Six Thinking Hats
Edward de Bono's book Six Thinking Hats is another one of those management style books from the 80's that offers
a system that businesses can use in team building towards finding ways to make every person within the team as effective thinker.
First, let's talk about the style of the book. I have to say this isn't a style I'm all that familiar with for this type of book. For one, there are lots of
very short chapters. For another, there are a lot of short paragraphs within all of those paragraphs. This isn't necessarily a straight forward book
giving its principles. It's also not the type of book that has lengthy stories to convey its messages. The paragraphs are just long enough to give a
thought, then moves on to another paragraph. To some, that might make it seem choppy; to others, it might break things up into sound bites that are
easier to understand.
Next, let's talk about the concept of the book, the six hats. Mr. de Bono comes up with his concept of the six hats as a way to gear people into
thinking about an issue from the point of view of what the hats represent. Since this book is over 20 years old, I don't think anyone would say I'm
giving away any secrets as to what the six hats, defined by their colors, stand for: White Hat - concerned with objective facts and figures;
Red Hat - the emotional view; Black Hat - covers the negative aspects; Yellow Hat - covers hope and positive thinking;
Green Hat - indicates creativity and new ideas; Blue Hat - concerned with control and the organization of the thinking process.
In essence, these six hats are three pairs of contradictory thought processes, three sets of positive and negative thinking points, then the coalescing
of all the points of view into what should produce the best results.
In the book, each colored hat gets six to eight chapters, or sub-chapters, since each chapter is only 3 or 4 pages long, of different ways of using
the hats to think about an issue. As an example, the chapters for Red Hat thinking are titled: emotions and feelings; the place of emotions in
thinking; intuition and hunches; moment to moment; the use of emotions; the language of emotions. At the end of each main chapter is a summary
of what was talked about before.
My problem with systems is usually two fold. One, systems are hard to memorize by a lot of people, which usually means someone has to keep
a list around to remember which color stands for what. Two, systems take a lot of work, forcing people to think, and this usually means that people
won't consistently use it because of its difficulty, and the mental work that must be expended each time. For instance, the book talks about normally
Black Hat thinkers, usually only used to thinking about things in a negative way, suddenly being asked to put on the White Hat and come at a problem
from that perspective, or one of the other colors, and how difficult it might be for that person because it's way out of their normal pattern of thinking.
Having said that, if there was a system book that I'd like to hope that someone would at least give a try when there are tough issues to deal with,
this might be the type of program to try. In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with getting people out of their comfort zones every once in awhile and
having them broaden their perspective for the good of the team, or the company. I've always said why have a meeting to brainstorm if everyone's not
contributing. The colored hats offer a relatively simple way to get people to at least try it out, and if done properly, some might actually find it fun.
But systems are always a lot of work, so whomever is the group leader has to know when it's time to stop pushing and go in a different direction also.
In the end, I would recommend that you give Six Thinking Hats a try. It was actually a very fast read once I got used to the rhythm. By
myself, it's not a system I would ever do; in a group, well, I just might give it a shot.
