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- P e r s o n a l _ C r e a t i v i t y -

Use the full potential of your thinking capabilities and learn to be creative with the 'Six Thinking Hats' technique.

Stuck in a mental rut? Don't know how to dig any direction but down? Whether you can't decide on how to implement procedures, which career move is wisest, or if you should buy a low-maintenance goldfish or an attention-consuming puppy, everyone experiences "thinking log jams" at one time or another.

Congestion on the brain's highway is so common that Lynda Curtin has made a career out of directing the traffic, so to speak. Curtin calls herself "The Opportunity Thinker" and is a creativity consultant in Glendale, CA, who teaches people how to use the full potential of their thinking power. One of the courses she teaches, the "Six Thinking Hats," initially seems quirky and even childish to some, but most skeptics become believers after giving the method a whirl. Companies such as Seattle-based Boeing's Rocketdyne Division, Hewlett-Packard Co. in Palo Alto, CA, and Motorola Inc. in Schaumburg, IL, are among those that have asked for Curtin's help and now use the Six Hats technique.

Six Hats is a thinking "tool kit" developed by Edward de Bono, a man many regard as the authority in teaching thinking as a skill. De Bono has been on the faculty at Oxford Univ., London, Cambridge Univ., Cambridge, MA, and Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, and now lives on an island near Venice, Italy, where he teaches thinking skills. Lynda Curtin became one of his students at a one-day seminar in the mid 1980s.

"That day, I was struck by the idea that you could take charge of your thinking energy to think your way to success," Curtin said. "My thinking journey had begun. I was hooked."

What is it, exactly? Ever feel as if you're wearing too many hats? You may have a problem to solve, or an issue to explore, but you're being pulled in several directions so that you can't focus. Yet you crave creativity. You wish the solution would miraculously transfer through osmosis after a deep sleep.

You awake to nothing. Yes, nothingness, along with anxiety and frustration, has consumed you. But it doesn't have to be this way. To be creative, you don't have to be artsy or peculiar. What you need is logic, according to Curtin. This is where Six Hats step in Six different-colored hats are metaphors for the six different ingredients in thinking. It's as follows:

• Information, facts
  
• Feelings, intuition
  
• Caution, concerns
  
• Benefits, value
  
• Creativity, ideas
  
• Managing the thinking, process control
  

At one particular moment, you may feel overwhelmed because all six hats are stacked on your head at once. Matters get worse when you're working in a group that is simultaneously throwing forth several unrelated ideas. Although everyone is working toward a solution in the company's best interest, tension and frustration mount as people get stuck on their perspectives and don't hear anyone else's. However, the Six Hats method, whether used individually or in a group, explores one thinking ingredient at a time, so that you can logically sort through information, feelings, caution, benefits, ideas, and process control. It's a dissection tool to help you reach a comprehensive solution.

Sound complicated? It's actually so simple that toddlers can use it. Craig Elkins, manager of the Applied Thinking and Creativity Team at Boeing, Seattle, not only teaches Six Hats to Boeing employees, but also taught the method to his daughter, Chelsea, when she was only four years old. Now an eight-year-old, Chelsea frequently uses Six Hats to solve dilemmas, for instance, whether to eat candy before dinner. Rather than pitching a temper tantrum, Chelsea will sift through all aspects of the problem to arrive at a sensible solution. White Hat--"There's a grape lollipop in my backpack." Blue Hat--"Should I have candy before dinner? I have to decide." Red Hat--"I'm feeling like I'd love some candy." Yellow Hat--"It tastes good." Black Hat--"Candy could spoil my dinner and give me cavities." Green Hat--"I could eat it after dinner."

After sorting all sides of the issue, Chelsea threw up her arms and said, "Never mind, no candy now!"

Chelsea is among 1,500 people, many of them top- level executives, who have been trained by Elkins on Six Hats. All employees in Boeing's commercial airplanes group, space group, aircraft and missile group, and shared-services group can ask for Elkins' help.

"We're very careful with implementation of the Six Hats, in that we work with teams that are ready to use it," Elkins said, explaining that before providing full-fledged training, he introduces the method and allows the group to decide if they want to learn it. "Most of the time, they want to do it. But we don't push it on anybody."

Only one person rejected Six Hats after training, said Elkins. These are good odds, but the close-mindedness of individuals is the most common obstacle to teaching the tool successfully.

"If the people who are involved in the Six Hats don't want to play, there's nothing you can do to get them to play," said Van Brollini, test engineering manager, National Semiconductor Corp., Tucson, AZ. "Sometimes you fire them. I've had to do that a couple of times." However, this was after Brollini asked those individuals for an alternative thinking-tool. If someone scoffs at Six Hats, Brollini always asks them for another solution and will implement their suggestion.

Here are implementation tips to help increase acceptance and successful use of Six Hats:

• Qualified facilitator--The person who is running a Six-Hats meeting should be adequately trained by a certified trainer and even attain certification himself. Facilitators should also have certain personality traits, such as being open-minded, observant, and unbiased. They need to be able to ask probing questions to get precise interpretation of ideas. A good ear is needed, as facilitators must listen to everyone and encourage those who seem withdrawn from the discussion.
  
  
• Adequate training--Not only must the facilitator be fully trained, but so must the trainees. In a world where time is money, it's tempting to teach briskly. Elkins recommends one-day training for teams and two-day training for facilitators.
  
  
• Order of the hats--Sequence of the hats can make or break the tool. Although some people choose an order and stick with it for all situations, you often need to rework the order according to your goals. For example, one day you simply might want only ideas, so you use the green hat to brainstorm. The following week, after the ideas have sim- mered, you can evaluate them with the yellow hat / black hat sequence to explore the value and difficulties of the ideas.
  
  
• Partnerships--It's not realistic to rely on one person to train an entire corporation, nor is it
  to build an organization solely dedicated to teaching the method. Thus, consider building a partnership model, like Elkins did. His two-tier partnership has a couple of certified instructors on one level, and several facilitators who can lead meetings, but not train, on another level.
  

If you carefully implement Six Hats and people buy into it, the results can be fabulous. Teresa Omar, now a quality manager at Acutek Adhesive Specialties, Inglewood, CA, has avidly promoted Six Hats and has rave reviews: Meeting times were reduced from 1.5 hr. to 20 min. This triggered motivation in employees, as they felt better not wasting time in unproductive meetings. Implementation of ideas became easier, because everyone helped developed the concepts. And finally, people had fun using Six Hats.

At ABB Corp. Research Oy, Vaasa, Finland, interaction of different cultures creates a communication challenge. The researcher of electricity distribution uses the hats during international project meetings. The facilitator can say "green hat," and everyone knows what that means. Time isn't wasted just trying to figure out the question. "The Six Thinking Hats is useful for leveling the cultural playing field in a multinational company like ABB," said Alex D'Anci, creativity trainer and facilitator. "We don't need to worry so much about how to interact with different cultures."

Whether you're communicating with various cultures, teaming up with co-workers, or pondering a personal problem, Six Hats can ease traffic jams caused by bumper-to-bumper thoughts. It provides the missing link to creativity--logic.