SPECIAL GUEST BLOG By Harley Murphy, Strategic Change Mentor, Mentors.ie

We have all participated in meetings which seem to go nowhere, other than around in circle. Studies have demonstrated that significant amounts of senior managers’ time are wasted at unproductive meeting. Even more importantly is the question mark over the quality of decisions being made at such meetings?

In his book “ The Decisive Moment” Jonah Lehrer makes the following observation:

“There is no universal solution to the problem of decision-making. The real world is just too complex. As a result, natural selection endowed us with a brain that is enthusiastically pluralist. Sometimes we need to reason through our options and carefully analyze the possibilities. And sometimes we need to listen to our emotions. The secret is knowing when to use these different styles of thought. We always need to be thinking about how we think.”

One of the great teachers of the skill of thinking is Edward de Bono and he created  the concept of the ‘Six Thinking Hats’. This framework for meetings has now been used, to great effect, by companies all around the globe, including such names as IBM, NASA, DuPont, Shell, BP, Federal Express and many others.

The Six Thinking Hats

One of the great strengths of the Six Thinking Hats approach is its simplicity. Each of the six thinking hats has a colour: white, red, black, yellow, green and blue. The ‘hats’ are intended to be visualised and normally real hats are not used in the process. The colour provides the name for the hat and is related to its function:

White Hat: White is neutral and objective. The white hat is concerned with facts and figures.

Red Hat: Red suggests anger & emotion to many people. The red hat is concerned with the emotional view.

Black Hat: Black is somber and serious. The black hat is cautious, careful and all about risk. It points out potential weaknesses or consequences arising from an idea.

Yellow Hat: Yellow is sunny & positive. The yellow hat is optimistic and concerns positive thinking.

Green Hat: Green is about growth and abundance. The green hat indicates creativity and innovative thinking.

Blue Hat: Blue is cool. The blue hat is concerned with control and process. It’s about organizing the thinking process and the use of the other hats.

Using the Six Thinking Hats in a Meeting

You need to just remember the colour and the associations of each hat. The function of the hat in the meeting will then follow.  In a meeting the hats should always be referred to by their colour rather than their function. There is good reason for this, as asking someone to give his or her emotional reaction to something may carry a connotation resulting in a less honest answer. This is because many people still think it is wrong to be emotional in a business context. However, referring to putting on your red hat is more neutral, carrying less connotations.  Similarly, asking someone to ‘take off their black hat for a moment’ is less threatening than asking them to stop being cautious. The neutrality of the colours allows the hats to be used in a meeting context in a way that is not confrontational. Thinking then becomes a game with defined rules.

There are two basic ways of using the hats:

The hats can be used singly to request a type of thinking. In this case you may come to a point in a meeting where you want to generate some fresh options. For example,  ‘……. I think we need some green hat thinking here.’ Or ‘ …..Maybe we should have some black hat on this.

Alternatively, the hats can be used in sequence to explore a subject or solve a problem.  The sequence may be made up of two, three, four or more hats.  In this case it is recommended that a pre-set sequence is agreed at the beginning of the meeting, under an initial blue hat (process).  Small variations from the pre-set sequence are permitted, depending on output.

Edward de Bono wrote that there are two main purposes to the Six Thinking Hats concept. The first is to simplify thinking by allowing a thinker to deal with one thing at a time. Instead of having to take care of emotions, logic, hope and creativity all at the same time, the thinker can deal with them separately. The second purpose is to allow a switch in thinking.  If an individual at a meeting has been persistently negative, that person can be asked to take off his black hat. By turning it into role play the concept of the hats makes it possible to request certain types of thinking. This can also be very liberating.

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. “

Martin Luther King Jnr.