Six Thinking Hats
"Six Thinking Hats" is a powerful technique that helps you look at important decisions from a number of different perspectives. It helps you make better decisions by pushing you to move outside your habitual ways of thinking. As such, it helps you understand the full complexity of a decision, and spot issues and opportunities which you might otherwise not notice. These are Six imaginary thinking hats. Only one is used at a time. When that hat is used then everyone in the group ware the same hat This means that everyone is now thinking in parallel in the same direction. Everyone is thinking about the subject matter and not about what last person said.
|
|
Benefits of Six Thinking Hats
· Separate out thinking so we can do one thing at a time
· Ask people to switch thinking from one mode to another
· Separate ego from performance
· Applied to individual, Meeting, Conversational and E-mail use
· Used for preparing reports, submissions, proposals and necessary for communicating with others
· Expand from one dimensional to full-colored thinking
· Explore subjects in parallel
· Allow specific time for creativity
· Signals what thinking process to use next
· It is quicker, creative and more constructive method than others traditional methods.
· It gets best out of people
The Blue Hat
Think of blue as sky and overview. The blue hat is control hat. The blue hat is concerned with the management of the thinking process. The conductor of the orchestra manages the orchestra and gets the best out of the musicians. The ringmaster in a circus makes sure that there is no confusion and that things follow in the proper sequence so the blue hat is for looking at the thinking process itself.
The blue hat is concerned with defining the problem and what is being thought about. The blue hat is also concerned with outcome, conclusions, summaries and what happens next. The blue hat sets up the sequence of other hats to be used and ensures that the rules of The Six Hats framework are adhered to. The blue hat is organizer of the thinking process.
Properties
· “Control” hat
· Organisaes the thinking
· Sets the focus and agenda
· Summarises and concludes
· Ensures that the rules are observe
Three Disciplines to be followed when using the Blue Hat
1. Focus: Decide on what you want to think about.
2. Technique: Choose the right hat or lateral thinking tool.
3. Time: Set limits and work within them.
The White Hat
Think of white paper and computer printout. The white hat indicates an exclusive focus on information. What information is available? What information is needed? What information is missing? How are we going to get the information we need?
All information is laid down in parallel even if it is in disagreement. The quality of information may range from hard facts which can be checked to rumors or opinions which exist.
Properties
· Information we know
· Information we need
· How we are going to get that information
· Determine accuracy and relevance
· Look at other people’s views
· What views this person or group have
· What information do we need from them
· How could we getting this missing information
The White Hat questions
1. What do we know?
2. What do we need to know?
3. Where can we get this information?
The Red Hat
Think of fire and warm. The red hat allows the free expression of feelings, intuition, hunches and emotions without apology and without explanation. The red hat asks the person to express his or her feeling on the subject at this moment in time (later the feelings could change). There must never be any attempt to justify or give the basis for the feelings. Feelings exist and should be allowed into the existence provided they are signaled as feelings and not disguised as logic. Intuition may be based on a great experience of the field and may be very valuable.
Properties
· Permission to express feelings
· No need to justify
· Represents feelings right now
· Keep it short
· A key ingredient to decision-making
The Red hat questions
1. What are my feelings right now?
2. What does my intuition tell me?
3. What is my gut reaction?
The Green Hat
Think of vegetation, growth, energy, branches shoots, etc. The green hat is creative hat. Under the green hat we put forward alternatives. We seek out new ideas. We generate possibilities. We use provocations and movement to produce new ideas.
The green hat is the action hat. The green hat opens up possibilities. The green hat is the productive and generative hat. At the green-hat stage things are only ‘possibilities’; they have to be developed and checked later.
Properties
· Seeks alternative and possibilities
· Creative thinking
· Removes faults
· Doesn’t have to be logical
· Generates new concepts
Disciplines to be followed
1. Positive: Every idea is valuable. All ideas should be recorded.
2. Prolific: The more ideas, the better, build on the ideas of others.
3. Playful: It is much easier to tame a wide idea than to make a boring idea interesting.
The Green hat Questions
· Are there other ways to do this?
· What else could we do here?
· What are the possibilities?
· What will overcome our Black Hat concerns?
The Yellow Hat
Think of sunshine and optimism. The yellow hat is the logical positive hat. Under the yellow hat the thinker seeks out the values and benefits. The thinker looks to see how the idea can be made workable and put into practice.
The yellow hat is much harder than the black hat and required much more efforts. The brain is naturally tuned to point out what is wrong and what is not as it should be. In order to avoid danger and mistake and mistakes we are naturally cautious. The yellow hat requires efforts. Often these efforts are well rewarded. Suddenly we see values and benefits which we had never noticed before. Without the yellow hat creativity is almost impossible because we would never see the benefits of an emerging idea.
Properties
· The optimistic view
· Reasons must be given
· Needs more often than the black hat
· Finds the benefits and values
· Consider both short & long term perspectives
The Yellow Hat Questions
1. What are the benefits?
2. What are the positives?
3. What is the value here?
The Black Hat
Think of a judge’s robe, which is usually black the black hat is for causation and stops us doing things which are dangerous, damaging or unworkable. The black hat is for risk assessment. The black hat is for critical thinking: why something does not fit in our policy, our strategy, our resources, etc.
The black hat is most useful hat but, unfortunately, is very easy to overuse. Food is good for you but overeating is bad for the health. This is not fault of food but its overuse. In exactly the same way the black hat is very useful and the fault lies only in its overuse. The tendency to overuse the black hat arises directly from the Gang of three, where Socrates felt it was enough to be negative and the truth would eventually emerge. So there are people who feel that it is enough to be negative.
Properties
· The skeptical views
· Reasons must be given
· Points out thinking that does not fits the facts, experience, regulation, strategy, values
· Points out potential problems
Black Hat Questions
1. What are the challenges-both existing and potential?
2. What are some of the difficulties?
3. What are the points of cautions?
4. What are the risks?
HHow it works?
The Six Thinking Hats Technique (by Edward De Bono) is a model that can be used for exploring different perspectives towards a complex situation or challenge. This systematic method of thinking in a completely new and different way will provide your employees with skills and tools that they can apply immediately! See results in days, not months.
You and your team members can learn how to separate thinking into six distinct categories. Each category is identified with its own colored metaphorical "thinking hat." By mentally wearing and switching "hats," you can easily focus or redirect thoughts, the conversation, or the meeting.
A single hat may be used on its own in a meeting or discussion to request a particular type of thinking for a defined time. For example at a certain time further alternative may be needed. So the facilitator of the meeting asks for ‘three minutes of green-hat thinking’. This aliens the thinking of the members of the group so that for three minutes every one of them is seeking to find further alternatives. At the end of three minutes they return to the discussion. Later there is a need to consider an action proposal so the facilitator request ‘three minutes of black-hat thinking’. For those three minutes everyone focuses on the dangers and potential problems of the action proposal.
In this ‘occasional’ use the hats become symbols that allow a particular type of parallel thinking to be requested. Everyone now thinks in parallel instead of in the adversarial mode.
In the sequential use, a sequence of the hats is used one after the other. The sequence may be pre-set at the beginning or may be evolve. There is no one fixed sequence in which the hats can be used. In general, start with a blue hat and end with the blue hat and choose any reasonable sequence in between. For inexperience group it is much better to use the pre-set sequence to avoid long arguments over which sequence of hat is to be used next.
You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of defusing the disagreements that can happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem
Summary
The White Hat calls for information known or needed.
The Red Hat signifies feelings, hunches, and intuition.
The Black Hat is judgment - the devil's advocate or why something may not work.
The Yellow Hat symbolizes brightness and optimism.
The Green Hat focuses on creativity: the possibilities, alternatives and new ideas.
The Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process.
The biggest enemy of thinking is complexity, which leads to confusion. When thinking is clear and simple, it becomes enjoyable and more effective. The Six Thinking Hats concept is very simple to understand. It is also very simple to use.
There are two purposes to the Six Thinking Hats concept. The first purpose is to simple thinking by allowing a thinker to take care of emotions, logic, information, hope and creativity all at the same time, the thinker is able to deal with them separately.
The second purpose of the Six Thinking Hats concept is to allow switch thinking. The concept of the hats makes it possible to request certain type of thinking
|
( Source: Edward De Bono)
|
