Six Thinking Hats

Peter Strathy is Vice-President Planning, Doctors’ Hospital, Toronto.

The author is well qualified to write on the topic of conceptual thinking. De Bono has published many books designed to improve the development of skill in thinking. In addition, his concepts and techniques appear in educational tools and have been the subject of three multi-program television series. He originated the concept of “lateral thinking,” widely used to promote creative ideas in many fields, and he gives frequent seminars to major corporations throughout the world.

De Bono assents that it is not enough to train minds capable only of logic and critical evaluation. Constructive, creative, generative, and comprehensive forms of thinking ability are also important. The “Six Thinking Hats” concept proposes a system and structure designed to render the process of thinking clear, simple, and effective. The main difficulty of thinking is confusion — trying to do too much at once. The “Six Hats” technique permits thinking processes to be separated into six distinct types of thinking. For example, emotion is separated from logic and creative thinking from information and fact-finding. Thus, it becomes possible to take one step at a time, to deal with each component of thinking about a problem in an ordered fashion. For example, the Red Hat brings forward and legitimizes the emotions and feelings attached to a thought process; putting on the Black Hat brings critical judgement and evaluation to bear. Thinking becomes a total process in which all components of a problem or situation are examined. In the end, decision-making is enhanced.

The concept and techniques proposed by De Bono are easy to understand and are presented with great clarity. Readers will gain a deeper appreciation of the thinking process and will also be able to extract many simple techniques to apply toward improving their own thinking processes. This book will be of particular interest to managers and decision-makers, who may wish to apply the proposed techniques to group problem-solving activities in their professional environments. The book is recommended for public library collections as well as corporate and academic libraries.