Six Thinking Hats: A technique of Business Analysis

What is Six Thinking Hats: Early in the 1980s, Dr. Edward De Bono introduced the concept of Six Thinking Hats. Six Thinking Hats is a brainstorming technique which is used to incorporate parallel thinking. Parallel thinking is a practice in which the focus of all participants at any given time is in the same direction. This helps in exploring a subject in depth. As humans, we tend to be confined to our habitual thinking style. For example, successful people often have a very positive, rational point of view which works in their favor in most situations. But they might fail to look at a problem from an emotional, negative perspective which may lead to wrong decisions. In situations like these, the powerful technique of Six Thinking Hats fosters creativity and innovation by forcing us to think outside the box and thus obtain more complete view of a situation.

The key theoretical reasons for using Six Thinking Hats are as follows:

• encourage parallel thinking
• encourage full-spectrum thinking
• separate ego from performance

Consider an example here; a multi-national company has planned to come up with a new product, a mobile phone of cutting edge technology for business use, i.e., for a specific market segment. The company introduced Six Thinking Hats technique with intend of encouraging innovative ideas and taking in to consideration different point of views. The technique is described below:

The Six Thinking Hats: This technique includes six imaginary hats that you ‘put on’ and ‘take off’ to signify the type of thinking being used. The six hats are described below.

White Hat: This hat covers facts, figures, information needs and gaps related to your current problem. With this thinking hat, you look at the information available to you, see what you can learn from it and analyze past trends.

In the example considered above, the group wears the White Hat to research about the day to day lives of consumers and how the consumers will benefit from using this new phone. They analyze the different mobile phones available in the market for that particular segment and also market trends of those phones.

Green Hat: This hat stands for creativity. Here, alternate way of thinking and finding solution to a problem is encouraged.

In our example, the group puts on the Green Hat and gives innovative ideas of what features can be implemented in the phone and also the provide their views about the design of the phone. They also try to find alternate ways of achieving their goal.

Yellow Hat: Yellow hat is used to think positively. It helps you see all the benefits of the decision.

Yellow Hat will be used by the group to see all the positive aspects of the ideas listed down. All the group members think about the benefits of the phone and how it will be profitable to the organization.

Black Hat: Black hat is used to point out flaws in decisions logically. This hat is also known as the hat of judgment and caution and is a most valuable hat. This hat helps you to eliminate the weak points in your plan or prepare contingency plans to counter them.

The group uses Black Hat to check if there are any flaws in their plan. They think about the worst case scenarios for their plan, meaning in which areas their plan can fail. For example, the chosen market segment for the mobile phone is wrong or the design of the phone does not serve its purpose.

Red Hat: This hat covers feelings, intuition and emotions. While using this hat, a thinker can put forward his or her intuition without the need to justify it. This hat allows its user to look at a problem using gut reaction.

For the example mentioned above, the opinion of group members about the new product will be put forward with the help of Red Hat. The group members will prioritize the need for different features in the phone and what according to them will be most useful. This hat will also help the group understand what emotions can be tapped into for successful marketing of the phone and what pitfalls emotionally must be avoided

Blue Hat: This is a process control or overview hat. It looks not at the problem itself but the ‘thinking’ that goes into solving the problem. Why falling short of ideas, blue hat gives direction as to which hat must be used.

The Blue Hat is used by the group to direct the thinking process and keeping a check such that all the issues are covered.

What are the advantages of using Six Thinking Hats?

Following are the advantages of using Six Thinking Hats:

• Adds structure to brainstorming process
• Shorter and more productive thinking processes
• Reduces conflict within a team
• Motivates a clearer thinking process
• Avoids potential threats to situation and helps avoid them
• Inspires creative thinking 

What are the disadvantages of using Six Thinking Hats?

The disadvantages of Six Thinking Hats are much less compared to the advantages. The disadvantages are described below:

• The process of thinking is very time-consuming
• Some team-members prefer to think alone rather than in a group
• Conflicts can still arise between people of different perspective

Overall, Six Thinking Hats is a very positive and creative brainstorming technique which improves the efficiency and effectiveness of our thinking methods. Be it problem solving or overcoming challenges, using Six Thinking Hats, better business decisions can be achieved.

About Author:

Kruti Gala is a lead consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at: kruti.g@spluspl.com