

De Bono's Six Thinking Hats - chegra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats

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allertonm
At a former employer we all got trained on this and used it for a few weeks
before reverting to our old bad habits :)

I generally approach these kinds of methods with some skepticism - it is a bit
7-habits-ish - but one thing I did like about this one was that you could look
at it as "design patterns for productive meetings", in that you could ask
yourself what the goal of the meeting was and work from there to identify the
right way to structure it. However I definitely attended too many meetings
where the goal ended up being following the 6TH plan to the death rather than
reaching a real goal.

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bonsaitree
All we're missing is violet, indigo, and orange. Then we'd have a full Green
Lantern Corps ;).

I can understand the philosophical underpinnings, but honestly, it smells of
7-Habits-esque management "science" , and worse, a pure sales ploy for
consulting.

At least 5-Whys ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys> ) and Six Sigma (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma> ) have show actual quantifiable
improvements in industry.

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ZeroGravitas
I quite like this system, though not as a "brain" thing as it seems to be
presented here, but as a social system for working together better.

Just as "brainstorming"[1] is just a way of saying _don't jump down my throat
with questions and problems when I'm trying to think_ , the six hats system
lets people say in a meeting "I have a bad feeling about this" and acknowledge
their feelings rather than try to shoot it down technically because vague
misgivings aren't as valued as they should be.

[1] Apparently brainstorming doesn't work, though I think the research
compared people coming up with ideas alone, whereas brainstorming is supposed
to make communal idea generation better. Maybe it still does that, but still
can't beat independant idea generation.

~~~
c1sc0
Sometimes brainstorming is more about motivating people and getting them all
on the same boat at the beginning of a project than it is about coming up with
the next brilliant thing.

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hegemonicon
Having tried to implement a certain form of this, I can say that forcing
yourself into a certain mode of thinking, top down, is EXTREMELY mentally
taxing. It's very difficult to keep up the mental focus necessary for an
appreciable amount of time, and I would not be surprised if this actually
impeded mental performance on an individual level because of the effort
involved, though it's possible overall group performance could still increase.

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martian
I used to work at a company where we used this method to tackle especially
complex or politically sensitive issues. I have to say it was really effective
at pull everyone together to have a constructive conversation. I wouldn't
recommend it on a day-to-day basis, but for larger issues or for issues with
several ideas in strong competition, this is fantastic.

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rman666
De Bono's Six Thinking Hats is part of the reason I named my security startup
"BlueHat Security, LLC" (<http://www.bluehatsecurity.com>). Unfortunately, now
it's on hold. So, maybe I didn't see the big picture after all :-)

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steveeq1
"Six Thinking Hats" seems to be on Alan Kaye's list of favorite books:
<http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp>

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hapless
Alan Kay is a legendary computer scientist. He is not a legendary expert in
psychology or organizational behaviour.

Why do I care what business self-help books he likes ?

