What Color is Your Thinking Cap?
Have you exhausted brainstorming? Try 6 Thinking Hats? Dr. Edward de Bono developed a technique for helping teams stay focused on creative problem solving by avoiding the typical western culture fraught with negativity and group arguments. 6 Thinking Hats can be used to direct team creativity when techniques such as brainstorming dry out. This technique has been used world wide, in a variety of corporations.
The hats involve participants in a type of mental role play. The following are some ways to apply this technique during solution or idea generation
A thinker puts on or takes off one of the hats
A facilitator asks a thinker to put on or take off one of the hats
All thinkers put on one hat for a period of time
Each thinker is assigned a different hat to wear for a period of time – All thinkers wear hats they do not “normally” wear.
If you have more than 6 folks, have each person wear a different color hat during the exercise. If you have less than 6 folks, the small group will wear each color hat together through all 6 colors.
Here's a warm up exercise you can use to get your team activated.
The Problem: Identity Theft:
A well known Department Store has posted on their Facebook page for ideas on how to solve and/or prevent identity theft. They have enlisted you to post the best ideas on their Facebook page by the end of business today. Using the output of the 6 Thinking Hats below, select the top 5 ideas and present on a flip chart for submission.
Use the Six Thinking Hats to generate the best ideas. Use nominal group technique or multi-voting to arrive at the top 5 ideas. Each 'Thinking Hat' is a different style of thinking. See Definitions below
White Hat - With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them. This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.
Red Hat - Wearing the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.
Black Hat - Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them. Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans 'tougher' and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance. This leaves them under-prepared for difficulties.
Yellow Hat - The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.
Green Hat - The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. Any creative tools may be used to help you.
Blue Hat - The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, etc.
Remember, if you’re stuck with generating new ideas, try using the 6 Thinking Hats to break out new ideas from different perspectives or views. Choose a color hat that you’ve not taken in the past. Group and then prioritize ideas.
If you enjoyed this article, click the like button and share with your network. If you would more information on this topic or related initiatives contact us at succeed@cikata.com. Don’t forget to click on our social links for the latest.