As a specialist in creativity, Edward de Bono - whose instruction has been sought by corporations such as IBM, DuPont, and Ford, and by the governments of the US, Brazil, and Singapore - here identifies a simple six shoes approach to taking control of situations. The author lays out the events and actions associated with each of the six types of shoes, and explains that while someone may naturally be better at responding in one particular mode - say taking emergency action (orange gumboots) rather than accumulating information (grey sneakers) - the truly successful person will master all six action modes and learn to tailor his or her actions to the situations at hand. The author has previously written Lateral Thinking and Six Thinking Hats.