Six thinking hats

Background

Here at SME Water, we hold the ongoing growth and development of our people as a significant and core value. Each individual is allocated a fixed time each month along with a designated mentor to ensure there is continual personal growth and development. As problem solvers and innovators within the UK water industry, we also look to develop our capabilities and effectiveness as a team. Homogenous teams, in which the members have similar views and character traits, do not work well. In smaller companies like ours, without the diversity that a larger team naturally provides, we need to ensure that individuals can think diversly and view problems from different perspectives. This post describes one of the models we use to help promote this way of lateral thinking- De Bono’s six thinking hats.

Six thinking hats

In 1985, the creative thinking guru Edward de Bono published his book – Six Thinking Hats. At first, critics dismissed the idea as too simplistic and one-dimensional, however, today, the theory is widely accepted, and teams use his approach to stimulate communication and break free of habitual ways of thinking. De Bono’s idea was to assign the members of a team a temporary one-dimensional point of view or ‘thinking hat’. Six hats thinking is a technique that helps individuals and groups look at problems and situations from various perspectives. In other words, the six hats guide teams on ‘how to think’ rather than ‘what to think’, which can be used universally.

Principles

This is how it works. An idea or problem is discussed by the members of a group. During the discussion, all the members adopt one of the six points of view – reflected in the colour of a hat. Everyone must adopt the same colour hat at any one time.

The following characteristics and points of view are associated with each colour:

The White hat – Facts

This hat calls for objective, analytical thinking. What do we actually know? What are the facts? ‘If it can’t be proved, it gets removed’ is a good mantra to have in mind when using this hat.

The Red hat – Feelings

This hat calls for emotional and subjective thinking, where people share feelings, hunches and intuition, without any need for explanation or justification.

The Black hat – Problems

This hat calls for critical thinking, risk assessment, identifying obstacles and scepticism. The ‘practical’ hat should be used to spot issues and challenges and is the negative but logical hat. It belongs under the red hat if it is negative but not logical.

The Yellow hat – Benefits

This hat calls for positive, optimistic thinking and should be used to explore the value and benefit that can be gained from a potential idea or solution.

The Green hat – Solutions

This hat calls for creative, out-of-the-box thinking. It allows for alternative and new ideas. It is an opportunity to express new concepts and even explore different perceptions. It is also used to explore solutions to issues highlighted whilst adopting the black hat.

The Blue hat – Big picture

This hat calls for structured thinking. It helps to create and manage a process to ensure the big picture is still in view. This hat is the control mechanism that ensures the meeting is efficient and productive.

Approach and use

The six hats can be used in any order and each hat can be used as often as required during the course of a session. However, by using the hats in a particular sequence, you can manage a discussion in a more logical and efficient fashion. Here are some of the guidelines we use to determine what order to use the hats:

• Sequences should always begin and end with a blue hat. This can be in the form of a clear agenda or as an agreed set of aims and objectives, which can be referred to later to gauge the productivity of a session.
• A white hat is remarkably effective early in a session to ensure everyone is aware and aligned on the facts. It can also be used towards the end of a session to question ideas produced after using other hats.
• A red hat can be effective in measuring differing attitudes throughout the session.
• It is generally good practice to have a yellow hat followed by a black hat, positive, then negative.
• The green hat isn’t always required.
• When developing new ideas, it is important to avoid using the red and black hats to promote positivity.

The following chart is a rough guide we use, showing which hats and in what order for different meeting types:

Summary

We have been slowly adopting the Six hats in the work we do and have experienced the following benefits:

• Shorter but more productive meetings.
• Improved collaborative thinking between team members.
• Improved decision making.
• Develop people to be more balanced in their thinking.
• Improved understanding and communication with clients.

The beauty of Edward De Bono’s hats is in their simplicity. The concept is simple and easy to implement and, if required, can be used by an individual and not just a group. Although it isn’t practical to use the approach in the manner prescribed above each time, after a little practice, people start to get a good appreciation for how and why certain people think and behave the way they do, including themselves.

The six hats are just one of the techniques we at SME Water have used to develop our lateral thinking capabilities. We believe our people should be both technically capable and good independent thinkers. In future blog posts, I plan to share other techniques and models we use to improve our ways of thinking.