According to Chuck Dymer writing for Successful Meetings (2004), Six Thinking Hats is an important and powerful technique used to look at decisions from a number of different points of view. It allows emotion and skepticism to be incorporated into business decisions. Each Thinking Hat represents a different style of thinking. White Hat thinking focuses on the available information to determine what can be learn from it. The Red Hat involves looking at problems using intuition or emotional responses. Black Hat thinking is conservative. It examines the potential downside of a decision. The Black Hat perspective is defensive and cautious. In contrast, Yellow Hat thinking is positive, upbeat and optimistic. It focuses on the best outcomes of a decision or action. Green Hat thinking involves developing creative solutions to a problem. The Blue Hat represents process control and it is the hat worn by people chairing meeting (Dymer, 2004).
Here is an example of the Six Hats thinking technique: A senior management team is considering whether or not their company should introduce a new product. Overall, demand for the company's products is growing, and the marketing department considers this an ideal time to introduce the new product. The sales department is excited about the new product's potential. Manufacturing is concerned about availability of raw materials, training costs, and set up time. Finance is concerned about the cost of re-tooling and inventory carrying costs. The management team decides to use the Six Thinking Hats technique to examine the matter. Looking at the decision with the White Hat, the team analyzes available information including reports prepared by the marketing department and data from consumer surveys and product marketing tests. รก
Using the Red Hat technique, the team members discuss their feelings that the sales projections may be skewed and overly optimistic. They criticize the appea
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