Consultant | Author
Everyone is impacted by the Corona Virus / Covid-19 whether you are an employee or have your own business.
I recently shared a blog on how to use Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to solve complex problems.
I’ve been thinking about the challenges presented by the Corona Virus so applied the model to this problem.
Here’s what I came up with.
Hopefully it will help you to think through any opportunities that could emerge from this dreadful pandemic.
Can you remember being both nervous and excited by a new idea? It’s common to have multiple reactions to a new opportunity or problem and for these mixed reactions to stop us in our tracks from taking action. Today I want to talk about a tool that will help you, and your team to separate your thinking from your feeling.
The Six Thinking Hats process helps individuals and teams to organise and classify information about a problem so that its complexity can be better understood. It also enables the team to have a conversation where everyone thinks in the same way – at the same time. As a result, everyone considers the problem from many different points of view. This is very important for a complex problem.
It was developed by Edward De Bono more than twenty years ago, and is valuable as it helps everyone to contribute, and for a problem or opportunity to be analysed from numerous perspectives. The value of the concept is in separating information, emotions and hopes so that thought processes and discussions can be more easily facilitated. You can probably remember a meeting which got out of hand because there were different aspects discussed at once and the conversation may have become adversarial. For example, one person may have been discussing the possibilities inherent in the idea while someone else felt the need to be the devil’s advocate so kept identifying problems with the idea. The discussions may have become overwhelming, confrontational and/or ‘stuck’ as a result.
The Six Thinking Hats process supports use of the brain’s different modes of thinking. Everybody’s information, perspective and feelings are separated into one of six categories for discussion. In each of these directions our brain works to make us conscious of issues being considered, such as our gut instinct, pessimistic judgement or neutral facts. As Edward de Bono himself says,
The main difficulty of thinking is confusion. We try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic, hope, and creativity all crowd in on us.
The problem or opportunity is considered in six ways, with each pass associated with a hat of certain colour.
Blue Hat thinking is typically considered first. In this phase the current situation/problem or opportunity is described along with the goal for the activity.
The next hat you choose and the type of thinking you engage in depends on the objective of the session. I’ll give you a few choices in a moment based on your objectives. But first let’s look at the White Hat.
When a team puts on their White Hat, they are presenting all the facts, figures and statistics related to the problem. Just the data is discussed here: no opinions allowed. This information should be neutral and objective, and an outcome could be that more objective data is needed.
When we put on our Red Hat the team is encouraged to declare how they feel about the idea or problem. These feelings will include their ‘gut instinct’, intuition, offering all the emotional stuff, ‘warts and all’. For example, they may say ‘I feel nervous’ or ‘I feel angry’.
Black Hat requires the team to think cautiously as they explore the risks associated with the problem or opportunity. Later, once the risks are identified, a further conversation on the steps to mitigate the risks is important.
Yellow Hat is when everyone thinks about the idea from a positive perspective only. For example, ‘What is great about this idea?’ This will help to identify the opportunities and possible benefits.
Green Hat requires the team to do their best creative or out-of-the-box thinking. Stretch thinking is applied here to imagine new futures and possibilities. Consider, ‘What could be a wonderful outcome here?
A summary of the objectives of each ‘Hat’ phase is provided below.
Tips on getting started
The different ways to manage a six thinking hat session are described in the book I co-authored with Barbara Wilson called Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools
Barbara and I discuss Six Thinking Hats and the Creative Problem Solving process on our April podcast.
In my most recent post I discussed how leaders can create an environment where their team feels safe to engage in creative thinking.
Today I want to describe processes you can use to encourage reflection and learning. Build these processes into your usual way of working and you will foster a work environment where new ideas and perspectives are welcome and failure is recognised as an essential part of the learning process.
What is a process?
Our Google dictionary defines a process as,
a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.
A dry but useful starting point for a discourse on processes.
So why do we need processes?
In organisations we create repeatable processes so we can work more efficiently. Work is often grouped by function with different teams managing different parts of the process within that function. Because of interdependencies, it’s important to have processes which are efficient, transparent, encourage collaboration and have clear points of accountability.
If you lead a team, you’ll develop a way to plan and track work or you may be required to use systems and processes already created in your organisation. Processes influence the way that work is done and influence peoples inclination to engage in creative thinking. For example, creative thinking needs time and sometimes permission.
Interactions
Work processes influence if and when employees interact with each other, with prompts for creativity often coming from interactions within the group and not just from a creatively inclined individual (Hargadon and Bechky,2006). Research reveals that interactions are more effective when all group members are focussed on the same task (Metiu & Rothbard, 2013). When your team gathers together, you have the opportunity to use a learning rich process. For example, end of project reviews or After-Action Reviews (AAR) as they are called in the military, are great processes for encouraging reflection, learning and thinking differently. This is how they work.
At the end of a project or mission, get everyone in the room (preferably), or online and ask them to think about these questions.
Give everyone the opportunity to provide their answers, in the same time allocation and then document responses on a whiteboard. If someone supports comments made already, tick the item listed on the whiteboard and move the discussion on.
If a project has gone badly, some may be motivated to not discuss what happened openly and to move on to the next project. This happens too often in organisations and represents a lost opportunity which reinforces a low risk culture. Experimentation and failure is a normal part of work and if we build these types of reviews into our processes then it becomes normal to engage in reflection with failure accepted as normal part of the learning process.
When it comes to the question around how we could do things differently, you have the opportunity to invite everyone to thing expansively and creatively. There are a range of questions you could ask or tools that you could use here, but of most importance is you giving the team permission.
Takeaways
Create or adapt the processes in your team to provide time for reflection and the capturing of learning.
At the end of a project: Ask three questions: What went well? What didn’t go as well? What should we do differently next time? Capture this information, store it somewhere accessible for all and refer to it when you’re undertaking a similar project or as a point of reference in your problem solving and decision-making processes.
Review the types of interactions your team members have with each other – and with other teams remembering that constant interaction with diverse others supports creativity.
References
Metiu, A., & Rothbard, N. P. 2013. Task bubbles, artifacts, shared emotion, and mutual focus of attention: A comparative study of the microprocesses of group engagement. Organization Science, 24(2): 455-475.
Wilson, B.A. & Stanley, T. 2018. Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools by Barbara Wilson and Tracy Stanley
Photo image from @campaign_creators on @unsplash
Are you aware of how Group-think may be stifling your efforts to encourage creative thinking?
Barbara Wilson explains what Group-think is and how you can counter it in our latest podcast. you can listen to it here.
And she’s also written a blog about the influence of Group-think in organisations here.
When you think about why some organisations are more creative than others, you often identify culture as the driver. But what is culture and how does it impact on an individuals’ willingness to do things differently?
Culture is a big and complex concept. It covers habits, behaviours, processes, attitudes, artefacts, among others and is often described in a nutshell ‘as the way that things are done around here.’ Organizational culture can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including leadership behaviours, communication styles and decision-making processes. While it can be hard to describe, culture is something you can often feel after a short time within an environment.
It’s hard to be creative at work if the culture does not support thinking differently and taking risks. In this blog, I’m going to discuss a few things managers can do to build a create a team environment, for new ideas to flourish. I’ll be touching on the importance of autonomy, time for play and experimentation and expectations. My thoughts are based on my experience inside organisations and from my PhD research.
Autonomy
Giving your team members freedom and autonomy in how they undertake their work is very important for creativity. Resist the urge to meddle or micromanage their activities and give praise and feedback to encourage further exploration of new ideas.
Time
Having enough time to explore a problem and to consider alternatives, supports for discovery of new approaches. If people don’t have discretionary time, they will resort to doing things the way they’ve always been done. People need time to experiment and play with ideas.
Time is a curious thing. If you have no time to think broadly and to experiment, you will do an activity as you always have. However, if you have too much time you may lack focus. My PhD research confirmed the findings of others that there is a ‘sweet spot’ with regard to the right amount of time to support creativity.
Expectations
If you’re a manager, your team will quickly pick up on your interest in and desire for new ideas. Giving permission to challenge assumptions, creating openness to new ideas, and giving freedom to experiment and learn all build a creative culture, as does an acceptance that failure is a component part of the exploratory process.
As a leader you should model creative behaviours such as being curious and taking time to consider different ways of doing things. Allowing times for discussion of new ideas and reflection on past activities in team meeting will reinforce a learning culture. I’ll talk more about processes you can use to support a culture of innovation in a future article.
References
Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools by Barbara Wilson and Tracy Stanley 2018
Work environments, creative behaviours and employee engagement (Doctoral dissertation, Queensland University of Technology).
Are you interested in learning more about encouraging creativity in the workplace and at home?
Barbara and I have started recording our monthly chat about creativity, a topic that we’re both passionate about. We are the co-authors of the book Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools.
A link to our first conversation touching on mindsets, motivations and culture is provided below.