Creativity technique “Your own business coach” or “Six thinking hats 2.0″

What to do when there is no creative team at hand? We are modifying the world-famous Six Thinking Hats creativity technique so that you can come up with new ideas alone.

In the early 1980s, Edward de Bono came up with the Six Thinking Hats creative technique . This is one of the most common and beloved brainstorming techniques in the West. One problem is that you really need six people to perform this technique. What to do when you are alone?

This cool technique can also be done alone – by taking a creative team from the 1000 Ideas deck (if you need specific suggestions) to your company. Instead of office employees, ideas will be thrown at you with psychological cards. How do you like this perspective? If this prospect pleases you rather than upsets you, then read on.

What is the meaning of the exercise

The six hats represent the six ways (six directions) of thinking. In other words: six completely different and complementary points of view. You just need to alternately try on these hats (mindsets) and speak for them.

Before proceeding to the exercise, formulate a question-problem, that is, what you are collecting your cards for brainstorming for. This exercise is very suitable for those situations where “nothing is clear at all”, either in life or in business. The cards here copy real brainstorming with live employees. Everyone has their own opinion and everyone shouts at each other. Arguing and expressing conflicting points of view. And you (the presenter) sit and watch this din and draw your own conclusions, listening to who you like best. You will see, in this layout, the cards will behave like people …

How to do the exercise

Take the “1000 Ideas” deck in your hands , shuffle the cards on the table, and draw six random cards in succession, keeping in mind the six positions that these cards will symbolize. You can make clues on pieces of paper so that you don’t forget which hat is which.

Six positions in which cards are placed:

1. White hat. The hat is boring. The card personifies the image of a person who answers you to the formulated problem strictly on the merits. This hat has a sober mind. She presents only facts and figures. Ascertains. In a word, it shows your current situation.
2. Red hat. Emotion hat. A card that carries emotions, intuitive insights. She cuts the truth-womb, is expressed figuratively, but in essence. With her performance, she, as it were, supplements the dry report of the first card with some strange trick and always hits the mark. Gives advice on what to do.
3. Black hat. Pessimist hat. This card will scare you with the worst things you can jump into if everything goes the way it is now, without any attempts to change anything. Exaggerating, however, do not forget about weighty arguments.
4. Yellow hat. Optimist hat. A card designed to give you hope. The optimist tells you what’s good about your condition, giving you the impetus to positively reframe the situation. This is the image of a person who can charge everyone with his optimism.
5. Green hat. Jester hat. This jester teases us, wakes us up, provokes, that is, “teaches bad things.” Makes you try your hand at the most insane adventures. Suggests a way out – the most unexpected way out. Scoffs. Challenges. Beckons to the land of Madness. Trying to get out of your comfort zone. Kills the mind like a Zen Master. He gives advice that we obviously cannot follow and makes fun of us. And we will take it and do it. Because it is the most powerful and wisest card in the whole spread… Gurdjieff’s card…
6. Blue hat. Organizer hat. The owner of this whole gang. Ataman of robbers, prince, king, chairman of the meeting. He gets up and everyone is silent. He is the oldest and wisest here. He has power. What he says will be the result. Summary. Final word. With one powerful aphorism, this card can sum up everything you have said.

Notice how the six hat cards shown break up visibly into three hilarious couples.

1. First couple. “Nerd and prankster.” They will tell you about your present. What are you up to at the moment.
2. Second couple. “Pessimist and Optimist”. A pessimist will tell you about your future – that the worst can happen. An optimist (using the reframing method) will say that everything is not so scary if you look at it more closely. Or even draw a different picture – how events will develop if everything goes well.
3. Third couple. “King and the Clown”. More precisely, the jester and the king – in order. They both sum up. They make a conclusion. But each in their own way.

How to make hats talk

Important advice. Try to speak freely, do not think over every word. As you look at the next hat card, you should grasp any associations you see on it. The title of the map, picture, text – it doesn’t matter can lead you to words. Remember that all this is a game – no one requires you to reproduce the way of thinking of all these people with documentary accuracy. The trick of the exercise is precisely that you draw new ideas from yourself, from your subpersonalities, with which you need to speak honestly. Therefore, do not be afraid to say too much, to freeze stupidity, but be afraid not to say it. Perhaps it is in this stupidity that the correct answer lies.