Book Review | Look: A Practical Guide for Improving Your Observational Skills

One word that we frequently hear from our parents, teachers and boss is “ Observe” correctly.  Attentive observation will help to grasp the topic in case of studies, provides clarity in case of work. Therefore the way we look and observe needs a varied approach based on the requirements. The book ““Look – A practice Guide for Improving your observation skills” provides narratives on application on the relevance of anything we do.  Six Thinking Hat methods are widely used for driving creativity and solving problems in the organisations.  However when a student writes answers in the examination describing in his own words, he never gets the top score. This is because the teacher needs answers as she has thought at the school. Without imbibing creative thinking and appreciating creativity at the schools, organisations have to invest to teach lean and unlearn.

Observation is key for any improvement and investigation. Observations influence on how we act and opt. Moreover observations in everyday lead us to the thoughts that possibly modify, reshape, reform and transform our behavior or overthrow aspects of the world. Creative thinking has four steps – Focus, Provocation, Movement and Harvesting. Focus involves identifying what one wants ideas about. Provocation requires setting up of mental stimuli on the chosen focus area. Movement responds to provocations and challenges by deliberation. Harvesting captures the value of creative output by recognizing the newness of thoughts.

The Six Looking Glasses method guide to become more skilled observer by enriching the time spent looking. The six different type of looking are

1.  Binoculars Look

2.  Bifocals Look

3.  Magnifying glasses Look 

4.  Microscope Look 

5. Rose coloured Glasses

6. Blindfolds.

7.       

These six methods of looking is critical and applicable across the life cycle of human and organisation. In today’s world, every day we use these six looking glass method. We scroll on the messages in our what sup application for a Binocular look. For certain messages we use Bifocals look to interpret two alternate views of any given situation. We use Magnifying glasses look  to spot one thing to look closely to respond. We use Microscope looking for greater details involving scrutinizing and studying scene. We use Rose coloured glasses look to uncover the hidden opportunity. We use Blindfolds look to reflect and recall what was seen and how was scene.