Six Thinking Hats, Citations included
...hats in their work. • White Hat o Wearing the white hat, you look at data you already have available. By looking at this information you can tell where any gaps so you can either fill them or at the very least take account of them. This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data. • Red Hat o When you look at the issue using intuition or you “gut feeling”, you are wearing the red hat. The red hat is very useful when you are trying to gauge how others will react to your reasoning or to get a personalized reason for the problem at hand. • Black Hat o As implied with its color, the black hat is where we look over the negative aspects of your plan to “weed” out the weak parts, and therefore making your plan tougher and more resilient to failure. • Yellow Hat o Like a golden ray of sunshine, the yellow hat is to help you think positively. The yellow hat will open your optimistic side, allowing you to see all the benefits of your decision, which will help you keep going in the face of any aversion. • Green Hat o The green hat is for creativity. While sporting this hat, you as the decision maker can get as creative with your solutions without having to worry about much criticism. • Blue Hat o The wearer of the blue hat is usually the one in charge, as the blue has represents control. The one using the blue hat will usually be the one directing activities into green hat thinking when ideas aren’t forthcoming. They may well also direct actions toward black hat thinking when contingency plans are needed. WHEN TO USE THIS TECHNIQUE In this section we will view a scenario where we should use the Six Hats Technique to solve a company’s dilemma of drawing in new customers. Each step of the process will be color coded to show which area each hat is applied to. With sales dropping, the Acme Whoopee Cushion Company is seeking to draw new business to their product to gives their revenue a boost. The company executives call a meeting with its shareholders to try and find out why their sales have dropped. The first thing the company looks at are its past sales statistics to see when and why the most products were sold. The next thing the company wants to know is what each shareholder thinks is the reason as to why sales have declined. Now that the executives know the past sales trends and have some ideas as to why the products are not selling as well, the shareholders are asked to share some ideas on what they think would be feasible plans to promote the product to boost sales. Once all ideas are in each one is looked over to see what kind of flaws o...