The Six Thinking Hats

An Exercise in Group Decision Making

Satya Chaitanya

Six Thinking Hats

Who is Edward de Bono?

Edward de Bono and Lateral Thinking
The Six Thinking Hats: Developed in the early
1980s. Can include lateral thinking.

Six Thinking Hats

Some of the worlds largest companies use the Six

Thinking Hats method: Prudential Insurance, IBM,
Federal Express, British Airways, Polaroid,
Pepsico, DuPont, Nippon Telephone and
Telegraph...

Six Thinking Hats

In ordinary, unstructured thinking this process is

unfocused; the thinker leaps from critical thinking
to neutrality to optimism and so on without
structure or strategy. The Six Thinking Hats
process attempts to introduce parallel thinking.
Each hat stands for a different kind of thinking.

Six Thinking Hats

The method promotes fuller input from more

people.
In de Bono's words it "separates ego from
performance".
Everyone is able to contribute to the exploration
without denting egos as they are just using the
yellow hat or whatever hat.

Six Thinking Hats

People can contribute under any hat even though

they initially support the opposite view.
Avoids spaghetti thinking where one person is
thinking about the benefits while another considers
the facts and so on.

Six Thinking Hats

This putting on and taking off is essential.

When done in groups, everybody wears the same
hat at the same time.

Six Thinking Hats

Under the hats, everyone together considers the

problems, or the benefits, or the facts, reducing
distractions and supporting cross pollination of
thought.
The hats must never be used to categorize
individuals, even though their behaviour may seem
to invite this.

Six Thinking Hats

Main Advantages

Encourages parallel thinking.

Encourages full-spectrum thinking.
Separates ego from performance.

Six Thinking Hats

The Six Thinking Hats

White Hat thinking

This covers facts, figures, information needs and
gaps.
"I think we need some white hat thinking at this
point..." means Let's drop the arguments and
proposals, and look at the data base."

Red Hat thinking

This covers intuition, feelings and emotions.
The red hat allows the thinker to put forward an
intuition without any need to justify it. "Putting on my
red hat, I think this is a terrible proposal.

Red Hat thinking

Usually feelings and intuition can only be introduced
into a discussion if they are supported by logic.
Usually the feeling is genuine but the logic is spurious.
The red hat gives full permission to a thinker to put
forward his or her feelings on the subject at the
moment.

Black Hat thinking

This is the hat of judgment and caution.
It is a most valuable hat. It is not in any sense an
inferior or negative hat. The rior or negative hat. The
black hat is used to point out why a suggestion does
not fit the facts, the available experience, the system
in use, or the policy that is being followed. The black
hat must always be logical.

Yellow Hat thinking

This is the logical positive.
Why something will work and why it will offer benefits.
It can be used in looking forward to the results of
some proposed action, but can also be used to find
something of value in what has already happened.

Green Hat thinking

This is the hat of creativity, alternatives, proposals,
what is interesting, provocations and changes.

Blue Hat thinking

This is the overview or process control hat.
It looks not at the subject itself but at the 'thinking'
about the subject. "Putting on my blue hat, I feel we
should do some more green hat thinking at this point."
In technical terms, the blue hat is concerned with
meta-cognition.

Six Thinking Hats

The meeting may start with everyone assuming the Blue
hat to discuss how the meeting will be conducted and to
develop the goals and objectives.
The discussion may then move to Red hat thinking in
order to collect opinions and reactions to the problem. This
phase may also be used to develop constraints for the
actual solution such as who will be affected by the
problem and/or solutions.

Six Thinking Hats

Next the discussion may move to the (Yellow then) Green
hat in order to generate ideas and possible solutions. Next
the discussion may move between White hat thinking as
part of developing information and Black hat thinking to
develop criticisms of the solution set.

Six Thinking Hats

Because everyone is focused on a particular approach at
any one time, the group tends to be more collaborative
than if one person is reacting emotionally (Red hat) while
another person is trying to be objective (White hat) and
still another person is being critical of the points which
emerge from the discussion (Black hat).

Six Thinking Hats

An Example

Six Thinking Hats

The directors of a property company are looking at
whether they should construct a new office building. The
economy is doing well, and the amount of vacant office
space is reducing sharply. As part of their decision they
decide to use the 6 Thinking Hats technique during a
planning meeting.

Six Thinking Hats

Looking at the problem with the White Hat, they analyze
the data they have. They examine the trend in vacant
office space, which shows a sharp reduction. They
anticipate that by the time the office block would be
completed, that there will be a severe shortage of office
space. Current government projections show steady
economic growth for at least the construction period.

Six Thinking Hats

With Red Hat thinking, some of the directors think the
proposed building looks quite ugly. While it would be
highly cost-effective, they worry that people would not like
to work in it.

Six Thinking Hats

When they think with the Black Hat, they worry that
government projections may be wrong. The economy may
be about to enter a 'cyclical downturn', in which case the
office building may be empty for a long time. If the building
is not attractive, then companies will choose to work in
another better-looking building at the same rent.

Six Thinking Hats

With the Yellow Hat, however, if the economy holds up and
their projections are correct, the company stands to make
a great deal of money. If they are lucky, maybe they could
sell the building before the next downturn, or rent to
tenants on long-term leases that will last through any
recession.

Six Thinking Hats

With Green Hat thinking they consider whether they
should change the design to make the building more
pleasant. Perhaps they could build prestige offices that
people would want to rent in any economic climate.
Alternatively, maybe they should invest the money in the
short term to buy up property at a low cost when a
recession comes.

Six Thinking Hats

The Blue Hat has been used by the meeting's Chair to
move between the different thinking styles. He or she may
have needed to keep other members of the team from
switching styles, or from criticizing other peoples' points.

Six Thinking Hats

Six thinking hats and the psychology of microteaching

Six Thinking Hats

Read Edward de Bonos Six Thinking Hats.
Exercise: In small groups, find a problem for you to work
on. Work on the problem, using the Six Hats. Make sure
you take an easy, challenging and engaging problem to
begin with.
Alt: the land allotment problem or the sinking ship.

Thank You!
Satya Chaitanya