Summary of Edward deBono’s Six Thinking Hats
'Six Thinking Hats' is a powerful technique that helps you look at important decisions from a number of different
perspectives. It helps you make better decisions by pushing you to move outside your habitual ways of thinking.
As such, it helps you understand the full complexity of the decision, and spot issues and opportunities to which
you might otherwise be blind.
Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint. This is part of the reason that they are
successful. Often, though, they may fail to look at a problem from an emotional, intuitive, creative or negative
viewpoint. This can mean that they underestimate resistance to change, fail to make creative leaps, and do not
make essential contingency plans.
Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive, and people used to a very logical approach to problem
solving may fail to engage their creativity or listen to their intuition.
If you look at a problem with the 'Six Thinking Hats' technique, then you will solve it using all approaches. Your
decisions and plans will mix ambition, skill in execution, sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning.
You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of defusing the
disagreements that can happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem.
A variant of this technique is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (e.g. doctors,
architects, sales directors) or different customers.
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Each hat represents a perspective or way of thinking
Helps overcome random “positioning”
Helps to ensure that a variety of thinking styles is used to think about and solve problems
White Hat
Red Hat
Yellow Hat
Data, facts, information known or needed.
 White hat is neutral
White hat ignores arguments and
proposals
Examine the facts, figures and information
already known
 Identify what information not known, and
how to get it
White-Hat Thinking
 What information do we have here?
 What information is missing?
 What information would we like to have?
 How are we going to get the information?
Feelings, hunches, gut instinct, and
intuition.
 Red is for feelings, hunches and intuition
 Permits people to put forward their feelings
without the need for apology, explanation
or attempt to justify them
 Intuition may be a composite judgment
based on experience
 Can be valuable even if the reasons
behind it cannot be spelled out consciously
Red-Hat Thinking
 Putting on my red hat, this is what I think
about the project ...
 What is my gut feeling about whether this
can be done?
 Do I like the way this is being done?
 What does my intuition tell me about this
problem?
Values and benefits. Why something may
work.
 The yellow hat is for optimism and the
logical positive view of things
 Looks for feasibility and how something
can be done
 Looks for benefits, but they must be
logically based
Yellow-Hat Thinking
 How might we make this work?
 What are the benefits from making it work?
 What else could be good about this?
Black Hat
Green Hat
Blue Hat
Difficulties, potential problems. Why
something may not work.
 The black hat is the logical negative
 Voice of caution & critical judgment
 Most used hat, and a valuable hat since
mistakes may be disastrous
 Very easy to overuse as it is easy to kill
creative ideas with early negativity
Black-Hat Thinking
 Do regulations permit this?
 Do we have the production capacity to
complete the task?
 When we tried this before did something go
wrong?
 Do the people involved have the necessary
experience?
Creativity: possibilities, alternatives,
solutions, new ideas.
 The green hat is for creative thinking, new
ideas and additional alternatives
 Green hat makes time and space for
creative effort
 Must engage in lateral thinking and other
creative techniques
Green-Hat Thinking
 We need some new ideas here
 Are there any additional alternatives?
 Could we do this in a different way?
 Could there be another explanation?
Manage the thinking process, focus, next
steps, action plans
 The blue hat is the thinking overview or
process control hat
 Usually used by the chairperson of the
meeting
 It sets the agenda for thinking
 Suggests the next step for thinking
 Asks for summaries, conclusions and
decisions
Blue-Hat Thinking
 We have spent far too much time looking for
someone to blame
 Could we have a summary of your views?
 I think we should take a look at the priorities
 I suggest we try some green hat thinking to
get some new ideas