Six Thinking

Hats
An Edward De Bono Concept
 Objectives
1.Explore each situation or problem
and generate alternatives that go
beyond obvious solutions .
2. Take decisions.
3. Increase the constructive output
from meetings and reduce time
taken for project discussions.
 Six Thinking Hats- how &
why
1. Wear one hat at a time. At any one time,
everyone will wear same colour.
2. Use 'Parallel Thinking' techniques as
a powerful alternative to Adversarial
Thinking.
3. Simplifies thinking by allowing a thinker to
deal with one thing at a time.
3. By changing the hat, one consciously
allows a SWITCH in thinking.
4. Intelligence, experience and knowledge of
the group are fully used.
 The Green Hat- Creativity
• Green Hat Role
– Takes us out of usual patterns of thinking
– Generate new concepts and perceptions
– Brings momentum & breaks the rut
– Think “outside of the box”
 Green Hat – Experience
Sharing
• Ideas come from everywhere. Even from
Customers

• Everyone is expected is to have ideas!

• How they got used ? Not be territorial

• Spend some time every week on Green Hat

– Google : One day a week on a project
 Yellow Hat - Sunshine

• Yellow Hat Purpose

– See the good parts of even a bad idea
– Optimistic that a new idea will work
– Probes and explores for value & benefit
– Tend to see the valuable contributions in people’s ideas
– Positive and constructive
– Effectiveness is the aim of yellow hat
– Opportunity
 The Red Hat- Feelings,
Intuition
• Red Thinking Hat Purpose
– The emotional perspective to an issue
– Convenient to switch in and out of the feeling mode
– Never attempt to justify feelings or provide a logical
base for them
– Use of intuition
– Hunches about the best decision
 Red Hat- Experience
Sharing
• Gut feeling
– Important to know how everyone feels about the idea.
This is closely related to its success.

• Intuition
– Benzene Ring in a Dream

– Archimedes in a Bath
The White Hat - Information
White Hat Role
– What are the facts/information is available?
– Neutral and objective in presenting information
- like a computer
– Distinguish facts and not in opinions
– Statistical evidence concerning a decision
 White Hat – Experience
Sharing
• Data is apolitical
– Tamil population in Sri Lanka Island; Bangladeshi refugees
in W.Bengal

• Ideas emerge as seedlings & then

nurtured
– Releases people from pressure

• Data throws New Insights

– Very helpful for Junior level management.
 The Black Hat : Caution
• Black Hat Role
– Not argument; objective attempt to identify negative elements
– Project an idea into the future to see what may fail or go wrong
– Not to be used for negative feelings which should use Red Hat
– Quickly see why an idea will not work
– The “devil’s advocate”
 Black Hat in Meetings
• Timing of the Black Hat invocation
– if the devil jumps in at the earliest stage, the idea never has a
hope in hell, or ends up having its sharp edges smoothed over

• Black Hat has to draw a fine line

– Big difference between someone crushing an idea based on
spinning out possible negative scenarios, vs. someone who
voices a genuine concern backed with real facts.

• Black Hat Overdone

– "We tried that before and it didn't work." is probably the fastest
way to stop an idea
 The Blue Hat-
Manager/Organizer
• Blue Hat Role
– Sets the focus, defines the problems, shapes
the questions, determines the thinking tasks
– Responsible for overviews, summaries, &
conclusions
– Monitors thinking, stops argument, enforces
discipline
– Ensures the “rules of the game” are observed
– Focus on the big picture