“Six Thinking Hats” Decision-Making Technique

Six Thinking Hats technique (“6 Hats”) was developed by Edward de Bono. “6 Hats” fosters collaboration, creativity, and innovation with the parallel thinking process of the six metaphorical hats. The basic premise behind “6 Hats” is that most people think and reason in a specific way based on their personality type. For example, an analytical person may generate ideas differently than an emotional person, and vice-versa. “6 Hats” method identifies six modes of thinking, which are meant to be directed in parallel at the problem at hand.

“6 Hats” serves as a tool to boost the productivity of creative thinking by dividing up the different styles of thinking into six "hats": logic, emotion, caution, optimism, creativity, and control. This parallel thinking approach proactively discourages and replaces the argumentative approach in which members of a group advocate for opposing solutions.

Each thinking mode is identified by a color and defined by the role it plays in the process of problem solving, and 6 different colored hats give a diverse visions on a defined idea. Each person takes on the role of a hat, ensuring that all viewpoints and styles are covered, when used proactively it separates ego from performance, so that everyone works toward a goal rather than in defense of a position. 

The six hats are:

• White Hat – It is the hat objectivity

It focuses on facts, figures, information needs, and gaps. It looks at what is known and what information could be missing. The association is with paper, on which ‘facts’ are recorded.

• Red Hat – It is the hat of intuition

In contrary to White hat, Red hat focuses on intuition, feelings, and emotions. It focuses on what people feel about the issue under discussion. Importantly, there’s no need to rationalize or explain.

• Black Hat – It is the hat of caution

It is the hat of judgment and caution. It is used to predict negative outcomes. It focuses on problems, risks, and challenges that this idea might pose.

• Yellow Hat – It is the hat of optimism

In contrary to Black hat, Yellow hat focuses on the positive outcomes and benefits. It can be used to look forward at the results of some proposed action, but can also be used to find something of value in what has already happened.

• Green Hat – It is the hat of creativity 

It focuses on the creativity, alternatives, proposals, provocations and changes. It brings abundance of ideas, and do not care about criticism. This hat is often used in a brainstorm to generate ideas.

• Blue Hat – It is the hat of control

It is used for management and organization. We can call it the disciplinary hat. The person given this role should mainly supervise the whole session.?

The key concept for using “6 Hats” are:

• Facilitate Parallel Thinking
• Inspire Full-Spectrum Thinking
• Detached Ego Thinking

“6 Hats” is a powerful technique for decision making that includes different points of view. It can be used in brainstorming exercise to divide the team into different groups with assigned hat. Each group talks about the product from their hat's perspective.

The process and methodology allows emotion and skepticism to be brought into what might normally be a purely rational process. It allows for more focused collaboration among smaller groups that can later rejoin with stronger ideas and goals, and it opens up the opportunity for creativity within decision making.

It is a brilliant decision-making technique. Decisions made using the “6 Hats” technique can be more resilient and based on a holistic perspective. It helps to make a more rounded decision, by looking into the decision in a number of important perspectives, by approaching problems from various angles of facts, emotions and creativity. It helps to make better decisions by having a more holistic and wide ranging view of the problem, and thus allowing us to avoid pitfalls and gaps before committing to a decision.