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I rarely ask a publisher to send me a book for review. I get more than I can possibly review without asking. But when I saw some of Tim Hurson's comments on Twitter connected to his book, Think Better: an innovator's guide to productive thinking, I knew it was a book I had to read and wanted to review.

I was prepared to be impressed, even though I'm very picky about "thinking" books. I've been fascinated by the subject my whole life. I've written on problem solving techniques, and helped design a course on creativity and innovation for a major oil company.

I think you can divide most books about "thinking" into four groups. There are books of tools, such as Michael Michalko's Thinkertoys. There are books about thinking or decision making in a specific context such as Creativity in Business or Thinking in Time. There are books which present a "system" for thinking such as Six Thinking Hats. And, of course, there are the psychological and cognitive science books that attempt to explain the underlying psycho-biological processes of thinking.

Think Better gives you the best of the tools, context, and system books. What you get is a system that's a big enough tent to cover a lot of situations and a workable selection of tools to use. If you want to find out more or get a bigger toolbox, this book is a great starting point. Here's how it's organized.

There are fourteen chapters. Here are the first six, in order. These chapters give you reasons why you should improve your thinking and introduce you to basic principles.

Why Think Better?
Monkey Mind, Gator Brain, and the Elephant's Tether
Kaizen vs. Tenkaizen
Stay in the Question
The Miracle of the Middle Third
Productive Thinking by Design

Then, chapters seven through twelve show you the Productive Thinking by Design Model in detail.

What's Going On? is about exploring the issue or issues that need attention.

What's Success? establishes criteria for success.

What's the Question? defines the problem you want to solve. In my experience, Americans and Canadians like to assume that everybody knows what the question is and jump right to the next step. If you or your people say "everybody knows" much, then this chapter is worth the price of the book.

Generate Answers. This is a stunning chapter. It will show you why so many "problem solving" processes don't produce anything worth keeping.

Forge the Solution is about transforming your "answers" into a solution. This chapter could be worth the price of the book if you find yourself coming up with great answers that never seem to turn into solutions.

Align Resources moves you gently from coming up with a solution to coming up with a solution that works. The difference is the difference between a lightning bug and lightning.

The final two chapters recap the lessons of the book and give you some ideas about how to move on. An appendix, glossary, and notes all help you get more from the book.

I have one quibble about Think Better. It may not be fair, since it's outside the author's stated purpose. My experience is that nothing ever works the way you expect straight out of the box. I'd like to see an "Observe and Adjust" step in the process. But, maybe Tim Hurson is saving that for his next great book.

Additional Resources

In addition to the books I've mentioned above, you might want to read my review of A. G. Lafley's book, Game Changer. It's about changing the way innovation is done at a company known for being the leader in its industry.

My obit for Arthur C. Clarke includes a quick summary of Clarke's Three Laws.

Two of my posts on innovation are Three Kinds of Innovation and Getting Good Ideas is the Easy Part.

Boss's Bottom Line

If you're the boss, then thinking, in the form of analyzing situations, solving problems and making decisions is a key part of what you do. Just remember that you don't have to do it alone.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.