Enhancing Decision-Making with The 6 Thinking Hats
About a year ago, Damien found Edward de Bono’s work on The 6 Thinking Hats for decision-making strategy. We implemented our own process within the business and have found it very useful when making big decisions (even for little decisions, we use parts of it, like just the Red Hat to make a quick decision with no discussion).
While reading Thinking Fast and Slow, I came across a concept that sparked a conversation about the possibility of adding two or three more hats to our process—excessive optimism, excessive caution, and the outside view.
Kahneman found that “an organization that could eliminate both excessive optimism and excessive loss aversion should do so with a combination of the outside view with a risk policy.”
The excessive optimism view works with the planning fallacy and excessive caution with loss aversion. While The 6 Thinking Hats uses the Black Hat for the downsides and the Yellow Hat for the upsides, we both felt that neither truly encapsulates the “excessive” side of either that should be considered with big decisions.
Perceptions and Reality
The other common thread I keep coming across is the idea that each of our perceptions of the world is vastly different. I wasn’t feeling well this morning and asked Damien to “hug me and make me feel better.” His response was “50%”. I broke that down to:
- You’ll hug me, but I won’t feel better; or
- I’ll feel better, but you won’t hug me; or
- You’ll hug me, and I’ll feel 50% better.
His take was that I would only receive 50% of my request—he would only hug me. This is just one small example of the things in which we have been seeing as examples of how we each perceive the world around us differently.
My overall take with “our perception is our reality” is that we should treat each other with grace, patience, and understanding because how we see/experience something is likely not how someone else does.
Ponder This
- How do you incorporate different perspectives and approaches into your decision-making process?
- Have you ever experienced a situation where differing perceptions led to a misunderstanding?
- What strategies do you use to ensure clear communication and mutual understanding?
Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!
Books
- Thinking Fast and Slow
- Influence
- The Tipping Point
More on The 6 Thinking Hats
Enhance your decision-making with the Six Thinking Hats framework. Improve your business outcomes.
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