with your ideas and how I think advertising works. Your thesis also has the quality of being very well written.

The point is that the new Coursebook, impressively authored by not one but two doctors, gave EDBSOT supporters something solid to flash around the many curious journalists who were writing about the school. Attracting publicity had not been difficult; in the crowded US market, the school had a product that stood out. It didn’t reek of religion in the way that many other personal development tools did, and there was something exotic about the two men at the helm. Here was your typically friendly, informal Aussie bloke selling the ideas of a man who, despite being born and bred in Malta, acted and sounded like an English gentleman. Michael’s role as a supporter to his mentor is important; although de Bono was still only visiting the US three or four times a year, it was his material, methods and moniker that Michael promoted relentlessly. And he was happy to do it. Michael Gleeson was indeed de Bono’s disciple, a word that is not too strong to convey the personal and professional respect, even reverence, that he had for the man chosen to be his guru. And Michael’s enthusiasm extended fully to de Bono’s theories and methods. He absorbed and practiced everything that his mentor published or discussed with him over the fine china tea they both preferred.

In March 1982, Michael penned a piece for Self, a women’s magazine, that promised to give the reader ‘Mind exercises to build people-skills, solve tough problems, make better decisions’. The article began with the usual reverential tribute to de Bono and his undeniable genius, and went on to give the reader a ‘cram course’ in thinking by taking them through three of the CoRT tools: the PMI, the APC, and the OPV. The article was valuable publicity for the school, and Michael was paid $2000 by Condé Nast for his article. He allowed himself to celebrate by splashing out on an Armani jacket.

Selling Snow

It must be nice to own a $2,000 jacket (I wouldn’t know), but it wasn’t just about making money. In fact, money had very little to do with it – it was about the mission. Exactly what that mission was varied among EDBSOT’s supporters. Eric was interested, from the beginning, in how the methods could be applied in business. Michael, for all his posturing as the super-salesman, had his sights set firmly on the education system. His real mission was to ensure that as much as possible of the youth of America, and the world, beyond grew up knowing how to think for themselves. He didn’t want anyone to go through the psychic pain he had experienced after returning from Vietnam, a pain triggered by believing without question what the establishment told him. And the way to ensure this was to arm young people with the clear, independent, broad-minded and productive style of thinking that EDBSOT taught. He wanted to get thinking on the school curriculum, a vision he shared with both Alex Noble and Edward de Bono.

Michael and his colleagues were not alone in their conviction that thinking needed to be taught in schools. Every year in the US, a Gallup poll was conducted to discover what the public thought of their schools. George Gallup himself, commenting on the poll, said, ‘we find that of all the goals of education, teaching students to think is always rated as the most important by the public. And yet, in the US, one finds that little or nothing is being done in a systematic way about teaching our students to think’. Gallup, who was the external examiner for Michael’s PhD and also a treasured mentor, was keenly aware of the work EDBSOT was doing, and the school’s newsletter quoted him as saying that he believed their work in teaching people to think ‘may be the most important thing going on in the world today.’

The public education curriculum is very precious real estate, especially for academic subjects. If EDBSOT wanted to establish their presence on that curriculum, they had to attack from every front. Local school boards, which usually decide the content of the curriculum in the US, were their most important targets. But EDBSOT also lobbied educational publishers, parents’ associations, schools and school principals, and even individual teachers. They faced stiff competition—there were many other organisations with a product to sell or a message to preach that promoted themselves just as fiercely. EDBSOT did have a few natural advantages, however. Firstly, they had the CoRT tools, which had originally been designed for school children and were versatile enough to be used at any grade level. Their mission was also benign, and not likely to be challenged by either educators or parents. No one would dare say, ‘Please don’t teach our children to think.’ In fact, giving children lessons in the art would make them believe that thinking was important. Finally, an improvement in a child’s thinking skills tends to improve their overall academic performance, just as better thinking can enhance all facets of an adult’s life. This flow-on effect is one of the reasons Michael Hewitt-Gleeson originally embarked on a career teaching thinking. When you teach somebody to think better, you teach them to do everything else better as well.

By the middle of 1982, EDBSOT was ready to expand beyond its original multi-level marketing model. The time was right to establish the CoRT Foundation. Having a not-for-profit entity associated with EDBSOT would allow Michael and his associates to interface with the education and government sectors, and deal with the many charitable foundations in the US whose support they needed. It was also hoped that the CoRT Foundation would get the Learn-To-Think Project off the ground; an initiative specifically devised to get the teaching of thinking on to school curriculums. So, on 29 June 1982, Edward de Bono, Alexandra Jane Noble, Eric Bienstock and Michael de Saint-Arnaud were duly elected Directors of the Foundation.

Hang on a minute. Who on earth is Michael de Saint-Arnaud? Or Count Michael de Saint-Arnaud, to use the full title. Let me explain. In those days, it was possible to purchase, hereditary titles from insolvent European royalty and nobles who had fled their various homelands and taken refuge in the US. After the spate of European revolutions in the early part of the 20th Century a diaspora of kings, princesses and nobility from the European Royal Houses had gone into exile many heading for Paris and New York. If diminished in stature they still conducted their balls and social events at The Pierre and The Plaza and were to be ‘seen’ at the famous nightspots of the day like Studio 54. It was all part of the New York Social Register and was also part of Michael’s social network via his exclusive membership in The Players and as an Honorary Bombadier in the elite Veteran’s Corp of Artillery.

Apparently, in Manhattan, it’s not only what you know but also who you know that counts. So, when the opportunity arose Michael bought his father a present (for the man who already had everything he wanted or needed). It was a real title of nobility making his father His Excellency Martin, Count de Saint-Arnaud. Michael hoped it would amuse his Dad who was very far from adopting any airs of hauteur.

His dad later enjoyed telling his story about how when he was pulled over by a young cop for a traffic violation and on presenting his Victorian Drivers Licence the policeman was impressed to read ‘Martin Hewitt-Gleeson, Count de Saint-Arnaud’. Wow! exclaimed the officer, “You’re a real count. I’ve never met a count before. What does it entitle you to these days?” To which Michael’s father enquired, “”Are you going to book me?” “Yes, I’m afraid so”, said the cop. “Then it really entitles me to bugger all!” They both enjoyed a laugh and Count Martin was given his ticket.

Michael, who had been an avid student of military history and chivalry for many years was not unaware of the fact that, being hereditary, this new title would fall on his own shoulders as well. It proved a handy social asset in New York in the 80s in the round of UN diplomatic parties and balls and the whirl of society networking.

From my perspective, here in Australia, where you’ll find that it’s fashionable to be republican and proudly descended from convicts, it seems an odd thing to do, but in the US perhaps it made sense at the time. They do like titles in America, where all men are self-evidently equal and they don’t have any nobility of there own and have to make do with Hollywood celebrities. The new styling of his name gave Michael some attention and opened a useful door or two that might have otherwise stayed shut. It also gave him an opportunity to give the television series that he made in 1984 a really bad title—‘It’s The Count that Thinks.’

But seriously, the new Count’s new CoRT Foundation was a very successful entity. As President of the Foundation, Michael was able to wear a more charitable hat, and he hit the speakers’ circuit to try and persuade powers-that-be in the education system to join the mission. On 9 July 1982, he gave a talk entitled ‘Teaching Thinking as a Skill’ to the University/Urban National Task Force. The Task Force was a group of leading US educators, chaired by Dr Richard Bossone of the City University, New York, who were dedicated to improving the effectiveness of public schools. The organisation survived on grants, but those grants were getting more difficult to secure. Dwindling funds and flagging enthusiasm for the cause had brought the Task Force to the brink of extinction. But after listening to Michael speak, Dr Bossone had a bright idea. What if the Task Force lobbied for a grant specifically for the teaching of thinking in schools? Teaching thinking was a new idea, something from the left field that might make the Task Force stand out among the other begging bowls. It worked. The College Board agreed to provide the Task Force with $300,000 for a project to teach thinking skills in public schools in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit, Minneapolis and Memphis.

One of the CoRT Foundations most successful ventures was a symposium that brought together the country’s most influential leaders in education. There were representatives from the City University of New York, the College Board, the New York City Board of Education, the Professional Staff Congress, the American Federation of Teachers, and of course the School of Thinking. Richard Bossone, already a fan, hosted the symposium, which was held at the City University of New York Graduate Center on 28 October 1982. Not surprisingly, the honoured guest and speaker was Dr Edward de Bono. Reflecting a few decades later, Michael recalls that it was this symposium that did most to get the teaching of thinking on to the school curriculum.

By the end of 1982, EDBSOT was well established, and the growing support of the education sector gave it status and credibility. A bit of celebration and relaxation was in order, and what could be more appropriate than a cocktail party for 2,000 EDBSOT members and guests? The Feedback newsletter of October 1982 announced that EDBSOT would be hosting Jerry Rubin’s ‘Networking Salon’ at Studio 54, on 27 October. De Bono himself would be present and would teach a new lateral thinking technique specially devised for the occasion, after which everybody could let off some steam on the dance floor. The event was entitled ‘Lateral Thinking, Entrepreneurs and Media’. Also known as ‘Lateral Drinking’.

Meanwhile, on the west coast, the efforts of Alex Noble and other EDBSOT supporters to get their product into schools started to show some impressive results. As well as courting such luminaries as Murray Gell-Man and Paul McCready, Alex had been pursuing important educators and power brokers in the school system. Pat McClure was a Santa Barbara educator and artist, who was already running projects teaching creativity when Alex introduced her to de Bono’s methods. Pat also had valuable connections, one of whom was Bill Cirone, the Superintendent of Santa Barbara County Schools. In the US, school superintendents are not indifferent public servants. They must run for office just like a politician does, and wield a considerable amount of power. If you have a product you want to sell to schools, having the ear of a school superintendent is like having a hot-line to heaven. And Bill Cirone was just one of numerous powerful figures in education who was wooed through Alex’s efforts to join the growing mission to teach America to think.

In September, in his role as Honorary Director of the CoRT Foundation, Michael de Saint-Arnaud announced on the Progressive Radio Network, all 150 stations-worth, that San Francisco was to become ‘the first city in the United States ever to teach their children to think for themselves.’ In November, the San Francisco Unified School District would launch the country’s first ‘Learn-to-Think’ project. Initially, 5,000 teachers would be trained in the CoRT method. Those teachers would train more teachers, who would then begin training their students, until every child in San Francisco was free to think what they wanted.

The enthusiasm with which schools were beginning to embrace the concept of teaching thinking as a skill is best expressed by Jack Kleinmann, Executive Director of the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education. After meeting Michael at a conference in September, he wrote to express his excitement:

‘Seldom have I been as excited by the potential of a project as I was on Friday discussing the DeBono School of Thinking with you. Was it a dream, or do we have a tiger by the tail? I hope the latter … and look forward to making further plans with you concerning our onslaught on the education establishment.’

Wow. If I was getting feedback like that, I wouldn’t stop. And they didn’t.

In 1982, Ronald Regan was in the White House, but when he took a vacation he liked to relax at his ranch near Santa Barbara. The entire White House press corps would follow him and encamp at the Biltmore Hotel, where they would twiddle their thumbs and wait for some news to break. During one of the President’s vacations in late 1982, Alex Noble decided to give them some news. She managed to get the names and room numbers of the ninety-six bored journalists holed up in the hotel. Anybody could have typed up a bunch of form letters addressed to ‘Whom it May Concern’, and asked the staff to file them with the other press releases at reception, but not Alex. She addressed all ninety-six envelopes by hand, prowled the hotel corridors with her list of room numbers, and slid one under each and every journalist’s door. That’s how you get noticed. I only wish for the sake of this story that she had dressed up as a chamber maid to do it. Alex was sure that at least one out of ninety-six journalists would take the bait. And the one who did was a big one.

In January 1983, Gene I. Maeroff reported in the New York Times on the growing number of students entering college after graduating from high school, who lacked the ability to ‘analyze, synthesize and generalize’. The article, which was published on the front page of the education supplement’s ‘Winter Survey’, also reported on the way that schools across the country were trying to rectify this worrying trend, by introducing the teaching of thinking to the curriculum. Educators across the country pricked up their ears. If the grey lady was talking about something, it must be important. Other media outlets took up the story. This cascading phenomenon of regional media across the country copycat reporting on New York’s broadsheet is known as The New York Times Effect.

Maeroff went on to report on the main educational philosophies that claimed to emphasise the teaching of thinking. They were Structure of the Intellect, Strategic Reasoning, Instrumental Enrichment and, last but not least, Lateral Thinking as devised by Edward de Bono, whose methods were ‘disseminated in the US from his school in New York’. It was just one line, but it was enough. EDBSOT had caught the wave at just the right time. Now all it had to do was keep steady on that board.

A Perfect Storm

In the wake of the New York Times coverage, every regional syndicated publication across the country carried articles on learning to think. On the back of this publicity, Alex Noble arced up her California crusade. If you can successfully launch a project that aimed to teach every child in one school district how to think, why not take the training to a whole community? This is what they decided to accomplish in Santa Barbara. Alex Noble had brought together a perfect storm of connected, credible, civic leaders who were ready to support a ground-breaking new initiative. Bill Cirone, along with the head of the PTA, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor of Santa Barbara and others, signed a statement that read, ‘As civic, business and educational leaders, we agree to the concept of Santa Barbara as an educative community, encouraging the upgrading of thinking skills in all learning environments (home, schools, business and government.’ On 13 April 1983, the Mayor, Sheila Lodge, issued a proclamation declaring the week of April 10–16, 1983, ‘Learn-to-Think-Week’. It stated:

‘Santa Barbra is widely recognized for its support of innovative and significant programs in education; and … is the home of idea-producing industries, a major research university, excellent colleges, and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, where dialogues between thinkers have helped to shape world policies; and … elementary and secondary public school teachers and students are being trained in the new educational basic; thinking as an applied skill; and … is the first city in the United States where leaders in government, education, business, non-profit organizations and community groups have also demonstrated an interest in learning new ways to improve their creative and problem-solving abilities through the learning and application of these thinking skills…’

EDBSOT responded to these momentous tidings by officially declaring Santa Barbara the first community ever to teach itself to think.

Learn-To-Think Week was planned to coincide with a visit by de Bono, and a fifteen-page press release listed the festivities. Press conferences with both de Bono and Bill Cirone were scheduled. De Bono would speak at a luncheon at the Channel City Club and Women’s Forum on the topic, ‘Beyond Computers; New Ways to Think’. A reception and presentation was also planned at the Biltmore Hotel, where both de Bono and Pat McClure would address the guests. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson was in town of course, and he and de Bono were kept busy talking to countless journalists. The Learn-To-Think Project attracted a torrent of publicity. It was a landmark initiative—its supporters were attempting to create a national model for the teaching of thinking in schools. Powerful organisations would be watching, and if it was successful, further initiatives would be launched across the country.

Santa Barbara’s Learn-to-Think Week attracted more than publicity, however. It also attracted money. A number of philanthropic organisations had become interested in EDBSOT, including the McCarthur Foundation; one of the two biggest foundations in the US. Mary-Jo Lewis, one of Alex Noble’s connections, approached the Foundation on behalf of EDBSOT and began to lobby for a grant. It was the support of so many respected civic leaders for to the Learn-to-Think Project that finally clinched the deal, and the Foundation agreed to give the county of Santa Barbara a grant of $25,000 towards the initiative. This was a stunning achievement for the many people who had been working relentlessly to promote the teaching of thinking not just in schools, but in the community. It had proved to be the right idea at the right time, and learning to think was fast becoming an essential accessory for the forward-minded Californian. Santa Barbara, however, was just the start. Bringing the notion of learning to think to the masses, and making them understand it and want it, would require a shift of many orders of magnitude. It would take a Goliath to make that happen.

Serious Money

In1983 there was no Oprah, but there was the Readers Digest. And there were the 68 million people around the world who read it every month. The magazine was started in 1923 by De Witt and Lila Bell Wallace, whose knack of understanding what the educated American middle class wanted to read turned their little venture into a success of behemoth proportions. In 1983 the Digest was the perfect vehicle to make EDBSOT a household name, and de Bono had long cherished a fantasy of seeing his name in it. Fortunately for de Bono, Alex Noble had a magic wand that could make his dream come true.

Morton Hunt was the leading science writer in the US in the early 1980s, and when Alex introduced him to the second edition of the Coursebook, it was love at first sight. The award-winning Hunt had indisputable credibility. If he wrote about learning to think in the Reader’s Digest, it meant the subject had to be taken seriously. The article was published in the March 1983 magazine and provided priceless publicity for the Santa Barbara Learn-To-Think Project, which was due to be launched in April. The headline read, ‘Want to reason like a genius? Try these seven steps to better thinking.’ It went on to promise the reader that by using Edward de Bono’s tools, ‘people of average intelligence can at times act like geniuses.’ Unlike many press reports on de Bono, the article was less concerned with the man’s breathtaking CV than the thinking skills he had invented. The article was, in fact, a mini Coursebook, in which the CoRT lessons were condensed into seven neat sections that gave the magazine’s 68 million readers more than just a taste of what learning to think was like. It practically taught them, there and then. Each section was illustrated with a neat silhouette of a human head in profile, with a coloured brain lighting up the back part of the skull. The section on the PMI had a red brain, the section about CAF had a yellow brain, and so on. They looked like the caps that Australian lifesavers wear, and Michael Hewitt-Gleeson was particularly delighted by the treatment, despite his name appearing just once in the article. But, of course, it wasn’t about him, it was about the mission. And now it was close to being accomplished.

The Reader’s Digest article was the tipping point. It opened the flood gates and the notion of learning to think caught the imagination of the general public. The unstoppable wave of intrigue and enthusiasm rolled on and on, and everything that EDBSOT supporters touched turned to gold. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson strutted his stuff in thirty radio interviews in thirty days. He remembers that the subject of teaching thinking made successful talk-back, and the programmes he appeared on received a very high number of calls. This was evidence that teaching thinking was an underserviced field. The response Michael received on radio was overwhelmingly positive, and during its life, EDBSOT received very little negative feedback in either print or other forms of media.

As well as manning the talk-back mic, Michael whizzed back and forth across the country conducting seminars and talks, including a memorable visit to the White House, to deliver his thinking message to the Reagan administration. You don’t get a much better rap than that. Unless you talk to the Dalai Lama about your ideas, and Michael got to do that as well. The endless slogging away had paid off; the thing had gone viral and learning to think was the latest fad. Michael had to get his trousers let out again and going to collect his mail, once a task he dreaded as he looked at the bills and wondered where the money would come from to pay his mounting debts, became the happiest moment of his day, as he collected armfuls of letters asking for information, ordering Coursebooks, and inviting him to come and speak and spread the message.

If there was anyone left in America who hadn’t heard about the new fashion of learning to think, they wouldn’t be in the dark for much longer. In August 1983, US Air magazine ensured that a captive audience of thousands of itinerant business executives read all about it. An airline magazine enjoys an enormous circulation, and was probably more read in 1983 than it would be today, when passengers can delight in play-on-demand, more channels than you can count inflight entertainment systems. The article is remembered fondly by EDBSOT supporters because it stated that de Bono had been described as the ‘McDonald’s of Thinking.’ When Michael told me this story, he recalled that the school had been described thus, in fact by de Bono himself. However, it was recalled thirty-odd years later, at the time it was taken as a compliment. What the journalist meant was that de Bono’s methods liberated thinking from its elite position in society and gave it to the common man. Michael said he could think of no greater compliment, and it gave him a sense that his mission was accomplished.

Of course, the really good thing about getting noticed like this was that EDBSOT started to attract investors with serious money. Jerry Wolf was an educational entrepreneur whose company, International School Supply, had a virtual monopoly on the US school textbook market. By now, the primitive, black and white edition of the Coursebook that Michael and Eric put together had been replaced by a more professional publication, courtesy of Alex Noble’s influence. The third edition was published in Santa Barbara by Capra New, and its canary yellow covers (EDBSOT’s official colour) had caught Jerry Wolf’s eye. Jerry did his homework on EDBSOT; he attended a seminar in New York, went on to complete the lessons and developed a great respect for the CoRT tools. Satisfied that it was a good product, Jerry put his money where his mouth was. When he told Michael that he wanted to buy 100,000 copies of the Coursebook and put it in every school in America, there was only one thing to say, ‘pinch me, I must be dreaming.’

THINK

It was a dream, but it had come true. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson was teaching in the White House and chatting to the media. Eric’s letterbox was straining under the weight of the fan mail. Schools were knocking at the door, demanding textbooks. In Santa Barbara, a whole community was getting ready to revolutionise the way they used their brains. To put it simply— they’d made it. So surely it was time to put their feet up, delegate all that photocopying to a lackey and buy a few more expensive jackets. Well, that’s what a regular business might do, but EDBSOT was different. They practiced what they preached.

De Bono warns in his books that if you don’t design your future, it will be designed by others for you. Just because a company is turning a nice profit and keeping its customers happy doesn’t mean the research and development department can take a holiday. Smooth seas don’t mean rough ones aren’t far over the horizon. The market evolves constantly, and products must be updated and revised to maintain their popularity and relevance. EDBSOT had caught the imagination of the public and become the centre of attention. What they had to do now was work out how best to exploit that attention and turn it into real growth.

Investment money was just one ingredient necessary for growth. You also have to have something to sell. The Coursebook was a great product, and the CoRT tools had proved their worth. They were too many of them, however, and were just a bit cumbersome. It was difficult for the uninitiated to understand how the system worked without completing the lessons, but that took sixty hours of formal tuition. This is why the PMI was often taught at opportunity meetings. With the heat created by the Reader’s Digest article the school might have to grow quickly, and they needed material that was comprehensive, but could be absorbed in a single session. So the thinkers at EDBSOT set themselves the task of designing a simplified, more accessible thinking tool that would help them spread their message more efficiently.

A number of different ideas were tossed around in a series of brainstorming sessions. Eric still has a set of handwritten notes in the EDBSOT archives, and his very legible handwriting indicates that a TV series was being considered: ‘Wed nite is thinking night.’ If a TV station bought the show it could also promote the seminars. Eric’s notes also mention another idea called School of Thinking Caps.

The Reader’s Digest article had suggested the idea that seemed to have the most promise. The graphics in the article looked like different coloured skull caps, and it wasn’t a big leap from that to the idea of thinking caps. What about getting a set of baseball caps (or similar) in different colours, and designating a particular colour for each CoRT tool? You could indicate the use of a particular thinking tool in a group discussion by asking everybody to put on their blue cap, or red cap, and so on. And if you wanted to change the way you were thinking about a topic, you could just change caps. With everybody wearing the same coloured cap, it would act as an instant reminder to keep a discussion on track. Simple, but effective. EDBSOT was ready for the next wave of growth, which was surely just over the horizon.

They were flavour of the month, all the hard work had paid off and in just a few short years they had established themselves as the go-to centre for learning to think. They had managed to get across their ground-breaking, yet elusive ideas to the education sector and to countless members of the general public. They were front page news in more than eighty countries. They were rescuing thousands of people across America, and now the rest of the world, from being trapped by the limited patterns of their untrained thinking. It was a seismic shift – soon the world would be populated by enlightened, creative thinkers and the human race would begin to see the end of poverty, disease, conflict and violence. Surely nothing could stop this juggernaut.

Or could it? In 1984, Michael Hewitt-Gleeson opened a letter from the corporate lawyers of Pergamon Press in London claiming they held the rights to de Bono’s CoRT material. If this was true, EDBSOT had been breaking the law every time they conducted a lesson, and every copy of the Coursebook had been printed illegally.

Expanding the Vocabulary

Pergamon Press was no backwater publishing house. It was owned by British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, and was one of the best performers in his global empire. Rated one of the richest men in the world, Czech-born Maxwell was a man whose ruthless business practices attracted controversy throughout his life. His stature in the boardroom was legendary, and brawling with him could be fatal for a small enterprise, but until now Michael had firmly believed that he had been pursuing his business interests within the law.

When Michael first encountered and expressed his liking for the CoRT material, he had asked if it was legally available to use. In a letter to Michael dated 18 June, 1978, de Bono wrote:

‘In response to your questions about CoRT School material and the American publication of Opportunities, the answer is that no deals have yet been arranged although different organisations have shown interest and are considering the matter.’

Later, on 3 January 1980, in the letter that outlined his ideas for EDBSOT, de Bono stated:

‘The position with the CoRT material at the moment is this. It is currently being published by my brother as a one product publishing house and is just ticking over without making profit and without resources—so we cannot expect credit or even a large number reaction from them. I am negotiating with Pergamon Press to take up the publication of these. If so this is a large operation and could become our suppliers. If this happens they may also want to get involved with materials for the other courses. The deal is not yet concluded.’

Later he added:

‘If the Pergamon deal comes through this could solve publication problem’.

I once had a lecturer who described copyright law as ‘rubbery’. It was a word that failed to instil comfort in the hearts and minds of the would-be writers and editors taking his class. And once you were sure you didn’t understand this vital aspect of the publishing game, you went on and failed to understand licensing agreements. And then there’s plagiarism. I have a friend who is terrified of publishing his poems because he’s not sure if some of the lines he has written are the words of other poets whose work he has accidentally memorised, but forgotten having read. And it’s true that unconscious plagiarism happens all the time. The whole area is a minefield.

Surely, though, if you’re going to use someone else’s intellectual property, you can feel safe if that someone is a trusted friend, mentor, business partner and colleague.  Not to mention a man who has written books on solving conflicts and finding solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Michael trusted de Bono implicitly, and that trust was what EDBSOT had been built on. Everybody involved in the school went ahead with their work on the assurances from Michael that de Bono’s material was legally available for them to use.

Obviously, it all had to be a big mistake—a misunderstanding of some sort. The first thing Michael did was pick up the phone and talk to his mentor. He was sure that de Bono would sort out SOT’s publishing rights, and that’s exactly what he promised to do. De Bono advised his protégé not to talk to anybody about this just yet, and go ahead and take the well-earned holiday he’d planned. The fact that de Bono was friends with Robert Maxwell gave Michael confidence that the matter would be resolved quickly and easily.

But for weeks, there was nothing but silence. Then one day Michael finally got a call from de Bono who asked to meet with him in New York. When he saw that de Bono’s lawyer was present, Michael expected that they were about to put EDBSOT back on firm legal footing so they could continue with their good work. But when the lawyer began to talk, Michael realised that he was there not to mend their business relationship, but to end it. For weeks, Michael’s trust in his mentor had remained as firm as the rocks of Malta that de Bono called home. He had never doubted that EDBSOT had a viable future, and kept faith that any ‘misunderstanding’ over rights to the CoRT material would be clarified in his favour. But sitting in that office, listening to de Bono’s lawyer read out his sentence, Michael realised that he had, as he puts it, been betrayed. And that’s not good for a military man.

No military training can prepare you for an ambush from your own people. But if you are versed in the art of war, you can at least fight back. Once the fact had been established that he and de Bono were no longer on the same side, Michael launched a counter attack. Michael’s lawyer, John Somers, was a well-regarded Fifth Avenue lawyer with high-profile clients like Alan Greenspan. Michael had instructed John Somers for EDBSOT business dealings. Michael went to see him feeling confident that he had a solid case against his newly separated business partner. And he did. But it takes more than proof to win in court. Michael remembers the day he went to see Somers as the day he learned a new word. ‘Michael,’ the lawyer said, ‘Robert Maxwell is a billionaire. You, on the other hand, are indigent.’ The Oxford dictionary defines indigent as ‘needy’ or ‘poor’. The Macquarie adds ‘lacking the necessities of life’. The real translation, of course, was that Michael couldn’t afford to take Maxwell to court, despite the fact that EDBSOT had filing cabinets full of material that would strongly support their case. Somers’ advice was unequivocal – the school must be shut down, at once. There are moments in life when time seems to stop, often for good reasons, but as Michael looked at his lawyer, it felt as though time had stopped along with his heart, and all the light in the world had gone out.

Love Among the Ruins

By the end of 1983, EDBSOT had 4,000 members on its mailing list. But there was no shutdown procedure, no exit strategy, no wake at Studio 54. Just a lot of grief. When I asked Michael what happened to the many people who had an interest in the school, some of whom were instructors with their own students, he said they were just let down inccomunicado. He and his colleagues were restricted legally from further dealings. When Michael asked de Bono what they should do about their 4,000 members, he replied that he didn’t care. Some instructors did keep going independently, but EDBSOT as its supporters knew it, simply ceased to exist, with no closing letter explaining its disappearance. Nor did the people who had manned the helm ever get a full explanation of what had happened. De Bono never once stood up to his old protégé and gave him a straight story. To this day, everybody who was involved is either still trying to understand what happened, or have accepted that how and why they were misled over their rights to use the CoRT material will never come to light.

Initially, however, there was a lot of pain. Alex Noble took it very badly. She had put a substantial amount of money into the school and, given that she was expecting a return on her investment, believed she had been defrauded. The only question was by whom—Edward de Bono or Michael Hewitt-Gleeson? When Michael asked de Bono about the ‘misunderstanding’ over rights, his mentor advised him not to speak to Alex until the problem had been sorted out. Michael did as he was told, but this radio silence allowed Alex to believe that he had deliberately misrepresented the school’s position with the CoRT material. On the advice of her financial advisors, Alex took the matter to the FBI. Michael was interviewed, but the Bureau chose not to place him under investigation and the focus shifted to de Bono. Unfortunately, privacy regulations prevent the FBI from releasing information regarding any investigation of de Bono without his written consent. So all I can do here is report that the parties involved believe that de Bono was the focus of an investigation for about twelve months. In a letter to Michael dated August 1983, de Bono stated that the FBI had contacted him through Scotland Yard and were asking questions.

The radio silence between Michael and Alex continued for some months, while both parties stewed over events and nursed angry feelings towards each other. Finally Michael could stand it no longer, and put in a call to Santa Barbara. Once both sides of the story were aired and other facts put on the table, everything made sense and the two friends agreed that de Bono was primarily responsible for allowing his eponymous school to fail. Michael went to Santa Barbara to see Alex, and one warm summer evening they staged a little funeral service for EDBSOT. The Coursebook was the brick that had built the school into something substantial, and the bell that was used to time the thinking lessons had been the school’s unofficial symbol. One evening as a closing ritual, they wrapped up a package containing a Coursebook and one of the SOT bells and buried it at sea from the end of the Santa Barbara pier, along with a candle to complete the trilogy, and felt grateful that they still had each other and their friendship was intact.

Above and Below:

The RIP SOT funeral package prepared by Janie and Michael for their burial ritual off the end of the Santa Barbara Pier on 13 August, 1984. 

When I asked Eric Bienstock if he was surprised by de Bono’s actions, he shook his head. Unlike his colleagues, he had seen, if not writing, at least some invisible ink on the wall. The Reader’s Digest article which had catapulted EDBSOT into the limelight (and probably caught the attention of Robert Maxwell and his lawyers) contained just a single line about Michael, despite the fact that he was the man Morton Hunt had interviewed for the piece. But Eric remembers saying to Michael, who was ecstatic over EDBSOT’s top billing on the cover of the Digest, that ‘Edward won’t like you being mentioned.’ It has been documented that de Bono is a man who does not like to share the limelight, and Eric was not surprised by his willingness to separate himself from the school and allow it to fail. Eric never suspected any guilt on Michael’s part. He had got on board with EDBSOT precisely because he believed Michael was open, honest and trustworthy.

There were attempts to save the school, however. In August 1983 de Bono wrote to Michael and informed his old friend that ‘In California they think you are a criminal, a con-man and a liability’, but reassured him that ‘I do not go along with that’. After a couple of pages worth of anger directed at Michael, de Bono insists, incredibly, that he wants Michael to remain with the school and sets out a plan for its future. Michael’s reply indicated that by now his disappointment and anger over the betrayal was such that he was in no mood for conciliation.

In the aftermath of the rights dispute, Eric Bienstock had to dispose of a lot of bad paperwork. There were also half-baked business transactions that either had to be completed legally or carefully unwound. The following month, Eric took the unusual step of travelling to London to talk to de Bono about Jerry Wolf’s investment and other matters. Negotiations with Jerry had reached an advanced stage and shares had been issued. Eric reports that he had never been able to establish the comfortable rapport with de Bono that Michael enjoyed. Particularly frustrating for Eric was what he perceived as de Bono’s habit of making vague, indirect assurances. To ensure that the delicate business negotiations went well, Eric wanted to give de Bono a gem or trinket of some sort that would ensure his attention, interest and cooperation. The best kind of gem to give the king of thinking was, of course, a good idea. So Eric told de Bono about the School of Thinking Caps idea they had been working on. Bingo! it worked. De Bono loved this new idea so much that he immediately followed it up with a two-page document and gave it to Eric at breakfast the next morning. Hope glimmered for a moment, but it wasn’t enough to save EDBSOT.

Eric tried again in December 1983, when a letter signed by all  shareholders was sent to de Bono’s London address, requesting that de Bono ‘issue a License Agreement, within two weeks from your receipt of this letter, which will set forth the rights and responsibilities of The Edward de Bono School of Thinking, Inc., with respect to the use of your materials, ideas, technology, etc.’ On 30 December, presumably in reply to that request, Eric opened a letter from the legal firm of Ridd, Rapinet, Badge & Co., and Yarde & Loader, the legal firm representing Robert Maxwell. It read:

Dear Sir,

I am writing on behalf of Direct Education Services Limited (a Company registered in the United Kingdom) which owns the copyright to Sections 1 to 4 of the CoRT material as currently published by Pergamon Press.

I wish to confirm that these rights are held by Pergamon Press and will not be waived. They are held in accordance with the existing publishing agreement between Direct Education Services Ltd. and Pergamon Press.

And so that was that.

EDBSOT was officially wound up on 17 August 1984, when an order was filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York preventing The Edward de Bono School of Thinking, Inc from using Edward de Bono’s name ‘in any manner for purposes of trade, promotion or advertising without [his] prior written consent and publishing or distributing any written or printed materials which bear [his] name without [his] prior written consent’. In January 1980, de Bono had requested that Michael’s School of Thinking bear his name. Less than five years later, he invoked the power of the Supreme Court to prevent his original request. The speed and severity of this about face is quite breathtaking.

CVS to BVS

So what do you do when you’ve won the lottery, but lost the ticket? When you wake up just as your dream was coming true? You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and look on the bright side, of course. The current situation was that EDBSOT had closed down, and its supporters could no longer use it as a platform for their heroic enterprise —teaching the world to think. But there are other ways to do good work. In Santa Barbara, Alex Noble reconfigured the Learn-to-Think Project into CHIP – the Community Human Intelligence Project. She removed all references to de Bono from her work and substituted his thinking tools with other worthy material. Eric went to work the speakers’ circuit, and in October 1984 found himself appearing on the same bill as de Bono at a lateral thinking seminar at the University of Dayton. The dates had been booked long before the school had been forced to close, and the publicity material featured a head shot of each man on the front page above the words ‘When de Bono and Bienstock speak, people listen’. Eric remembers that travelling to the conference together was awkward at best. Eric enjoyed his time on the speakers’ circuit, but he was fascinated by the emerging technology of personal and desktop computers and eventually pursued a business consulting career in that field. He still moonlights as a teacher of thinking with several colleges in the USA. Today, he is still is proud to be Vice Principal of the School of Thinking.

It was Michael Hewitt-Gleeson who had been most intimately involved with EDBSOT. He lived it, breathed it and took it home with him every night. It was his dancing partner at Studio 54. But there had been life before EDBSOT, so Michael picked up the threads of his old career and began working full-time as a business consultant and trainer. While he had been supporting and promoting EDBSOT, Michael worked almost exclusively with de Bono’s materials, but the rights dispute over CoRT meant he could no longer do that. Fortunately, Michael had somehow found the time and energy during the early 1980s to develop some intellectual property of his own. By the time EDBSOT folded he had designed a comprehensive set of thinking tools that were later published in his bestseller, Software for the Brain. It was this set of tools, along with CAP and his Newsell techniques, that Michael began to use in his consulting work.

Newsell was the subject of Michael’s PhD. The project he completed as part of that study was ‘to test the theory of lateral thinking in a difficult application, the science of selling, and see if I could develop a new approach’. Hmmm, sounds like a really good sleeping pill. And all this talk of selling seems at odds with the mission of teaching people to think for themselves. After all, isn’t selling about forcing someone to buy, or even do, something they don’t really want to buy or do? Apparently not— Newsell is different. Yes, I can hear you groan, you suspected this story was a sales pitch all along. But I groaned too, the day I finally picked up Michael’s battered old copy of Newsell and forced myself to read it. It was a stifling hot day, the kids next door were throwing a basketball against the wall of my house, and the only way I could begin to concentrate was to lie under the air conditioner and stick in a pair of ear plugs. So, imagine my delight when the pages of Michael’s bestseller proved to be an illuminating read, chock full of little gems of wisdom and fascinating insights into human behaviour. Well, I admit I skipped the case studies and what-not, but Newsell is about a lot more than selling.

Newsell is actually about changing perceptions. That’s how you get customers to buy your product; you change the way they think about it. And achieving this means applying some lateral thinking. Newsell is, in fact, a Trojan horse—a disguise that lets Michael get through the gates of his client’s city on the pretext of sales training. But when those clients do the training, they co-incidentally teach themselves to think as well. Newsell doesn’t just make people better at selling, it makes them better thinkers. Alex Noble first learned Newsell from Michael in New York in 1980, and remains a firm advocate of its techniques. She says that Newsell has supported all of her entrepreneurial work since she first encountered it, and she continues to use it every day.

Michael rescued Newsell from where it had been languishing on his back burner, fired it up, and took it to the streets. And they loved it. Far from being washed up in the wake of the break up with de Bono, Michael discovered he was still a popular act in the boardrooms of the USA. Moreover, he didn’t need his former mentor’s techniques and ideas – the ones he had developed independently were even more appealing to his audiences. It was liberating to be able to teach his own material after being an acolyte of de Bono for so long. And there was another unexpected, but welcome side effect of working independently; he finally had a real income.

The wounds inflicted by the failure of EDBSOT were healing. But in 1985, a new publication by de Bono scratched at the slowly-forming scabs. In 1985, MICA Management Resources published the first edition of Edward de Bono’s most successful book, Six Thinking Hats®. Sound familiar? It certainly sounded familiar to Michael Hewitt-Gleeson, but when he bought his copy and looked for the acknowledgement of EDBSOT’s role in creating the concept of thinking hats, or perhaps caps, it wasn’t there. The six modes of thinking that de Bono published in his book are clearly derivative and evolved from the original ideas that he, Eric and Michael had designed in their EDBSOT brainstorming sessions. The fact that the six thinking hats are now a registered trademark and regarded as de Bono’s most successful thinking tool makes it hurt just a little bit more.

There was some discussion among Eric, Alex and Michael on whether to take legal action over this 0bvious infringement, but it was decided that the cost was not worth it even if they won. Michael’s view regarding legal battles with Edward have remained constant since their split: an ugly court battle would only damage the reputation of lateral thinking and teaching thinking. They were still committed to the mission of getting thinking into schools and no-one was doing a better job than Edward. After promoting the ‘Edward de Bono’ brand for so long Michael did not want to be the one to now tarnish it in the courtroom. So they all continued with their own plans and worked on being successful in their own right. Michael threw himself into his consulting career with even greater vigour, and enjoyed far greater personal success than he had while working for EDBSOT.

Michael’s natural talent and flair as a speaker was noticed by the Caribiner Agency in the US, who put him on their books and acted as his agents for the next five years. The 1980s were a time when Fortune 500 companies paid top dollar for top keynote speakers. Michael’s flair, sense of humour and charismatic style saw demand for his services grow rapidly, and soon he was trotting all over the globe with his message. The clients that Michael consulted to included F500 global enterprises like IBM and General Electric. GE became one of Michael’s main clients, and the company accomplished one of the great corporate turnarounds of the 1980s during the time that Michael was consulting to them. Jack Welch, Chairman of GE from 1981 to 2001, paid Michael the highest compliment by describing him as ‘a friend of the company’.

On 21 January 1987, Michael was delighted to be declared a ‘national asset’ by the US government. This meant that he had finally earned the coveted H1 visa, the highest one the US Government awarded to individuals of unique talent. To obtain the visa, Michael had to demonstrate that he had a qualification that no other US citizen possessed. That qualification was, of course, a PhD in lateral thinking. There were now no restrictions on Michael’s entry to and exit from the country—he had the same status as a US national and could come and go as he pleased. He was also now free from the pressure to prove that he was employed and earning money—just when he finally had visible means of support! Michael made the most of this enviable freedom by taking increasingly long visits to Australia. He still had many friends there and missed the shared reference points and sense of humour. Most of all, he missed his father, always his best friend and mentor, whose health had begun to fail and who could not travel to New York to visit his son. It was time for Michael to reconnect with his roots.

PRACTICE REPETITION REHEARSAL

Michael had not just been missing his family, he began to realise that he was also missing the School of Thinking. Losing his sense of mission had left a hole that his consulting work didn’t quite fill up. On his trips back home, in between catching up with friends and family, Michael had begun consulting to Australian companies and was successfully putting his name and brand on the map down under. The next step was a natural one— in fact it was de Bono who first suggested it in the unsavoury missive sent to Michael in August 1983, in which he set out his plan for rescuing EDBSOT. The time was right to launch the School of Thinking in Australia.

As an expert in lateral thinking and sales techniques, Michael naturally came up with a clever way to launch the new School of Thinking. In 1988, Australia was due to turn two hundred. Celebrations galore were planned, and an event that caught Michael’s eye as a handy publicity bandwagon was the Bicentennial Conference. On 30 May, more than 700 of Australia’s statesmen and women–mayors, municipal CEOs and managers, councillors and town clerks joined the Governor General of Australia, Sir Ninian Stephen and the Prime Minister of Australia the Rt Hon R. J. Hawke, for the official launch of the School of Thinking at the Institute of Municipal Management Bi-centennial Conference in Canberra. Michael delivered the keynote address, in which he stated that Australians needed to focus more on their productivity as individual thinkers, to ensure the economic future and stability of the nation. He also said that the School of Thinking aimed to have the skill of thinking taught in Australian schools within three years. The speech had a familiar ring. And Michael was able to report in his ‘BrainUsers’ newsletter that the GG, as the Governor General is irreverently but affectionately known, stated that it was the best keynote address he had ever heard. To mark the occasion Michael had a School of Thinking gift for the GG in the form of his very own Brainusers Kit including his Software For The Brain audio cassette. He also presented a Kit to the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, and honoured him with title of ‘Australia’s No. 1 Brainuser’. This was received with charm and good humour by both of Australia’s senior statesmen. The Aussie SOT was launched. It was an old idea in a new country with brand new material, and this second version of the school was off to a promising start.

The launch was followed by a flurry of publicity. All the major Australian newspapers reported it, and reading them today reminds me of the many articles that promoted EDBSOT in the early 1980s. As usual, journalists were captivated with Michael’s vision, and what he was trying to achieve with the SOT mission. The notion that intelligent people are not necessarily good thinkers was there in all its controversial glory. And once again, Michael had made sure that eager citizens who wanted to learn this vital art of thinking would know exactly where to find him.

There was also something slightly familiar about the ‘Brainusers’ newsletter that Michael designed to launch the new school. He had evolved the format from his earlier EDBSOT newsletters. There were quotes from important people like the Governor General, and photos of important people like the Prime Minister. There was the background story of how SOT had started in New York with Edward de Bono (no need to explain who he was—Australia is his biggest market), and how it had reached classrooms and living rooms all over America and begun to spread its influence around the globe. What was different, of course, was the syllabus. Michael was happy to mention the Cognitive Research Trust in his flyer and how its findings supported the value of teaching thinking as a skill, but he no longer used the CoRT skills. His new lessons were designed around the experience and tools and materials that he had been using in his consulting work. I you wanted to enrol in SOT, all that was needed was $25.00 for a Brainusers Kit, which included:

• One ‘Software for the Brain’ audio cassette

• One Brainusers Card

• One School of Thinking Membership Form

This was the second time around for SOT, so you’d expect it to be more successful. In fact, a better way to look at the current situation was to view EDBSOT as just a rehearsal for OZSOT. Michael had new material, which he had spent years trying and testing and pummelling into a robust, reliable and effective syllabus. He had years of experience now in public speaking and lecturing. The list of corporate clients he had in the US was a litany of name dropping. He could boast the proud possession of the world’s first PhD in lateral thinking under the personal tutorship of none other than Edward de Bono—surely the consultant’s consultant. And despite the disappointing split with de Bono, Michael was still happy to promote the man’s name and discuss the history of their association to the many journalists who could see a unique story in SOT. Surely, everything was pointing to happiness.

Welcome Home

In 1990, Michael decided to relocate to Australia, mainly to spend time with his father, whose chronic health problems showed no signs of abating. The year before, he had published Software for Your Brain, his most successful book to date and the one that distilled his thinking techniques into a single platform—indeed, a single formula (cvs2bvs). In 1990 he embarked on a national tour to promote his book and all went well, with journalists falling over each other to interview this articulate, amusing man who was full of great stories and quirky ideas that would spice up their papers with just a touch of intellectual controversy.

On 29 August 1990, The Age in Melbourne published a piece by Peter Weiniger. The headline read, ‘First doctor of thinking urges lessons in the art.’ The article talked about Michael’s mission to get the teaching of thinking on the school curriculum, and there was the usual background about his PhD and the original School of Thinking that was founded by himself and Edward de Bono in New York. The article was published two weeks into the tour, and nobody was more surprised than Michael when he received a call from Michelle Eckersley, his hard-working and effective publicist at The Write Approach, informing him of a little bit of a conniption. I think it’s best to use Michelle’s own words to describe the phone call she took from Tom Farrell, from the Edward de Bono Foundation, at approximately 9.30am on 31 August. Michael Had asked her to write down the notes of everything that happened in the phone call:

Mr Farrell was yelling down the phone and Leanne and I both listened to the call, holding the phone between us. His monologue went something like this:

‘You’re the people publicizing the School of Thinking. I’m from the Edward do [sic] Bono Foundation and I can tell you the School of Thinking is a fraud.

I’m going for the jugular. I am not mucking around. There [sic] is no such thing as a PhD in lateral thinking. Hewitt-Gleeson has no right to market himself as a clone of Dr Edward do [sic] Bono. He never even trained with Edward de Bono. De Bono took out injunctions on him in the States because he sold him out. That’s why he had to escape the States.

I know all about him. I know about the ANZ. I know about his free thinking lessons.

I’ve faxed all the information to Edward de Bono in Dublin. I will stop him. I’ll go do Derryn Hinch—do you understand what that means? I’ve sent information to The Age. I will stop him. He has no right to do this.’

Phew. If you read that, you’d think this Michael Hewitt-Gleeson guy is a wide-boy of gargantuan proportions. So, perhaps we should take a leaf out of de Bono’s book (almost literally) and put on our white hat – the one we wear when we just want the facts. Mr Farrell’s outburst was prompted by claims that he thought Michael was making via Peter Weineger’s article. So what exactly does that article say that was so upsetting to a close associate of de Bono? The article states that Michael has a PhD in lateral thinking. That’s true. I know I’ve seen the thing and it bears Edward de Bono’s signature as his Tutor.

Weineger’s story goes on to say that ‘the concept of formally teaching children to think began in New York where, with Edward De Bono, he founded the School of Thinking.’ Okay, that’s not exactly right. I don’t know who the first person in history was who dreamt up the idea of teaching children to think, but it is true, however, that a School of Thinking was founded in New York in 1978 called The Edward de Bono School of Thinking. The article also says that ‘thinking has been introduced successfully into the curricula in all states in America, as well as Venezuela and Cuba.’ That is true. But what seems to have inflamed Mr Farrell is that Michael was implying that he had played a part in that. And he did.

Now, if we’re wearing our white hat, we need to be careful. It does seem safe to assume that Mr Farrell was upset and that he thought Michael was misrepresenting himself. What we do have in the fact department are a couple of faxes. The first is a private from de Bono to Tom Farrell, in which he refers to Peter Weiniger’s article and expresses many concerns about it telling of Michael’s previous association with him. In the fax, de Bono disparagingly states that Michael’s PhD was obtained from a ‘California Correspondence College’, and that his thesis, his book Newsell and much of his current work ‘contains large sections taken fairly directly from my work’. He goes on to say that Michael is giving the wrong impression about an endorsement of his work by de Bono. He does, however, confirm that EDBSOT did exist and was established by Michael with his permission. Unfortunately, according to the version of events iterated in the fax, de Bono had to take out an injunction to close the school down because investors had not received their promised shares. There was a problem with investors and there was an injunction, but the two facts were only indirectly related and had nothing to do with the fundamental reason for the school’s closure.

De Bono didn’t seem to have his white hat on when he wrote the fax, which is altogether rather vague and talks a lot about how Michael is ‘giving the wrong impression’— four times to be exact, plus one instance of ‘misleading’. But you can see how it made an impression on Tom Farrell, who immediately picked up the phone. The upshot of all this was that Mr Farrell carried out his threat to send ‘information’ to Peter Weineger at The Age. The ‘information’ turned out to be de Bono’s fax. And the next thing Michael knew, he’d gone from hero to zero. At that time, The Age was the Fairfax-owned Melbourne daily and it suddenly changed its angle and said it now planned to write an exposé on Michael as a fraud. So then it was Michael’s turn to pick up the phone. He called de Bono in London and told him bluntly that if The Age writes a negative story on the Monday based on de Bono’s libelous fax that he would be filing charges against de Bono in the County Court that same day. Then de Bono made the astonishing confession that Peter Weineger was never meant to see the fax he had sent to Tom Farrell. Hmmm, I wonder why he sent it, then. The Age agreed to cancel their exposé on Michael if they received another fax from de Bono clarifying the facts. Such a fax was duly received, being a lot more specific about what he was trying or not trying to imply. He confirms that Michael ‘did do a considerable amount of work for his thesis’, that he ‘does not consider Michael to be a fraud or anything like that’, and that he had never meant to imply that any problem with investors in EDBSOT was Michael’s fault. He also confirms that he is in favour of much of what Michael does, but that he ‘has done enough to establish his own credibility and should not in publicity depend too heavily on an earlier association with me.’ Yes, well, if Michael didn’t want to have his reputation dragged through the mud that would be a sound piece of advice. And if it had been me, I would have taken it.

Michael received two phone calls of apology as a result of this episode. One was from Peter Weineger who apologised for not checking his facts. He remarked that if he hadn’t seen de Bono’s two faxes side by side and each contradicting the other, he would never have believed it. Tom Farrell apologised saying, “Edward has used us both. He has been very naughty”. Michael thought that was the end of it, and tried again to busy himself with his consulting work and getting SOT established in Australia. But apparently he wasn’t the only guy in the thinking business who knew the value of repetition. On 27 September 1991, de Bono put a public announcement in the Financial Review. In it, he stated:

‘I have recently become aware that my name is being used in association with a series of lectures conducted by Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson. In order to avoid any confusion in the mind of the public I would like to make the following disclaimer:

1. I am not in any way associated with the activities of Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.
2. I am not in a position to judge whether the said lectures accurately convey the concepts and processes of lateral thinking and therefore cannot be responsible for any changes, omissions or additions.
3. Copyright in materials written by me is held by various publishers and other bodies from whom it is necessary to obtain permission.

I have asked Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson to stop using my name to avoid causing any confusion in the mind of the public with regard to these matters.’

It must be said that since then several professional journalists have seen this notice and have been appalled at its outrageous breach of ethics. There are a number of factual errors in the notice yet no attempt was made by the Financial Review to contact Michael for his view or to check the facts. This was a Fairfax-owned publication which carried lots of weight in the boardrooms of Australia. Here we have a foreign national who can walk into Australia and post a public notice which is deleterious to the good name and professional career of an Australian citizen and he can do it with impunity.

So, what exactly is he disclaiming? Or, more to the point, how do you make a disclaimer in the absence of a claim? It’s true that Michael often referred, and still does, to a past association with de Bono, but he never suggested a current working relationship. So, point #1 is disclaiming something that wasn’t being claimed in the first place. And point #2  doesn’t really disclaim anything; it’s more like an unsolicited opinion on Michael’s work. That he claims he’s “not in a position to judge” Michael’s competence as a teacher of lateral thinking is disingenuous to say the least since de Bono was not only his tutor for a PhD in lateral thinking but worked with him for years in EDBSOT and witnessed Michael’s teaching on many occasions. He often remarked, “Michael is a brilliant teacher”. Point #3 is the strangest of all, it sounds like a lesson in copyright law. I mean, if Michael was using de Bono’s material illegally, why not just go ahead and sue him? He’d done it before, to others. But let’s not be naïve—de Bono’s public announcement would make anybody using Michael’s consulting services think twice about his credibility. And it worked a treat. Having just completed a very successful pilot for a major Australian bank Michael was about to launch it across the enterprise but when this notice appeared in the Financial Review the project stopped dead in the water.

This was a dirty deed. It was not only untruthful–a scurrilous and nasty piece of work motivated by envy and greed–but it was also a very clever ambush and highly effective in its timing and execution. And, it was now on the public record. Other journalists accepted the notice without question and the damage was done. De Bono’s Public Announcement put a big question mark on Michael Hewitt-Gleeson’s qualifications and credibility and by the very source on whom his lateral thinking qualifications had been built. Game. Set. Match.

After that Michael’s career in Australia was no longer barrelling along at the pace he was used to, and he was no longer sought after by the boardrooms of the blue chip companies that had been so welcoming in the US. It seemed disappointingly dissonant that, in Australia, the word of a visiting foreigner should be cringingly accepted, without question, over that of a fellow countryman. Michael said he began to experience that same inexplicable sense of rejection that he had once felt as a young Vietnam veteran returning to Australia 20 years before.

His main concern was that the Australian SOT was funded entirely by the income from his consulting work, and this meant the school’s future was at stake. But there’s always a sunny side. When you’re semi-employed, you can spend two or three days a week playing Scrabble™ with your father. Michael describes his dad as one of the best brainusers he has ever known. He was well-read and wise, and had warned his son years before about de Bono’s ‘snake oil.’ De Bono’s antics may have been keeping Michael out of the top boardrooms, but he was grateful that he now had spare time to spend with his dad and make up for the years he had been away. CVS2BVS.

New Frontiers

During this quiet time Michael invested his time and energy into experimenting with new SOT training methodologies and distribution ideas. In its very early days, the lessons were all disseminated in person by Michael. Students were mostly corporate clients, and Michael packaged the material in different ways. One client might want a one-hour lecture, but a bigger, richer client might pay for a series of workshops and seminars over several days. As well as this corporate work, Michael organised free lessons for the general public. Interested people might get a taste for learning to think at a free weekend seminar, then go on to pay for a second seminar. Michael also undertook national tours at his own expense, and travelled the country delivering free lectures on lateral thinking. He also produced a popular audio cassette of a one hour lecture called Software For Your Brain which he distributed for free by the thousands. It was very different from the way a student experiences SOT today.

SOT’s first flirtation with a hi-tech delivery came when Michael put it on the telephone. And no, not a sleek white smart phone with a trademark ring and something I don’t understand called Bluetooth. In the olden days, a telephone was something with a dial or buttons that sat on the table or hung on the wall, and the only way you could get information from it was via a recorded message.  But it was worth a try. In the early 90s, Michael put the SOT syllabus into a series of recorded messages, and students who wished to learn to think picked up the phone twice a day for their five-minute dose of training. Despite the dinosaur technology, it still managed to be a little bit interactive. Students would have ‘homework’ that they had to speak into the phone, and received an official certificate at the end of the month-long course. It wasn’t a great success. But that’s okay. You never know until you try it out. And Michael had to give it a shot—it’s part of the SOT message. You have to start things, because that’s the only way you can find out if they’re going to work. If they don’t work, it doesn’t matter, because once you’ve started you get some feedback, learn from mistakes, modify your project and make it fitter and better. Then you get more feedback, and you can make more changes, and so on. This is the SDNT component of SOT’s software, or start, do, notice, think.

By February 1993, the telephone training had morphed into a much better idea —the Clever Coursebook. The front cover of the Clever Coursebook features an alarmingly intimate close-up of Dr Hewitt-Gleeson’s smiling face, but the back cover is much more frightening—in the middle of the plain yellow cover is an orange box containing the words ‘The sentence in this box is false!’ Underneath are the words, ‘Is this sentence true or false?’ It’s a famous paradox, I know, but I hate those things. I’ve been staring at it for two hours and I still can’t figure it out.  Obviously it’s there as a tease designed to entice you to open the book, complete the lessons and use your newly-acquired thinking skills to solve the puzzle. The Clever Coursebook laid out all the SOT lessons in a very similar way to how students today experience them on the Internet. It provided a four-week course in thinking, with daily lessons, and could be used in conjunction with the telephone training.

The Clever Coursebook was clever in more ways than one. It was designed to make readers clever, and it was also a clever idea. The book was very successful. It sold 10,000 copies in a market (Australia) where you have a technical bestseller if you can flog just 7,000 or two reprintings. But those 10,000 copies weren’t sold in bookshops. The A4 booklet is a modest sixty pages – about the same size and weight as the better class of magazines you can buy at the newsagent. And that’s where they were sold. So when you were browsing for your favourite gossip rag, you could pick up this piece of intellectual stimulation as well, just to ease your conscience and make sure your reading was well-balanced. Michael explained that while there were 1500 bookstores in Australia, at the time, there were 4000 newsagents so that provided “a much bigger channel”.

The Clever Coursebook was very successful, and like EDBSOT’s ill-fated Coursebook, it wasn’t just a textbook—it was a valuable promotional vehicle. Michael lists his past experience and credentials on teaching thinking and the fact that he and de Bono co-authored the original Coursebook. The Clever Coursebook may have been a good idea, but about two years after it was published, Michael had a much better idea for SOT. He put it on the Internet.

It’s hard to remember now, but in 1995 the Internet was a new-fangled underground techno-toy only frequented by geeks and nerds. It was all dial-up, and sometimes when you rang the number you couldn’t get connected. And it was timed; you’d buy something like three hours a week from your ISP, and checking emails more than twice a day was only for the rich or the addicted. The idea of going to school on it was unknown and unimaginable for anybody except clever lateral thinkers. In fact, not only was SOT one of the world’s first 10,000 web sites, Michael believes that it was also the first school on the Internet. This was more readily accomplished because Michael had already designed the SOT syllabus into an ‘online’ format for the telephone training and the Clever Coursebook. But as unlikely as this futuristic style of education might have seemed, SOT had at last found its most natural expression. SOT had survived and evolved from de Bono to pro bono. SOT was free at last!

The original online SOT was, of course, very different from the contemporary blog that today’s students enjoy. The curriculum was essentially the same—it consisted of the material Michael was teaching in his workshops and seminars, and was already published in Software for the Brain and Newsell. The process, however, was different. The lessons were all posted on the site and once you completed a lesson, you simply had to click on a link to get the next one. Or that was the theory. Probably, many students did the lessons backwards, skipped lessons, read them without doing them, or didn’t do them at all. But that is absolutely fine – SOT has always allowed students to opt in or out at any stage. There was no dogma, no judgement and no rules to break. The site was less interactive than it is today, and although it was possible to post feedback, Michael was obliged to add it manually. He struggled along, spending several hours a day keeping the site up to date for the hundreds of students in forty countries who enrolled. But he didn’t begrudge the effort —it was interesting, it was fun, and it still had the purpose of his mission.

The school continued to be funded by Michael from his consulting fees and speaking engagements. He is still sought after as one of Australia’s most inspiring motivational speakers. His talks are both thought-provoking and entertaining. Few speakers have had his experience as he’s shared the platform with Presidents, Prime Ministers and CEOs and has been engaged to motivate thousands of audiences in over 20 countries around the world. He has now taught more people how to think than any Australian in history.

• Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson is invited to give the Commencement Address to Central Queensland University on 13 May 2011 •

X10

As the technology developed, so did SOT. Or more accurately, it evolved. The Internet is a highly darwinian environment—only the fittest survive—and SOT adapted itself to the emerging needs of Internet users. The next cyberspace mutation was the advent of audio and video, and SOT was the first site in Australia to feature RealAudio sound. And then, in 1999 the cyberspace equivalent of crawling out of the water and growing lungs happened. The switch to email.

While the early online version of SOT was doing well, it had a much higher attrition rate than it does today. People would discover the site, do a couple of lessons, then frequently lose interest. Then email happened, and everything changed. Email meant that you didn’t have to go to school any more, even if going to school just meant logging on in your lounge room, cup of tea in hand. Instead, the school came to you. Michael was able to take the lessons off the site, where they had languished in danger of being done in the wrong order or not done at all, and begin emailing them to his students. It was a revolution. To use a Newsell slogan, it times XIO-ed the school.

Enrolling in SOT was now like employing a personal trainer who came to your house and yelled at you and treated you bad until you gave him just one more crunch. The lessons are not at all scary, of course, but when they plunk down in your inbox every morning you have to do your homework promptly or suffer that uncomfortable feeling of things left undone. I completed my first three or four lessons quickly and enthusiastically, but when life got busy, as it does, I started to let them sit there unopened. But then I felt an unseen presence tut-tutting me from above. Eventually I could stand it no longer and started to power through them at the rate of two or three a day. The end of 2010 loomed, and I vowed to graduate before hitting the champagne on New Year’s Eve. That was almost enough motivation, and when I posted my last lesson on 1 January 2011, I enjoyed a real sense of personal satisfaction. I hadn’t split the atom or performed brain surgery, but I had done what I set out to do. And few things make you feel better, however humble the task, than completing that task. Oh, and I had fun doing the course and learned a lot about how to think. And, I received from Vice Principal Eric Bienstock in New York my personalised SOT certificate.

The exponential growth of SOT was exactly what Michael wanted, but now he was spending even more grinding hours bent over his Mac, trying not to look at the beguiling view afforded by the school’s salubrious location opposite St Kilda beach. As well as reading every single feedback entry, Michael also had to respond to emails that students sent him. Despite the extra workload this created, it was usually a pleasure. But not always.

Recurring Nightmare

Just when he thought he was free from distracting de Bono disputes over intellectual property and could dive back into the ocean of teaching thinking, Michael found himself facing new harrassment. In the winter of 2002, he received an email from a Dr Mark Harrigan, who stated that he believed Michael and the School of Thinking were plagiarising the ideas of Edward de Bono. Harrigan was an accredited de Bono master trainer, and couldn’t be ignored. So far, Michael had resisted either taking legal action against de Bono or making a public statement on their disagreements, but this time he had had enough. He issued a public disclaimer and sent it to all members of SOT, his associates and clients, and the media. He also published it on the SOT web site. It brought an immediate response in the form of a letter of demand for $50,000 from a small-time lawyer based in the Melbourne suburb of Dandenong who was acting for Dr Edward de Bono.

When someone writes to you demanding the equivalent of the average yearly wage, you have to take it seriously. Michael decided to bring in the big guns. He briefed the law firm of Slater & Gordon, who agreed to represent him on a contingency basis. They instructed Michael to prepare his evidence for a possible legal battle in the County Court of Victoria, and also advised him to leave the disclaimer on SOT’s web site. It was not something that Michael relished having to do, but the problem lay with the World Wide Web itself. The dispute between Michael and de Bono became public thanks to de Bono’s notice in the Financial Review. Now, this story had reached Wikipedia which means that it could never be out back in the closet. Even when Wikipedia references are changed or removed from the site’s main pages, it would always be possible to trace the history of those pages from within the site itself. It’s all part of Wikipedia’s commendable policy of accountability, but it also meant that Michael could no longer ignore de Bono’s tantrums and that he would now have to take a strong defensive position. It was best to have that defence courtroom-ready for action against de Bono or any of his cronies who took it upon themselves to repeat his relentless and libelous claims.

Ironically, while the Internet had given SOT a tremendous growth spurt, it had also made it much easier for the dispute between Michael and his former mentor to continue, and indeed escalate. In August of 2002, Michael received an email from an SOT student which possibly explains why Mark Harrigan had become convinced that he was plagiarising de Bono’s work. The email contained a link which directed Michael to de Bono’s web site, where he found this:

MESSAGE FOR WEEK BEGINNING 29nd [Sic] July 2002

Infringement

It is always sad when people for whom you had some respect do strange and silly things which destroy that respect. Many years ago in the U.S.A. Michael Gleeson asked if he could set up a ‘School of Thinking’ to teach my work to the public. I agreed and the school was set up and seemed to function reasonably well. Then there were problems because investors claimed that they had invested money but no [sic] been issued with any shares. Although I was never involved in the ownership or running of the school, my lawyer received calls from the F.B.I. asking what was going on. For this, or other reasons, the school ceased functioning and Michael returned to Australia.

In his on-line course Michael claimed that I had helped him design the course. This is not true. There may be material derived from, borrowed, or taken from my work but that is a different matter. In the literature of the New York School of Thinking there is a quote which Michael obtained from George Gallup: “What Edward is doing to teach people to think may be the most important thing going on in the world today”. Suddenly, this quote has changed and Michael’s name is now substituted for mine.

This latest nonsense is that I did not design the Six Hats method. This is a complete lie and I shall be taking [sic] serious legal action in this regard. It is not open to anyone to create and promote lies of this sort.

I wish to make it very clear that Michael no longer has any connection whatever with me. He is not authorised to use my intellectual property in any way. Any courses he delivers are not endorsed by me in any way. I shall also take legal action for any infringement of copyright.

It is sad that things should go this way.

The claims de Bono was making here have a familiar ring. This time he deigns to admit that EDBSOT existed, but doesn’t go as far as remembering that he was the majority-owner whose suggestions on how the school should be run were always followed. It’s true that people had put money into the school, but the reason they received no return on their investments was because the school was forced to close and could not generate any income. De Bono seems to have forgotten about the injunction he took out to prevent the school from using his name and the absence of a license agreement to use the CoRT material. It’s also true that Michael left the US ‘for this or other reasons’. But when we remember that he was awarded an H1 visa in 1987, more than three years after the school closed, and didn’t return to Australia permanently until 1990, well, it was obviously for ‘other reasons’. As for the Gallup quote, EDBSOT literature certainly published the quote with de Bono’s name in it, but the quote as it appears today on SOT’s web site refers not to Michael but to the School of Thinking, the entity. When I asked Michael about this, he told me that de Bono was not present when Gallup made his comments, and that he was talking to him as his personally as his mentor. It’s possible that Michael’s memory is inaccurate, but does it matter? It’s clear from the quote that Gallup was commending the teaching of thinking, not the person who was doing it. As for the Six Hats business—well, you’d need to consult an IP lawyer. The gloves were off, with de Bono threatening to sue for the first time. Or so it seemed. In fact, the only hint of legal action was the letter of demand for lots of cash from that obscure lawyer in Dandenong.

Michael’s new lawyers swiftly dealt with the letter of demand by sending a stern reply, and the matter went no further. But the question of the Infringement notice remained. Michael contacted de Bono and asked for the message to be removed. De Bono said that he would ask his brother, Peter, who he said handles all his IT matters, to remove it. But before it was taken down, it caught the attention of a senior journalist with the Fairfax group, Nikki Barraclough, who thought she could smell a scoop. Once again Michael was facing the prospect of an exposé on himself. However, this journalist did her homework properly. She flew down to Melbourne to talk to Michael personally, and after carefully examining the SOT archives she was convinced that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. She took back copies of the documents to Sydney and wrote her article for publication in the Weekend Magazine of The Sydney Morning Herald. Photographers were even sent for the shoot. In fact, Michael now had a new fan, and it looked like the story of EDBSOT and Michael’s collaboration with de Bono would at last have both sides told publicly by an impartial observer. The journalist was confident, but Michael warned her that “this story will never be published”—he knew how good de Bono’s contacts were. De Bono was always bragging about “my good friend Lady Fairfax”. The story was never published.

Then in 2008 the following notice appeared on de Bono’s official web site:

Tit for Tat

This time Michael decided to give Dr de Bono a taste of his own medicine. Tit for tat. He retaliated by putting the following Notice on his own blog:

Dispute with Edward de Bono

••• PUBLIC RESPONSE by Michael Hewitt-Gleeson to Edward de Bono’s defamatory and reckless claims about the School of Thinking made on his personal website (22/04/08). Because recently Edward has repeated his claims in Australia and because of the seriousness of these claims our legal advisers have suggested we take the time to provide the public with the following historical background and factual information from SOT archives in New York and Australia since 1979.

Contact: Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.

___________________________________________________FACT: The ‘six thinking hats’ idea was invented by The Edward de Bono School of Thinking, Inc. in September 1983.

It is widely claimed that Edward de Bono invented the ‘thinking caps’ idea but he did not. Those who repeat this claim in public need to be certain they are not running the risk of making false and defamatory statements.

Yes, de Bono did publish the idea and took credit for it … but that is not the same thing. In 1985 Edward de Bono lifted the ‘thinking hats idea’ from the School of Thinking and then published Six Thinking Hats. He gave no academic attribution to the School of Thinking nor to the origin of the idea nor from where he snatched it.

But, this is simply a fact of history that has been legally substantiated over and over again. It is a fact which Edward de Bono has been forced to admit, in writing, by our lawyers. But, for reasons of his own, he has never publicly been willing to acknowledged this fact. My lawyers have advised me to present the facts here.

People often ask “Why would the great Edward de Bono do such a thing?” Perhaps Edward took his cue from Einstein who once quipped, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

I am a supporter of Edward de Bono because he is one of those people who has made a great and enduring contribution to the field of teaching thinking. For over 30 years I have personally encouraged him in his work. And, to support him in a practical way, I have drawn the attention of millions of people to his name and his brand. I continue to do so.

When I first met Edward in 1974 he was employed by Cambridge University and was trying to get his ‘thinking syllabus’ off the ground as a part-time enterprise. He told me his brother was trying to do something with it but not really getting anywhere. I showed him the train-the-trainer technique (CAP) I had distilled from my military training and offered to help him by setting up a replication program not to just teach thinking but to go beyond that and to train ‘teachers of thinking’.

At that time, my original idea was to design and launch a Learn-To-Think Project to train 300,000 thinking instructors in the USA and around the world. It was Edward’s idea to name this project “The Edward de Bono School of Thinking”.

I had predicted that the train-the-trainer approach would have a much greater spread effect. (This prediction has turned out to be true and is now the largest movement in the world for the teaching of thinking in schools). Edward was very keen on the ‘train-the-trainer’ idea and wrote to me from Cambridge saying, “I think your idea is brilliant! Training instructors has much more motivation” and so, after much discussion and planning, we decided to combine my CAP program with his CoRT Thinking syllabus and we started the School of Thinking on November 17, 1979 in New York.

For eight years (1977 to 1984) Edward and I collaborated to launch a project to get THINKING taught in schools as a school subject. This was the Learn-To-Think Project and was first published in our textbook The Learn-To-Think Coursebook and Instructors Manual, ISBN 0-88496-199-0 which we co-authored in 1982.

This was the original and celebrated textbook on training ‘teachers of thinking’. It was also featured as a cover story on all global editions of Readers Digest (article entitled Seven Steps to Better Thinking, April 1983) with a readership of 78 million readers in 70 countries and published in 21 languages. This global publication event was the widest ever distribution of thinking lessons and remains so to this day and it was the book that launched both the School of Thinking and Edward de Bono’s 30-year career in thinking.

To advance this project we created and co-owned several corporate entities: Edward de Bono & Associates Inc, New York (1978), The Cognitive Research and Training (CoRT) Foundation Inc, New York (1983) and The Edward de Bono School of Thinking Inc, New York (1983).

In 1983 we developed The Six Thinking Caps method for teaching thinking skills. In the Preface of a recent edition of Six Thinking Hats Edward de Bono acknowledges that the thinking hats method “may well be the most important change in human thinking for the past 2300 years”.

As the result of a legal dispute in 1984 by Pergamon Press over Edward’s claim that he had the right to publish CoRT Thinking (which he had represented to the School of Thinking) we had no alternative but to fire him. I did this in 1984 and he parted with SOT. In 1985 he published Six Thinking Hats without our permission and without proper attribution to SOT.

In the early days, while he was still on salary at Cambridge, I worked in New York to get things going. Within a few years, Edward was able to quit his Cambridge job and begin full-time on a new professional career of teaching thinking. For over 3 decades, Edward has received substantial benefits–both financially and professionally–from my personal support and the support of the School of Thinking.

However, those who are academically familiar with Edward’s body of work make two consistent and valid criticisms:

1. the repetitive nature of his books–that he writes ‘the same book over and over again’, and

2. his failure to give proper academic attribution to the work of others in the same field especially those whose work he uses to build his own ideas upon.

The second criticism is more serious than the first. Edward simply does not share the limelight with his colleagues. This is his admitted strategy. He does not acknowledge the work of others. Not even the work that antedates and informs his work. He acknowledges only himself. When interviewed in India by Vivek Kaul of DNA de Bono was asked, “Who inspires you the most?” To which he replied, “Myself”. In another interview Edward (Emma Brockes of The Guardian) declared that he regarded himself as more important than Plato.

Edward’s pomposity and egotism can, of course, be amusing (I mostly laugh it off) but it can be thoughtless and damaging to others. I believe it can also be detrimental to the credibility of our shared mission of ‘teaching thinking” because disputes, such as ours, are short-sighted and second-rate thinking and set such a bad example to those whom we are teaching.

•

However, for those who are interested in these things here are the facts. These facts are supported by documentary evidence and corroborated, in writing, by third parties who were present at the time.

I co-founded the School of Thinking with Edward de Bono in New York on November 17, 1979. By 1982, Edward de Bono and I had co-authored TheLearn-To-Think Coursebook and Instructors Manual (1982 Capra New). It introduced my ‘brilliant’ idea (as Edward described it) of ‘teachers of thinking’. This book became the first textbook of the School of Thinking. It was designed for Thinking Instructors to teach seven CoRT Thinking skills: PMI, CAF, C+S, AGO, FIP, APC and OPV.

One day, at The Players Club in Gramercy Park, New York, the distinguished American science writer, Morton Hunt, interviewed me about our coursebook for Readers Digest which he wrote up in an article called Seven Steps To Better Thinking.

This interview was arranged by Alex Noble of Santa Barbara who was also one of the founding directors of SOT. In April 1983, Morton Hunt’s article was the cover story on all international editions of the Readers Digest. Today’s equivalent would be like being on OPRAH!

As a result, these SOT lessons reached over 68 million readers worldwide. This was the widest ever broadcast of these SOT thinking skills.

Seven different coloured icons–skulls with coloured brains–featured in this Readers Digest story, one for each of the seven thinking skills from our coursebook.

When I saw this story with the striking silhouettes of the seven heads with the seven coloured brains I pointed out that they looked like ‘Australian surfing skullcaps’ and that led to the idea of School of Thinking Caps.

In September 1983 Eric Bienstock and I developed a plan to package and sell the SOT Thinking Caps and we discussed the plan with Edward in London later that month. We felt we could sell the caps to raise funds for SOT and exploit the enormous publicity created from the Readers Digest cover story.

We were going to use baseball caps and maybe even headbands. We were looking at a package to put the seven coursebook skills on the baseball caps with a booklet How To Use Your Thinking Caps. Each cap or headband was to be a different colour with one of the seven coursebook skills plus the SOT logo.

These SOT meetings were tape recorded and documented. Eric’s notes of these meetings (held in London, on September 26/27, 1983) and the cassette recordings are in the SOT archives. At these meetings, Edward submitted his suggestions in writing, too. His notes are also in the SOT archives.

For example, in his own self-typed notes of the meetings Edward wrote that the SOT thinking caps should be sold in sets of six, or they could be headbands instead,“Each is of a different colour and each bears the logo of the School of Thinking. Instead of caps, elasticised head bands could be used”. Six months later, Edward de Bono parted company with the School of Thinking in April 1984.

In 1985, within a year of leaving SOT, he had published Six Thinking Hats. The concept outlined in his book was identical to that developed by SOT except for two innovations: 1. Edward changed the word ‘caps’ to ‘hats’, and, 2. he switched the Blue Hat and the Green Hat around. Bravo Edward!

When Eric, Alex and I saw this book we were shocked. We looked for his attribution to the School of Thinking and were disappointed not to find it. Subsequently, I have never found an attribution for any of my work, Eric’s work, or that of the SOT in any of Edward’s books over the years. Not once. On the other hand, we have been meticulous in giving Edward proper attribution for his role in co-founding SOT.

••• Click through here for the Original School of Thinking Caps

••• See also: The Seventh Thinking Hat

What I have described here was no accident or innocent lapse of memory. We have observed that two very misleading and highly sanitised books have been released over the years claiming to be academically credible histories of Edward de Bono’s work. Except they are not.

The first was a rush job called Breaking Out of The Box: The Biography of Edward de Bono by Edward’s friend, Piers Dudgeon. When I challenged Edward about its veracity and authority he said it was “only a quick biography which we wanted to get out there on the record”.

In 2006, another self-serving and sanitised book popped up by an Australian author, Leo D’Angelo Fisher, called Rethink: The Story of Edward de Bono in Australia.

Rethink indeed! Although the cover is adorned with an Australianised image of the “thinking hats”, this book makesno reference whatsoever to the true origin of the “hats” idea and pointedly ignores any role that an Australian may have played in its invention.

This book, while claiming on its cover to be “The story of Edward de Bono in Australia”, goes to considerable trouble to avoid any mention of my association with Edward de Bono in Australia since 1972. It does a great disservice to its readers by failing to record the multitude of relevant and interesting facts of how an Australian launched Edward de Bono’s professional career in ‘teaching thinking’.

After I published these facts, I was finally contacted by the author who takes exception to my comments about his book. I challenged him to explain his ommissions and he said it was an ‘oversight’. He has kindly offered to rectify this: “if there is a second edition you have my assurance that I will redress that oversight”. Am I holding my breath? No. The chances of such a flawed and misleading book ever selling out its first edition are slim. Yet, this Australian author, Leo D’Angelo Fisher, is also a journalist who publishes media commentary on a weekly basis in Australian media and yet he has still, not once, made any effort to “redress that oversight” nor to rectify his appalling breach of trust with Australian readers. What are we to conclude about his journalistic credibility? In 2002 his employer was given the opportunity to independently set the record straight. We opened the SOT archives and co-operated with one of their senior investigative journalists who flew down from Sydney to Melbourne to take back copies of the evidence from our files. We were given a publication date for the story. But we were told “off the record” that the story was pulled by the editors just before publication after Edward’s intervention. We were not given any official explanation and are still waiting. And, so are their Australian readers.

That almost a decade of foundational collaborative work should be ‘missing’ from Edward’s history in both books remains a curious thing to many people who are interested in this story. Regrettably, there is a history of this kind of thing which has gone on for twenty years and has always been a disappointment to me as I had always held Edward in high regard.The latest escapade? Funny you should ask. It’s a new claim by Edward in his latest book H+ a new religion? (Random House 2006) that he is now ‘the pioneer of software for the brain’. Oh, really?

The only problem with this latest claim is that I first published my best-seller Software For The Brain (Wrightbooks 1989) 18 years ago which is now in its Fourth Edition. Here’s the reference in the National Library of Australia to the Third Edition of my book in 1997, ten years before Edward found that it was his idea.

Long before de Bono’s H+ book on religion, long before The God Delusion and even before The Da Vinci Code there already was Software For Your Brain. Edward omits this salient detail and makes no mention of this in his book. This is a long-standing pattern of behaviour that cannot be explained by coincidence.

I’m afraid you will find none of these facts in any of Edward’s books or articles. No mention at all. Not a word. They are completely sanitised. It’s as if none of it ever really happened. Many people find these facts hard to believe. Understandably, they experience a strong dose of cognitive dissonance. As a result, the first question they often ask is this: Why would a person of Edward de Bono’s academic standing lift his most famous work, the ‘Thinking Hats’ idea, from the School of Thinking?

Well, if you do your homework you will find there are different people around the world who have had similar experiences with Edward. There is a pattern of behaviour over time. These people have formed their own answers to this primary question. Several have suggested a classic case of egomania (NPD). Another possible explanation is the habit that some academics have of establishing their reputations at the expense of their colleagues. Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins draws attention to this unprofessional practise in The Selfish Gene where he complains, “I recently learned a disagreeable fact: there are influential scientists in the habit of putting their names to publications in whose composition they have played no part … For all I know, entire scientific reputations may have been built on the work of students and colleagues! I don’t know what can be done to combat this dishonesty. Perhaps journal editors should require signed testimony of what each author contributed”.

Most of those who are interested in our work want us to focus on what we are doing in thinking and are confused by this dispute or perhaps just bored. Some have described it as ‘petty’. I can understand and share their frustration but they are wrong. Truth is never petty. For my part, these claims are not just a bunch of ill-considered or self-serving rants. Every claim I have made here is supported by documented evidence and corroborated by third parties, in writing. I do regret this dispute has gone on for so long as I feel it has distracted people from the value of the original idea itself. But, as I have said to Edward, it is never too late to do the right thing.

A mutual friend in Sydney dismissively refers to Edward as “Greedy Eddie“. It’s not an attractive sobriquet but there is a factual basis for it. He’s coined this nickname because Edward is always talking about money. For example one of his claims is he believes he is ‘the highest paid thinker in history’. Not that De Bono has ever produced any evidence to prove his claim but what’s the point anyway? Does it really matter whether De Bono’s paid more than Tony Buzan? Does anyone care? I think it’s not helpful.

Finally, here’s one absurd idea that Edward certainly did NOT get from me. I was born in Australia and Edward was not. I’m a Vietnam veteran from an Australian family of three generations who have had the real honour of serving this country as returned war veterans–my grandfather, my father and myself. Edward is Maltese. He has never lived in Australia. I admire Malta and it’s unique history and 25 years ago I stayed in Malta as a house guest of his very gracious mother, Josephine de Bono. For all I know, maybe Edward would make a very good President of Malta. And, of course, I would wish him well. But no. He now wants to be … (fanfare) … King of Australia!

I have learned, through experience, that Edward’s sense of entitlement knows no bounds but this one really did my head in. Does it have to be said that we do not need, in this country, an itinerant usurper from Malta or the Channel Islands or wherever Edward lives now? We already have a real Sovereign in our Australian Constitution and if anyone changes that in the future it will be the Electors of Australia. If Edward’s grandiose idea is just too silly to be seditious it certainly qualifies as a breathtakingly pompous and ill-mannered impertinence to everything I understand to be Australian whether one is a Monarchist or a Republican. In a straight-faced interview on television he even proclaimed that, if there were a vote, the Electors of Australia would give him more votes than the Queen of Australia. However, he has not yet produced any evidence to support his absurd claim.

Yet, he is so serious about this idea that he has already conned several local governments in Australia to let him be their ‘King’ and pay him homage. He believes as King of Australia he should be entitled to Palaces of Thinking to be set up for him to take up residence and rule in his Australian kingdom … presumably rent-free!

‘King Edward’ (who likes to talk about himself in the third person) has actually decreed about his ‘palaces’ as follows:

“ The king does not have to live in Canberra. The king would live in whichever state provided the palace. If more than one state provided a palace, then the king would spend part of each year in each palace.”

Believe it or not, Edward has even published a book: Why I Want To Be King of Australia (Penguin, 1999). What are we to make of this?

Will we be seeing “King Edward” exchanging ambassadors with the eccentric but harmless “Prince Leonard of Hutt River” at Geraldton, WA?

Next thing he’ll want to be Pope Edward as well! As a matter of fact, he has also started a religion where people are now to pay him money for their ‘punishments’.

The reader must be smiling by now but it really isn’t funny as it seems. Think about it. Edward now risks losing all credibility and being relegated to ridicule along with sinister charletons like L. Ron Hubbard which surely is the antithesis of everything we have worked for in teaching people to think for themselves. I didn’t spend 30 years advancing his name and his work for this kind of recklessness. Is there no end to his arrogance, pomposity and greed?

Many Australians have told me they feel it’s an embarrassment and it would be a joke if only it wasn’t all so sad. Others think he has simply lost the plot. I do remember he once told me that he believed he was a descendant of the Emperor Napoleon but I didn’t pay much attention, at the time, as I thought it was just one of Edward’s many delusions of grandeur.

Whether or not his claim is true, like Napoleon, Edward has gone far too far. It’s now time for Edward to get real or seek professional help. For my part, I’ve had enough of the defamation and discredit he has brought to the good work of the School of Thinking to which I have devoted the last 30 years of my life. I dumped him once in 1984 and my patience with Edward is now at an end.

In Australia we are governed by the Rule of Law where issues are settled not by regal arm-waving but by the balance of legal evidence. My fair and final warning to ‘Napoleon de Bono’ is watch your step in this country or I will see you, not in your madcap “Imperial Court” but in a fair dinkum Australian Court of Law!

A Future by Design

Michael spent the next few months combing through his files and collecting evidence for a probable court battle. Meanwhile, de Bono did nothing about the infringement notice and it continued to languish on his web site where more journalists and obscure lawyers could stumble across it. Then, just as Michael was on the brink of legal action and the public relations battle that would inevitably accompany it, de Bono came to town. If it wasn’t for some fatherly advice, the court battle may well have gone ahead. Michael has said that his father was one of the best thinkers he has ever known. But it seems he had more than raw brain power—he had wisdom too. He had never been able to understand why two men who were both virtuoso thinkers could not sort out their own trivial differences. He called it their Shakespearean flaw. When de Bono came to town, Martin Hewitt-Gleeson did not mince his words. ‘This thing with de Bono,’ he said to his son, ‘Fix it!’ There’s nothing like a bit of parental authority to galvanise a devoted son into action, and Michael picked up the phone to call de Bono. Sadly, it transpired that Martin’s request was a dying wish. He passed away on 9 August, the day before Michael had arranged to meet de Bono.

Sitting across the table from each other, face to face, the conflict seemed to melt away. They were just two mates again. Both men agreed that the now public battle they were engaged in must stop, and that a court case would not only harm them both personally and professionally, it would also taint their message. They agreed that the best thing to do was design their way out of the situation and into a better, more productive future. To facilitate this, they decided to revisit an old idea and launch another learn-to-think initiative, the Family Thinking Network, using de Bono’s material and Michael’s expertise with online instruction. Their intentions were confirmed by fax and letter. It seemed that perhaps Martin Hewitt-Gleeson’s exhortation for the two men to fix their problem had worked.

On his most recent visit to Melbourne in November, 2011, Edward de Bono was interviewd by Nicola Card of My Business. She asked the great thinker an interesting question. She wanted to know how he deals with his own worries. The co-founder of EDBSOT replied that most of his worries “ … relate to people I have been working with who have behaved very badly.” When thoughts of such people intrude “I have a little signal that I give to myself … when I think about something I don’t want to think about I just say ‘NFCN’ – not for consideration now.”

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The Australian Copyright Act applies to this work written under contract for the School of Thinking. This abridged blog adaptation is edited by Michael Hewitt-Gleeson. Copyright © 2011 School of Thinking •  All Rights Reserved.