Six Thinking Hats

A simple exercise to encourage diversity of thinking when problem solving.

Kevin May owns the Sticks advertising agency in Seattle.

He holds ‘brainstorm salons’ where he invites groups of smart people along who have nothing to do with the ad campaigns they will be talking about.

He says it’s amazing what an engineer has to say about lingerie or an artist has to say about accountancy problems. You can get amazingly different insights, reframed approaches and other ways of looking at problems that people immersed in the problem would never come up with because they’re blinkered by being too close.

As individuals we are prone to similar patterns of thinking. Unsurprisingly, we don’t think like other people do. We think how we do.

However, when we’re faced with a challenge that requires us to get resourceful, this can leave us a bit hamstrung. The reason is because, in order to be an effective problem solver, you need to think differently.

Dr. Edward De Bono has been described as one of the world’s greatest thinkers.

He has dedicated most of his life to teaching people ‘how’ to think rather than ‘what’ to think.

He devised the ‘Six Thinking Hats’ technique which is a role playing method whereby a group of people debate a problem by…