Strategy Survival Guide

For example, Sub-problem: My colleagues will think it’s a stupid idea
This is a problem because without their support I’ll never get the resources I need to develop and implement
the idea. I wish I could show them how this would work. If I built a model, or tried it out on our office team, or
found a case study, then I could demonstrate the benefits to them. But I do not have time to do this.
You’ve hit another hurdle, so it’s through the process again. I wish I could find the time to run a
demonstration of my idea. If I could delegate some more of my work, change my working hours to devote
half a day a week to this, agree with my manager that the report on ABC can wait for a month . . .And so on.
Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats ®
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats ® technique can help to organise thinking and make it more effective
and more powerful. The approach is widely used by multi-national organisations, such as Siemens, IBM and
Shell.
The hats represent alternative perspectives from which to view an issue. By wearing one hat at a time, the
energy of the team can be focused in a particular direction allowing opinions and ideas to be expressed
more freely, and unnecessary conflict to be avoided.
The benefits of using the Six Hats include:
• accessing the intelligence and knowledge of all the group
• limiting opportunities for argument and counter argument
• saving time through parallel thinking
• cutting down on ego and power displays
• giving each aspect of the issue time and space to be discussed.
The six hats are each given a different colour:
• The white hat is neutral and focuses exclusively and directly on the facts
• The red hat allows for emotions and intuition
• The black hat advises caution, pointing out the risks, threats and obstacles
• The yellow hat sets out to find the benefits and how an idea might be put into practice
• The green hat is used to put forward new ideas, building upon existing proposals
• The blue hat defines the problem and organises the thinking.
Lessons from trying to be creative
1. It can take time. After the excitement of a creativity session, the plunge back into day-to-day working
can be depressing. The wonderful ideas seem to have been shelved, the camaraderie and
motivation seems to have disappeared. We found this was all normal. Synectics describes the Path
of Innovation like this:
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
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