Description: This 2-part seminar introduces the current cross section of tools in use within Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne that are associated with the Enterprise Thinking Network’s Thinking Roadmap.   The tools range from Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to Kepner-Tregoe’s Problem Analysis and Decision Analysis, to an internally developed “Cause Network Analysis.”

Target Audience: Members of government, industry, service, education, and volunteer organizations who want to benefit from approaching thinking as a skill and who will lead idea generation and exploration, problem solving, decision making, and planning activities.

Organization Issues: Our traditional thinking methods of argument and analysis are inadequate to deal with the rapidly changing world of today where new concepts and ideas are urgently needed. The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. Proficiency in idea generation, topic exploration, problem solving, decision making, and planning are fundamental to sustainability.

Objectives: At the completion of this review of structured approaches to thinking, participants will recognize the benefits of utilizing several thinking tools individually and in combination with an aim toward the problems we face.

Date: Monday, April 19th and Tuesday, April 20th

Length: 9 hours (12:30-5:00pm on April 19th and 8:30-1:00pm on April 20th)

Location: California State University, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge

Cost: None

Handouts: Available for download

Tim (right) with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne colleague Rudy Hernandez (left)

Biography: Tim spent nearly 29 years employed by service the company currently governed by United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) business unit in Canoga Park.  He retired, and returned to the same Canoga Park location as part of the NASA Resident Management Office. Departmental assignments took him from engineering to manufacturing operations to the total quality management office, to quality in the position of focal point for cause and corrective action.  He now represents NASA’s interests from the System and Mission Assurance viewpoint.   All was preceded by 8 years teaching high school English and mathematics. 

Tim claims that the company paid him to mess with the frontal lobes of those trapped in the prevailing style of management, though they thought he had a different assignment.  In support of PWR's Thinking Roadmap efforts, he conducts sessions in Six Thinking Hats, Lateral Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making and organizes discussions of Deming’s last book, The New Economics, obtaining local participants as well as participants from the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

Tim spends three days a week playing soccer, some portion of  each day adoring a Brazilian wife who saves him a fortune shopping, and some time loving a trilingual-History-Channel-watching-19-year-old son.  He is especially fascinated with books describing the probabilistic and downright weird behavior of the universe and the people in it.  Tim has a Masters degree in English, has an A.S.Q. Certified Quality Engineer card, and a rather large collection of Brazilian soccer jerseys.

Contact: Tim can be reached by e-mail at timothy.higgins@pwr.utc.com for additional information about this post-conference session.