Look

A Practical Guide for Improving Your Observational Skills

James H. Gilmore

Mastering the Way You See the World

Inspired by Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method, Jim Gilmore has created a unique and useful tool to help our ability to perceive. In his latest book, Look: A Practical Guide for Improving Your Observational Skills, Gilmore introduces the metaphor of “six looking glasses.” Each looking glass represents a particular skill to master in order to enhance the way we look at the world.

The six skills include binoculars, bifocals, magnifying glass, microscope, rose-colored glasses, and blindfold looking. Each looking glass provides an observational lens through which to see the world differently. This framework will help its users to:

• See the big picture
• Overcome personal bias
• Pinpoint significance
• Better scrutinize numerous details
• Uncover potential opportunities
• See what’s in the mind’s eye

These varying perspectives offer myriad practical applications: They can help any executive, manager, or designer more richly observe customer behavior, philanthropists and policy makers more keenly identify human needs, and anyone else interested in innovative thinking to first ground their ideation in practical observation.

Gilmore helps readers grasp the Six Looking Glasses by including helpful everyday examples and practice exercises throughout. Put into practice, this method of looking will help you see the world with new eyes.

Jim Gilmore is co-founder of Strategic Horizons LLP, based in Aurora, Ohio. He is a Batten fellow and adjunct lecturer at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia, where he teaches a course on the Experience Economy. Gilmore is a visiting lecturer in Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, where he teaches a course on cultural hermeneutics. He also teaches a design course at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.

Gilmore is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an alumnus of Procter & Gamble, and, before co-founding Strategic Horizons LLP, was head of CSC Consulting's Process Innovation practice. Look is his third book. His other books include the highly influential, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage and Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want.