6 Thinking Hats

By Edward De Bono
Edward De Bono
Agenda
Background

Parallel Thinking

Advantages

Six Thinking Hats - how to use it?

Case Studies - Apply Hats to the Problems

Background
Background
Edward De Bono

Most Revolutionary thinking change of 2300 yrs

Examples - ABB, Siemens, GE etc.

Thinking - ultimate resource | Confusion - ultimate problem in thinking

One thing at a time

Advantages of Six Hats
More productive Meetings

Time Saving

Create, evaluate and execute action plans

Improved communication and understanding

Removal of Ego (reduce confrontation)

And much More..

Parallel Thinking
At any moment everyone is looking in
the same direction.
Traditional Vs. Parallel Thinking

● Take sides. Opposite ● All parties think from same

point of view.
● Argue your point
● Prove other side wrong
point of view. Co-ordinate.
● Lay out all the
differing/different ideas
● Get a full view of the
problem from all the angles
using six hats
 Six thinking hats are..
Six Different types of thinking.
Hats help groups to do parallel thinking.
You can ‘Put on’ and ‘Put off’ Hats.
Six Colors
White: neutral, facts

Red: emotional, feeling

Black: caution, danger

Yellow: positive, optimistic

Green: creative

Blue: organizational
General Warnings
Hats are not category of people. Don’t put people into box.

Constructive way of showing off - better thinker

Everyone must use all the hats. E.g. I am not a Red hat thinker.

Requires discipline while using the hat. Play along.

No fixed sequence. No need for all the hats.

White Hat

Neutral. Objective.
Be Like Computer.
Facts, figures and information.
White Hat Thinking
Neutral hats, talks only about facts, figures and data.

Be like computer while wearing the hats. Excludes emotions.

What info do we have? What are the facts? and/or What info do we need?

Two tier facts: Believed facts & Checked facts

Red Hat

Feeling. Hunches.
Emotions.
How do we feel about this?
Red Hat Thinking
Gives you an opportunity to express feeling and emotion.

Intuition and hunches. Likes and Dislikes.

Legitimize the emotion as part of discussion

No need for justification.

Black Hat

Caution and Careful.

Focus on Risks & Problems.
What are the potential problems in it?
Black Hat
Black hat thinking is concerned with caution and careful

Hat of survival. Base of critical thinking.

Logical negative: why it wont work

We need to consider the risks, dangers, potential problems

Most abused hat. As we are naturally programmed for this.

Yellow Hat

Positive and Optimistic.

Looking for upside.
What are the benefits?
Yellow Hat Thinking
Develop ‘value sensitivity’ (opposite to danger sensitivity)

Naturally not programmed to do so unlike black hat

Yellow hat looks for positive side and benefits

I know the risk of doing it, now need some yellow hat thinking on it!

Why something may work though it is outrageous!

Yellow Hat
..before we start meeting I need you to put Yellow hat

(than black hat) and decide the time for office daily!

..now that you told be all the downside of the idea,

Why you don’t like it and why it will fail. Can you do

Some yellow hat thinking now?

Green Hat

Creativity. Growth.
New ideas and alternatives.
Suggest me some new ideas to increase
sales without lowering price?
Green Hat Thinking
Hardest hat to wear.

Hat of Creativity, new approach to problems

Generation of new ideas and find new alternatives

Collect the idea with green hat then do some Yellow hat and black hat thinking on
it.
Blue Hat

Organizational hat.
Control of other hats.
Facilitator
Blue Hat Thinking
Should be used in Starting and End of the session

Setting the thinking tasks: Why are we here

Why are we here? And What we want to achieve?

Focus and control of the process.

Decide the sequence of other hats

And closing with Blue hat
Outcome of the whole session

Solution

Next steps

Conclusion
 Thank you
Presented by Yuvraj Zala