#4 Introducing The Six Thinking Hats 🧰
Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats is a tool for guiding teams through complex conversations and achieving specific outcomes using six different thinking styles.
This is our first tool. It's a doozy. It is a classic in the world of business management and certain areas of design. You can use this to direct your thinking, as a single workshop tool or as a framework for your entire workshop, nesting other tools inside it.
In this issue, we'll cover the theory, outline the hats and discuss two example uses. Next week we'll work through a retro template structured around the approach and discuss how you might construct your own six hat sessions.
The theory
The concept of "thinking hats" is based on the idea that thinking can be like an avalanche, where one idea triggers others, each triggering even more.
Think about the last time you participated in a brainstorming session when someone proposed a wild idea that sparked enthusiasm and promise. Now recall the awkward silence when someone else interjected with a gut reaction or doubted whether the concept aligned with the project's success metrics. This shift from generative thinking to emotional or critical thinking blocked and dissipated the energy, much like a snow net catching an avalanche and absorbing its energy.
While emotional reactions and critical assessments are crucial, allowing these different thinking styles to collide can hinder our momentum. Six-hat thinking forces us to explore each thinking type independently and fully before moving on to the next. De Bono calls it "parallel thinking". We're switching from a discussion or debate style of communication (native western approaches to a conversation) to a dialogue-based experience.
In addition to fostering thinking momentum, this approach allows people to step outside their perceived "box" and feel psychologically safe to engage in different thinking styles. It enables the financial director to engage in broad, generative thinking without worrying about their perceived role as the critical thinker, safe in the knowledge that they'll get to bring that voice forward later. It also allows the junior designer to express their emotional response to a proposal without fear of judgment for their lack of experience.
From a facilitator's perspective, this method is powerful because it sets clear expectations for individuals' behaviour during each phase of the exercise. This makes it easier to redirect people if they stray from the productive path you have laid out.
You have created a "game" by creating and laying out rules. Since childhood, we've been socialised to play by the rules and to call out others who aren't doing so. This peer buy-in is an invaluable tool for you as a facilitator.
What are the hats?
There are six thinking hats, each representing a different style of thinking. The hats are; White, Red, Grey, Yellow, Green and Blue. This is what they stand for:
White Hat: This is the neutral hat. It is used to gather facts and figures and to outline questions. During a white hat session, participants are asked to share what they know about a subject and to be overt and careful in separating what they think from what they know. It's important to note that you can also flag unknowns as questions when wearing the white hat.
Red Hat: This is the emotional hat. It asks participants to express their emotional responses to the subject being discussed. It asks what the gut is saying and overtly doesn't require justification. This can be a dangerous hat if not used carefully, so it's essential to make sure that everyone in the room has a chance to express their emotions.
Grey Hat: This is the sombre and serious hat. It is careful and critical. You can view it as the de-risking hat. It poses challenging questions that must be answered or highlights potential flaws and weaknesses.
Yellow Hat: This is the bright and optimistic hat. It explores the positives and probes for value, opportunity and benefit.
Green Hat: This is the creative hat. It is used to generate creative ideas, to go wide and find solutions to problems, and ways to exploit new opportunities.
Blue Hat: This is the control hat. The team will wear this hat to set the tone for the conversation and establish the ground rules. This includes the scope of the discussion, the tone of voice, and how collaborators will communicate. A common misconception is that the facilitator wears the blue hat for the duration, but once the rules have been defined, you all take this hat off.
This is a very high-level summary; there is a subtle depth to each of the hats, which you'll get a better feel for in next week's issue.
DeBono outlines six thinking styles and uses coloured hats as a metaphor. In some instances (usually with collaborators who respond to a bit of daft-ness), I'll pick up six berets in the right colours and wear them to keep people in line with our thinking style. In others, it's easier to be straight-laced about it. Using the analogy of hats is positive because it gives you a softer and less accusatory language to use when engaging with collaborators; "We're wearing yellow hat's at the moment, but you'll get to wear the grey hat soon" is less pointy than "we're looking at opportunities, can you stop being critical for the moment, please".
Using the six hats
Ok, so we've got the groundwork in place. But how do you actually use these thinking hats in a session? You're going to use these as the building blocks of a conversation. Depending on the context you're working in, you'll arrange those building blocks in a different order to shape the conversation you need to have. You don't have to use every hat in every conversation. Instead, consider what might bring the best discussions forward.
Some of those blocks might be just open conversations, but others might be viewed as containers for other design tools, like a silent post-it session for the initial white hat thinking or crazy eights for some green hat magic.
Below are some boilerplate sequences for Ideation, Decision Making and Feedback sessions which you can take and use as they are or evolve yourself.
Regardless of the sequence you're working with, there are some key things to do in every session:
Lay the ground with your collaborators; explain what each hat stands for.
Ensure the whole group collectively wears a single hat at one time. Laying out the ground rules should help them be called back quickly if they drift.
Have a predefined sequence of hats to work through. And you're going to tell people what that is ahead of time. That's important because it gives them confidence that they will get to express some thoughts that they want to. And that there will be time for those conversations later.
Give a tight timeframe for the discussion. as I have suggested in previous articles, time is fluid, and you can always allow the time to extend if a valuable dialogue is being had.
How to structure an ideation session
For ideation, you could use a blue-red-white-green-blue sequence. This will help you generate a wide range of ideas.
How it might look-
Blue - Define the scope of your ideation, how far can you go, and are there any hard boundaries? And are there any metrics that need to be involved in this ideation from the start? Essentially, in this first blue heart, you’re ensuring you have a good brief to ideate against.
Red (if there are strong opinions already) One minute to give your gut reaction to the prompt. Something important to note here is that if one of your key stakeholders has a strong opinion, You may want to skip this red hat. We might want to ask them to go last. You don't want to kill the conversation by having the highest-paid opinion getting that too early.
White - What do you know about this opportunity space? This is the space for your customer insight, facts, figures, competitor feature lists etc. Anything which is factual and hard evidence. You're giving people the material for the ideation.
Green - Creative thinking time. Depending on the scale of your conversation, it could be a shout-out brainstorming session. It could be a quiet sketching and presentation or something structured, like crazy eights. What's important is that this is a divergent phase, and you're giving people the opportunity to go wide.
Blue – Did you create enough ideas to be working with? Was your scope correct? Do you need to spend more time in this space?
Depending on your scope, this sequence could run for 30 minutes or take an entire day.
At the smaller end of the scale, imagine you're a product team working on a specific feature. You've come up against a technical challenge and need help proceeding. You could gather the other engineers for half an hour and run this process, leaving you with various options. People bring their existing knowledge; they're well-versed in the space and don't need to prepare.
At the bigger end, you could be working with the directors of an organisation to think about how the company should be structured moving forwards. You could run the same process over a day and be ready to return tomorrow to prioritise, refine and define your new operating model. In this context, there is a lot of groundwork to cover and shared understanding needs to be created before effective ideation can happen.
How to structure a decision-making session
To make an informed decision, you could use a Blue-White-Yellow-Grey-Green-Red-Blue sequence.
Blue - What is the desired outcome for the session? Is it to inform a process or a go/no-go result? Does everyone understand the brief that was set and the status of the options?
White - What are the options being put in front of the collaborators? How do they align with the previously agreed success metrics? What questions still need to be answered?
Yellow - What are the merits of each idea? Where could they have unexpected benefits? How could it enhance existing solutions?
Grey - Where do we see challenges for each idea? Where does the idea not meet previously stated criteria, and what impact might that have?
Green - Decision-making time. Choose your best option and reflect on its yellow and grey hat comments. What needs to be done to elevate the chosen option? Is there anything that can be incorporated from the other considered options?
Red - Everyone gets one minute to express their gut feeling about the session's outcome. No justification is needed.
Blue - Have you reached a decision which aligns with your goals? Are there clear next steps? Do you need more time to get a consensus?
The duration of each of these segments will change depending on the context of the conversation. Your white hat may involve creating the criteria against which the ideas will be measured if this wasn't done at the project's inception. This can be an in-depth conversation in its own right which, depending on the gravity of the decision, might take a substantial time.
Clear criteria might mean that your decision is made in the white hat. In this case, the remaining sequence works beautifully to evolve and develop the chosen idea rather than assess all options.
So there you have it!
There are two different ways of ordering hats to achieve different outcomes. Combining the six thinking hats in different sequences allows you to create and manage conversations that achieve a wide range of outcomes. Next week we’re going to walk through a retrospective feedback session structured using the six thinking hats. That’ll be our first template for you to take away and use.
With these six thinking styles in your toolbox, you can lead your team through complex conversations and achieve specific outcomes. Remember to start and end with the blue hat to ensure everyone is on the same page, and use the other hats to explore different thinking styles and perspectives. I hope you're as excited to try out this powerful tool in your work as I am to share it with you!
If you want to dig deeper into the six hats, I’d highly recommend picking up a copy of “The Six Thinking Hats” by Edward de Bono.
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Until then, happy facilitating!