Message-Id: <10523.108487@fatcity.com> From: "Eric D. Pierce" Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 15:10:48 -0700 Subject: no friday jokes As part of the continuing series "Tape Haiku & Cultural Enrichment Fridays, on ORACLE-L" ---fwd--- In Six Thinking Hats, De Bono describes six common thinking patterns. He describes how we use one or two of these patterns more than the others and find it difficult to communicate with or understand those who prefer different patterns. He proposes that if we wish to ... converse we need to use the same or a similar "thinking hat" as our colleagues. In short, we need to speak the same language or get on the same wave length. Here is a brief summary of the thinking patterns he refers to. 1. White Hat; this pattern gathers and examines facts. It stresses objectivity, replication and is only concerned with what can be verified. 2. Red Hat: This covers one's feelings, intuitions, and instinctive reactions or value judgements. It almost always denotes how committed one is to the Truth of an event or an idea. While those who prefer wearing a White Hat often consider Red Hat wearers as illogical, and irrational, this thinking pattern is critical when it comes to value judgements and intuitive processes. 3. Yellow Hat; This examines and identifies the positive, favourable, interesting and useful qualities of an idea, theory or situation. ... 4. Black Hat; This represents the critical mode of thinking in which one points out the errors, fallacies, and misconceptions in a reasoning process, situation or behaviour. This is a Hat much favoured in Western Society and is often used in academia. 5. Green Hat: This is what De Bono refers to as Lateral Thinking. This is creative in the sense of generating as many new approaches to a situation or process as possible. It tends to be provocative, non sequential and does not depend on fixed categories, classifications and labels. If one is looking for a new solution or way of thinking, the Green hat is very useful. 6. Blue Hat: The Master Hat decides when the situation calls for another form of thinking, when one should stop collecting facts and start evaluating the implications of the them. This is the hat of the facilitator, the moderator, and the person who wants to choose between several approaches and initiate action. This is also the Hat one uses, when one leaves off thinking about something and decides to act.