Think about the last difficult decision your team had to make together.
How did the meeting go? Did everyone contribute? Did you explore the risks thoroughly, without getting stuck in them? Did someone come up with a genuinely new idea or did the group gravitate towards the safest, most familiar option?
If you’re honest, most meetings don’t work like that. One or two voices dominate. People advocate for their existing positions rather than exploring together. The meeting ends with a decision that nobody feels fully committed to, or worse, no decision at all.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Edward de Bono figured out why meetings fail and designed a method to fix it. That method is Six Thinking Hats®.
Why smart teams make bad decisions
The problem isn’t intelligence. It’s thinking style. In a typical meeting, people bring different kinds of thinking to the table simultaneously and those different modes collide. The optimist argues with the pessimist. The creative person is dismissed by the pragmatist. The person with the data can’t get a word in because the room is already arguing about conclusions.
De Bono called this “argument thinking”, a legacy of the adversarial tradition that values winning a debate over finding the best answer. His solution was radical in its simplicity: don’t think about different things at the same time. Think about one thing at a time – together.
The Six Hats
Blue Hat – Process. The conductor’s hat. Who is facilitating? What are we trying to achieve?
White Hat – Facts. What do we know? What data do we have? What are the gaps?
Yellow Hat – Optimism. What are the benefits? Why could this work? Worn by everyone, including the natural sceptics.
Black Hat – Caution. What are the risks? What could go wrong? Due diligence, not pessimism.
Red Hat – Emotion. What’s your gut feeling? Gives people permission to voice feelings without having to justify them.
Green Hat – Creativity. What are the new ideas? Dedicated space for lateral thinking.
What changes when you use it
Meetings get faster. Better decisions emerge. Quieter voices contribute more. Because everyone is focused on the same mode of thinking simultaneously, there’s far less cross-talk and circular argument.
The effect is well documented at organisations that have adopted the method. At a global technology leader, multinational project teams that used to take around 20 days to reach a decision now do it in as little as two, after switching to a Six Hats process. Siemens has certified Six Hats facilitators across its European offices to run the method with teams directly. Better thinking produces better outcomes and better meetings produce better organisations.
Why this matters right now
Universities UK’s 2023 survey of senior leaders and talent acquisition specialists at FTSE350 companies found that 61% say their organisation needs more creative thinkers to get real value from new AI tools (Universities UK). But creative thinking without structure is just brainstorming. What employers actually need is structured creative thinking, the ability to generate new ideas and evaluate them rigorously. Six Thinking Hats® is precisely that.
Indigo is the offical UK distributor for Edward de Bono. Six Thinking Hats® is a one-day workshop where participants leave with a clear understanding of each hat, practical experience applying the method to real business challenges, and a shared language for thinking that works across the whole team.
