Book Review: Six Thinking Hats

For many years I have known the concept of Six Thinking Hats. But did not know how to really use it in practice and what is the practical value of such a concept. Well, on one of the days whilst strolling along nearby bookstore I came across this book. So, I thought of giving it a go. Apart from being reasonably priced this book is an easy read and gives a lot of cues that we can use to structure different meetings.

Central theme of the book is to leverage the concept of parallel thinking. Specially in a meeting context, Idea is to have everyone present in the meeting to focus their thinking in one direction to reduce arguments. With that central theme set, this book uses hats to identify a certain type of thinking. Following is the summary of hats and their thinking types

* White - Just facts please
* Black - List all risks and dangers
* Red - List all emotions
* Green - List exploratory ideas
* Yellow - List all the positives
* Blue - Everything else. Including the meeting context

Book also says that meetings should start and end with Blue hat. Remaining hats can be used based upon the meeting context. Also, the idea is to allocate time for a certain type of thinking and encourage everyone to restrict their thinking to that type only. For example, when asked about red hat opinion people should mention their emotions only without any justification such as "I think this idea will not work". That's it .. no need to justify why the idea would not work.

Once all the thoughts are put on board or paper - team present at the meeting can easily prioritize to create plan go forward.

This book does give some examples where the Six Thinking Hats approach delivered great results for many companies. I haven't been a part of a meeting where this approach was used. But after reading the book I am encouraged to be a part of such meeting.