Six Thinking Hats®
How to Think Your Way to Success

Thinking performance drives business performance. Most mistakes in business are mistakes in thinking. Decisions are poorly thought through. Risk factors are overlooked. Faulty information is taken as fact. Ideas are killed far too early. Benefits aren’t built into solutions — customers have no idea why they should embrace your new efforts. Changes backfire.

If any of this describes the condition at your company we can help you improve the thinking performance of your employees. The end result for your company:

• Increases in bottom-line profit.

• Increases in top-line growth.

• More time to develop meaningful customer relationships.

• More time to work on what’s important to develop the business.

• A happier and more motivated workforce

The Six Thinking Hats® Process and Tools

When teams engage in six hats thinking they are practicing parallel thinking — everyone is using the same tool at the same time on the same challenge. This speeds up the process saving everyone time. Each person’s unique thinking on the challenge is included which ensures a stronger solution is implemented, supported and is well thought out.

Six Thinking Hats® training will equip your teams with a process and proven tools to participate in productive thinking together meetings and work independently on projects. You will see measurable improvements in: practical solutions developed that can be implemented and supported; written reports, proposals, e-mail messages that are clear, compelling, balanced and complete in thought.

Six Thinking Hats® is Powerful

"Six Hats is a simple, yet powerful tool that can be learned rapidly and used immediately to achieve long-lasting results. Six Hats has helped our product development group to generate ideas quickly, evaluate them efficiently, and implement action plans effectively." - Laura Donahue, Nestle

The Six Thinking Hats® Tool Kit

	Process control. Managing the thinking. Focus tool. Thinking agenda development. Time management plan. Keep egos and argument in check. Action planning for next steps, roles, responsibilities, time.
	Data, information, facts — known and needed. White hat O.P.V. tool — other people’s views. Spectrum of relevance tool. Range of accuracy tool. Plan to get necessary white hat data.
	Creativity. Ideas. Alternatives. Solutions. Possibilities. Top of the head tool idea generating tool. Random entry tool idea generating tool. Concept fan idea generating tool. Time and space for creative thinking.
	Benefits with rationale. The optimistic view. Plus points. Frames of value tool. Levels of feasibility tool. Competitive advantage screen. Sense of potential.
	Risk assessment. Potential problems. Danger. Difficulties. Find errors in logic. Speculate about the future. Note ways something does not fit. Set out to remove difficulties with green hat solutions.
	Hunches. Gut instinct. Intuition. Feelings. Range of feelings tool. Decision making tool. Idea sorting tools. Idea power tools. Level of commitment tool.

Six Thinking Hats® is Powerful

Customer Service Soars at MobiFon-Connex:

• The average speed to answer a customer phone call went from 225 seconds to 40 seconds

• A new point of sales process was introduced which reduced phone activation time from 8 hours to less than 15 minutes

• Customer retention - customer churn was reduced by over 50%

Six Thinking Hats® Training Outcomes

The Six Thinking Hats® method helps teams and individuals:

1. Save time by providing a framework to:

• Participate in productive “thinking together meetings” that are focused on delivering necessary results.

• Clear up confusion on rapidly changing challenges and complex issues.

• Minimize personality conflicts.

• Become better focused and to the point in discussions.

• Separate out: facts from emotions; the positive from the negative; critical thinking from creative thinking.

• Help individuals focus on what is important rather what is irrelevant.

• Put quiet employees on an equal playing field with those who are more talkative or monopolize meetings.

• Sidestep egos which get in the way of performance.

2. Improve performance by providing a framework to:

• Make better decisions based on thorough and clear thinking.

• Be better prepared to implement change.

• Create communication plans that are clear and concise.

• See all sides of a situation to avoid being blindsided.

• Sort through wide ranges of data, quickly, to work with just the necessary information. Avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary detail.

• Solve problems that are high priority rather than problems that are easy to solve and of little consequence.

• Design action plans that are supported by the group and can be implemented.

• Complete documentation of decisions and actions for future reference.

• Think through business challenges more thoroughly.

3. Increase creative and innovative performance by providing a framework to:

• Break the idea killer habit that shuts down the creative process.

• Generate powerful new ideas that are outside of the mainstream.

• Follow a practical process for idea evaluation.

• Consider a broader range of possible solutions and selecting the one that best meets the business need.

• Select opportunities to pursue based on balancing value against risk.

• Develop action plans to minimize risk.

• Sell well thought out ideas to management and clients with more confidence.

• Look for innovative solutions more regularly — “out-think” the competition.

Six Thinking Hats is Powerful

ABB reduced multinational project meetings from 30 days to 2 days.

Six Thinking Hats® Workshop Options

• Two-day customized full course workshop with job application and coaching. Available in-house only. Call 818-507-6055 to discuss.

• One-day short course.

• Half-day seminar to sample the method — perfect for time pressed executives that want an understanding of the tool in order to support team training.

Candidates for Training

HR/OD, project leaders, team leaders, high potential employees, six sigma trained employees, process improvement teams, business unit leaders, engineers, attorneys, R&D, product development, sales, advertising, marketing, IT, finance, customer care and professionals.

Very Important Piece of Information: If you really need to develop a team of highly skilled facilitators this workshop may not be the best fit for you. Our experience tells us many people attend Six Thinking Hats® training because they really want to learn how to use the tools to facilitate meetings. If this describes you, Focus on Facilitation™ training will better meet your need. Click here to learn more. Call 818-507-6055 to discuss in more detail.

Six Thinking Hats® Seminar Pre-reading: Click here to download our free PDF booklet.

de Bono Online Six Thinking Hats® Tutorial

Long term support is available for your training investment to make it easy to introduce the method consistently throughout your organization.

For example: You have a business unit with 300 employees led by 25 managers. The 25 managers attend a two-day custom workshop and plan how to use the tools within their teams. The online tutorial is made available to the remaining 275 employees at a very affordable cost of $69.00 each. Click here to learn more about our Six Thinking Hats® online tutorial.

Six Thinking Hats® 24x7 Software Application Support

Our de Bono Thinking 24x7 software is available to support job application and skill development back on the job. It can also be used to facilitate meetings. Click here to learn about our 24x7 software and how you can purchase it.

Four Ways You Can Learn Six Thinking Hats® Tools and Process

Attend a Six Thinking Hats® Seminar

1. Have us lead a customized Six Thinking Hats® training event at your organization. Call 818-507-6055 for details.

2. Attend one of our public workshops. View our current dates, locations and registration details.

Become a Six Thinking Hats® Certified Trainer

3. Have us lead a Six Thinking Hats® instructor certification training event at your company. Develop a group of your own expert trainers that will train your internal clients. Call 818-507-6055 to discuss details.

4. Attend a public Six Thinking Hats® instructor certification training event. View our current dates, locations and registration details.

Six Thinking Hats® Materials: attendees will always receive the official de Bono Thinking Systems, Inc. materials which include handy job aids for use back on the job. Some clients may choose to supplement their training with our Innovation Instinct™ Personal Assessments.

Our Instructors: de Bono for Business is different. Training is led by highly qualified business experts who understand the fast pace of work and rapid change driving business. Many are successful leaders of their own companies. This is what sets us apart from other training organizations — we live and breathe in the world of business — we understand it. We are results driven.

Book us to present or keynote at your conferences, team meetings and executive retreats.

Call 818-507-6055 to discuss the ways we can add value to your events by stimulating the thinking of your groups.

Six Thinking Hats® is Powerful

"We know health care is changing. We don't have to sell the need for creativity. For us it's the implementation piece; the next step. We see the Six Thinking Hats as a method to go beyond generating ideas ... a way to help teams effectively and efficiently evaluate the merits of the ideas they learned during our "One Team, One Purpose" course." - Jennifer Kirby, Washoe Health System