Six Thinking Hats- Edward de Bono

Six Thinking Hats, a popular thinking technique across meetings and brainstorming sessions, was first introduced by Edward de Bono. The technique is known to have had a major impact in improving meetings' productivity by making the participants have a complete picture of the story before making a decision. De Bono, introduces this book with a brilliant example of how four people looking at a house, standing in front of it's four walls can claim to have seen the right face of the house, if they do not look at the entire building. That's precisely how Edward launches the concept of lateral thinking, a concept wherin you need to look at every angle of a story to judge or decide upon an issue.

De Bono uses colors to distinguish between different ways of thinking, simply because they can be identified easily in stark contrast to jargonned names. The users of the technique are asked to “wear” the “hats” and give their thoughts. Each “hat” signifies a distinct way of thinking and brings to table an oppurtunity to look at an issue in a particular light. The result is that all participants are made to think in different modes and contribute to the overall discussion, unlike the conventional argumentative thinking which gets malaised by ego and authority. While De Bono does indicate, in between the lines to undergo a formal training on the technique, the book does give ample examples on how, the usage of a certain “hat” impacts decision making. Some of the aspects that I found noteworthy, amongst others was that under the Red Hat, it is legitimate to give you opinion on an issue, without having to explain the rationale behind it, or the Green Hat, where
the user is forced to think something creative and new.

Although I have personally, not tried the technique yet, it does seem to have a positive impact on meeting durations, wherin you can take decisions faster by having an holistic view of the matter. The fact that De Bono brings out is that, thinking is a technique and a better way of thinking can impact our lives by making decision making easier. Should you want to learn more, I suggest further reading of books by De Bono or on Lateral Thinking.

Contributed by: Our very dear Mama ji :)