Dominic Foster

Edward de Bono - The Six Value Medals

A couple of weeks ago, 3 of my lucky work colleagues got to attend an Edward de Bono seminar here in Auckland. The seminar was about his theories of Six Thinking Hats - and in the days after the seminar I ended up borrowing another of De Bono’s books - The Six Value Medals from one of the said colleagues.

It is entirely by opportunity that I was to start reading this insightful book at the start of my 31 Days to a Better Blog. However, the book was easy to read, and there has now been a Blog Stub glowering at me from my Wordpress Admin pages for half a week now telling me to post something about it.

So I thought I had better write up my review of this book and how I believe it is relevant to Better Blogging. Besides my colleague will be wanting the book back pretty soon.

The book itself is about how we can go about thinking of the values which we hold in a different way. De Bono proposes using his framework of ‘The Six Value Medals’ to assess these seemingly intangible things. He says:

Values are central to everything: the purpose of any business or government organization is to deliver value and, increasingly, we seek this in our personal lives as well … The Six Value Medals thwarts traditional thinking habits, demonstrates how you can deal with values in a much more definite way and enables you to highlight your strengths while pinpointing areas for improvement…

De Bono identifies these Six Value Medals as:

1. Gold Medal Values which are specifically concerned with Human Values
2. Silver Medal Values which are organizational values which arise from things that are intended for an organization to complete its mission.
3. Steel Medal Values - arise from the quality of a service or product.
4. Glass Medal Values which are connected to areas of innovation, design and simplicity. They are often connected to change.
5. Wood Medal Values will occur from the impact of your actions on third parties.
6. Brass Medal Values which are to do with perceptions of actions. How they are carried out and how they affect different peoples points of view.

You can then apply this model to aspects of your life, work or organization.

This is where I found it apt that I was reading this book the day my 31 Days to a Better Blog kicked off. However, how I thought about applying these values in relation to my Blogging is another story - and therefore is the subject matter for another post.

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