Website Evaluation Video -- Interrogatives

Web Site Evaluation

Argument compared to Report Map Graphic

Argument compared to Report

What do you see -- Your observation and argument for your response

Points of View - Six Thinking Hats

Six Thinking Hats

Looking at a Decision From All Points of View

Look at decisions from many angles,
with James Manktelow & Amy Carlson.

'Six Thinking Hats' is an important and powerful technique. It is used to look at decisions from a number of important perspectives. This forces you to move outside your habitual thinking style, and helps you to get a more rounded view of a situation.

This tool was created by Edward de Bono in his book '6 Thinking Hats'.

Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint. This is part of the reason that they are successful. Often, though, they may fail to look at a problem from an emotional, intuitive, creative or negative viewpoint. This can mean that they underestimate resistance to plans, fail to make creative leaps and do not make essential contingency plans.

Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive, and more emotional people may fail to look at decisions calmly and rationally.

If you look at a problem with the 'Six Thinking Hats' technique, then you will solve it using all approaches. Your decisions and plans will mix ambition, skill in execution, public sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning.

How to Use the Tool

You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of blocking the confrontations that happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem.

Each 'Thinking Hat' is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

• White Hat:
  With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.
  This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.
• Red Hat:
  'Wearing' the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.
• Black Hat:
  Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them.
  Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans 'tougher' and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance. This leaves them under-prepared for difficulties.
• Yellow Hat:
  The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.
• Green Hat:
  The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here.
• Blue Hat:
  The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, etc.

A variant of this technique is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (e.g. doctors, architects, sales directors, etc.) or different customers.

Example

The directors of a property company are looking at whether they should construct a new office building. The economy is doing well, and the amount of vacant office space is reducing sharply. As part of their decision they decide to use the 6 Thinking Hats technique during a planning meeting.

Looking at the problem with the White Hat, they analyze the data they have. They examine the trend in vacant office space, which shows a sharp reduction. They anticipate that by the time the office block would be completed, that there will be a severe shortage of office space. Current government projections show steady economic growth for at least the construction period.

With Red Hat thinking, some of the directors think the proposed building looks quite ugly. While it would be highly cost-effective, they worry that people would not like to work in it.

When they think with the Black Hat, they worry that government projections may be wrong. The economy may be about to enter a 'cyclical downturn', in which case the office building may be empty for a long time. If the building is not attractive, then companies will choose to work in another better-looking building at the same rent.

With the Yellow Hat, however, if the economy holds up and their projections are correct, the company stands to make a great deal of money. If they are lucky, maybe they could sell the building before the next downturn, or rent to tenants on long-term leases that will last through any recession.

With Green Hat thinking they consider whether they should change the design to make the building more pleasant. Perhaps they could build prestige offices that people would want to rent in any economic climate. Alternatively, maybe they should invest the money in the short term to buy up property at a low cost when a recession comes.

The Blue Hat has been used by the meeting's Chair to move among the different thinking styles. He or she may have needed to keep other members of the team from switching styles, or from criticizing other peoples' points.

It is well worth reading Edward de Bono's book 6 Thinking Hats for more information on this technique.

Key Points

Six Thinking Hats is a good technique for looking at the effects of a decision from a number of different points of view.

It allows necessary emotion and skepticism to be brought into what would otherwise be purely rational decisions. It opens up the opportunity for creativity within Decision Making. The technique also helps, for example, persistently pessimistic people to be positive and creative.

Plans developed using the '6 Thinking Hats' technique will be sounder and more resilient than would otherwise be the case. It may also help you to avoid public relations mistakes, and spot good reasons not to follow a course of action before you have committed to it.

TEXTBOOK MARKING - csu.edu

from http://www.csupomona.edu/~crsp/handouts/marking_textbook.html MARKING YOUR TEXTBOOK Reading is an active process. Mark your text, take notes, and write notes in the margins. Marking or annotating a text is your response to what you are reading, and it might prove valuable to you later as you begin to organize and plan your essay. Marking a text is not the same thing as highlighting or underlining words: marking a text is your way of discovering what you find important, what you want to explore, and/or what puzzles you about a text. Think of this process as having a dialogue with a text. Although the text cannot speak verbally, the written words communicate – sometimes the meaning is clear, while other times it is not. Your response, talking back to a text, can take place in your mind and also on the pages of text. As you underline, make notes in the margins, and raise questions, you are keeping a written record of your dialogue with the text. If you don’t record your reactions, the wonderful, insightful ideas or important questions you have while reading may be lost to you. If you annotate a text, you can return to it later to rethink what you consider important. There is no one perfect way to annotate a text. Indeed, people will mark a text in different ways. Because each person creates her or his own reading, each person will find different points interesting, complex, or worth noting. Review the following annotated texts. Two students marked up this selection from Bell Hooks’ essay “keeping close to home: class and education.” Note the similarities and the differences – how might a reader use these annotations as a way to come back to the text for subsequent readings? Before reading the following passage, turn to Hooks’ text. Read the headnote and skim the essay in order to place the passage in context as you review the annotations. Compare the two annotated texts. What does each annotator notice about the text? Are there patterns that emerge from the marking? Are there similarities between the two examples? Differences? What focus does each annotator seem to have? What are some issues each of these writers might explore in an essay about Hooks’ text? Notice that the annotations in each example are marked with specific meaning. Annotating a text is a technique to help you become a more thoughtful reader. There is a danger, however, of marking or highlighting too much. Many students highlight nearly an entire page of a text; this does not enable the writer to come back to what was important to her or him, it simply gives the student a yellow (or blue, or… ) page. Think of marking up your text as the beginning of your dialogue with a text, which will lead you to an extended writing project. In this dialogue, you will be doing most of the work because as you ask questions, bring up inconsistencies, or try to explore ideas more deeply, you have to rely on the text and your reasoning to respond to your inquiry. If you read a text more than once, and some of these texts will require more than one reading, note the ways in which your annotations change. What seemed so puzzling the first time around, may make more sense with subsequent readings, or you may discover why a particular section seemed so important to you. Clearing up one point may lead to another question or to a conclusion. Class or small group discussions may give you insights or raise more questions or spark an interest in something you had not noticed before. This is an exciting process. Marking up your text is an integral part of the process. Thinking about and reviewing your annotations can be crucial as you move on to more extended and sustained writing. Comfort, Carol. “Breaking Boundaries,” New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000.