Six thinking hats

Applying the six thinking hats is a powerful technique to look at decisions from a number of perspectives, forcing you to move outside your regular thinking style to get a more complete view of a situation.

The tool was created by Edward de Bono in his book ‘6 Thinking Hats’.

Although this tool was designed for business tasks, I feel it’s also useful for writing tasks, especially big ones.  Once you have an idea, this is a clever way to analyse that idea before going ahead and acting on it.

 

Briefly, the six hats are:

White hat

Focus on the data available, look at the information you have to see what you can learn from it.  Look for gaps in your knowledge and try to fill them or take account of them.  Analyse past trends and historical data.

 

Red hat

Look at problems using intuition, gut reaction and emotion, try to think how others will react and trying to understand responses of those who don’t know your reasoning.

 

Black hat

Look at all the bad points of the decision cautiously and defensively.  Try to see why it might not work, highlight the weak points in a plan, eliminate them alter them, or prepare plans to counter them.

 

Yellow hat

Think positively and see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it, find ways to keep going when things get difficult.

Green hat

Develop creative solutions with little criticism of ideas.  Adopt a free-wheeling way to thinking.

 

Blue hat

Apply process control, deciding which hat to put on when ideas run dry under another hat, thereby sourcing solutions using all six hats.

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If your idea still seems like a successful one after all the hats have been tried on, then GO FOR IT!