The Time To Think Council

Today I want to talk about our Grand Junction Time To Think Council. About four years ago, maybe even five, Jan and I decided to form a Thinking Council patterned after Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment Applications. http://www.timetothink.com

Our Council meets about once a month for a lunch get-together that lasts until about 2:00 pm. The  protocol is that one of the members will bring an “issue” or “problem” or “opportunity”—just something that needs to be talked over or thought about—to the Council. We then spend a couple of hours ruminating.

What makes the Council’s approach so unique is that we define ruminating not as chewing the cud, or brainstorming, or dialogue, or arguing, or talking over each other, or discussing.

We engage in independent, solo, thinking out loud. We take turns, with each of us spending our turn in out-loud thinking that may or may not be relevant, that may or may not directly hit the topic and that may or may not provide a solution or answer. The point is not to give the “presenter” advice or counsel. The point is to give the presenter the benefit of the “thinker’s” very best, very deepest thinking. The thinker is absolutely never interrupted and there is never any dialogue during the thinking time. When everyone has had a turn at that, the presenter nearly always can articulate a solution or response that is uniquely that of the presenter, after digesting all of the independent thinking of the others.

This is an extremely powerful approach to problem solving. I’d never heard of it until I began my studies under Nancy Kline. When we started the Council here in Grand Junction, Colorado, we had eight people, out of the twenty or so we introduced it to, that committed to join. We have a great deal of fun, but the real value is the gift of listening and the gift of thinking. That is just too powerful to describe; it must be experienced.  Our Council (of eight) stayed committed and together until the death of one of the founders, Terry Fine. We then replaced Terry with three other people. That was more than a year ago, and the Council now numbers nine. (We lost another member due to the pressure of time--membership requires a pretty consistent commitment)

To end with, remember this: The quality of everything we do depends entirely on the quality of the thinking we do first.

Anyone else out there doing anything like this?