Here at Heart Internet, we prefer not to have meetings; after all we’re around each other all day with constant opportunities to discuss ideas. However, every once in a while it does make sense to get a group together for a meeting to define the direction and objectives within a project and when this happens you want to make sure that your meeting is as productive as possible. One technique for achieving this comes from a book called Six Thinking Hats which helps all the different participants to consider problems and ideas to more effectively reach a clear consensus. This post will go through the basics of the Six Thinking Hats method of running meetings so you can use it to make faster and better decisions for your projects.

So, what is Six Thinking Hats?

Six Thinking Hats is a technique created in 1985 by author, inventor and consultant Edward de Bono that focuses on six different ways of thinking, each of which is characterised by a different hat. This technique has been successfully used across the world by businesses including IBM, Siemens, NASA, Shell and BP. The hats can be used effectively by multiple people if you’re in a team or by an individual if you’re an army of one.

The hats

White- Information

This hat focusses on being neutral and objective and is concerned with objective facts and figures. This is particularly useful to consider as it’s sometimes easy to take too much of a personal view when thinking about a project, but data and facts never lie so this makes them excellent tools for decision making.

Example questions include:

• What data do we have relating to this issue?
• Does our data prove or disprove our assumptions?
• What facts do we have about this?
• What could we measure to find out more?

Red- Emotion

Almost the complete opposite to the white hat, the red hat encourages individuals to explore their gut reaction to the issue and how they feel about it as this can help to address early concerns and make sure that everyone is enthused about the project before work on it begins.

Example questions include:

• What’s my gut feeling about this project?
• What about the project is giving me this feeling?
• Why am I getting this gut feeling?

Black- Discernment

The black hat is all about using logic to identify reasons to be cautious and conservative about the project and where it is potentially weak, getting everyone to flag up areas that they think could be problematic and preventing these issues arising later seemingly out of nowhere.

Example questions include:

• What about this project seems unfeasible?
• What potential conflicts are there within the work?
• What in this project has been overlooked?

Yellow- Optimism

Just as it’s important to be aware of potential issues within a project, it’s also essential for the team to be optimistic about it and to enjoy working on it. This is what the yellow hat is for, using logic to see benefits and value and to see how potential issues might not necessarily be problematic.

Example questions include:

• What about this project really excites me?
• What are the potential positive results of this project?
• Amongst the problems we’ve identified, are they certain to cause issues if they occur?

Green- Creativity

Creativity can turn a very average project into one that really delights and engages customers, so it’s important to consider this way of thinking when you’re starting to define your project. When using the green hat, you use statements of provocation and investigation and try to think laterally as well by seeing where thoughts take you.

Example questions include:

• What would we do if there was no budget?
• What’s the best way to achieve the goals in the project?
• How could this project influence other areas of our business?

Blue- Control

Whilst the other five hats are crucial to making your projects successful, the blue hat is possibly the most important of all because it is for organising how you use these other hats to get the most effective results.

Example questions include:

• Which hat should we use next?
• How long should we have for each hat?
• How many hats do we want to use and how often?

Guidelines for use

There are two main ways for using the Six Thinking Hats to help you achieve more when planning your projects:

A single hat: If you feel that a project needs to be looked at with one of the particular hats above, you can do this to make quick and valuable improvements on an ad-hoc basis.

In sequence: The most valuable way to use the hats is in a defined sequence that works for you. The hats can be used in any order you like and any hat can be used as many times as you want.

Extra tips:

• For the best results, try to start and finish with a blue hat as the first one can be used to establish what he goals of the session are and the one at the end can be used to establish what’s been achieved and what actions should be taken going forwards.
• One handy tip is to use a red hat after the first blue hat that you use as well if the project is one that’s likely to provoke strong emotional reactions as this will allow you to get the emotions out in the open early so they are less likely to negatively affect your approach to the other hats as you go.
• Using the yellow hat before the black hat can be helpful too because it’s much easier to be optimistic and to then see the weaknesses in a project that to lay out all its weaknesses and then try to be positive about its chances for success.

Image credits:

Bob Mical and Ian D. Keeting