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

Biography: Tim Higgins is in his 29th year  of service to the company currently governed by United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne business unit in Canoga Park.  Departmental assignments took him from Engineering to Manufacturing Operations to the Total Quality Management Office, and to Quality in the position of focal point for cause and corrective action  All was preceded by 8 years teaching high school English and mathematics.  He claims that, inadvertently, the company pays him to mess with the frontal lobes of those trapped in the prevailing style of management.  He conducts sessions in Six Thinking Hats, in Lateral Thinking, in Problem Solving and Decision Making and organizes discussions of The New Economics obtaining local participants as well as participants from the US, Canada, and the UK.

He 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 17 year old.  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 in English, has an ASQ 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.


Seminar Title: InThinking With Purposeful Tools and Techniques

Date: Monday, April 21st and Tuesday, April 22nd

Length: 9 hours (12:30-5:00pm on April 21st and 7:30-12:00pm on April 22nd)

Location: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne - 6633 Canoga Avenue, Canoga Park

Cost: None

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.

Seminar Handouts: Available for download after the Forum