Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono

This book was intended for inclusion in my companion blog: Books to Brag About. Unfortunately, after reading the book and digesting the message, I have had to reassign the placement of my review into Books I'm Ashamed to be Seen With. Ouch.

I culled this book from one of those, "Best Business Books of All Times" lists published by BNET. The method has gotten great reviews and has been used by IBM and other luminaries of the public and private sector. The author's career was made following the publication of this book, and he has been able to support himself on consulting and speaking engagements regarding the 6 Hats for the last twenty years.

All of that said, I was excited to read the book and to learn about this analytical tool and thinking guideline that I was ashamed to admit I had never heard of. Hmm. This method is currently being taught in elementary school as the way to think. I am sincerely sceptical regarding the quality of cognition that will be developed through the use of the 6 Hat method.

Basically, different patterns of thinking are developed: organizational; factual; positive; critical; creative; and emotional, and are assigned a color. The individual or the group is then supposed to regulate their thought patterns to follow the designated type of thought allowed during a period of time. To that end, either an agenda is set during a "blue hat" moment (organizational) regarding which thinking hat will follow the other; or, a facilitator will ask members of a group to "put on their yellow hats for a few minutes", etc. etc.

This is ridiculously juvenile. The basic concept, that a human being is capable of controlling his/her thoughts and is not at the mercy of his/her thought processes, is one that I heartily concur with. I am astounded that more people haven't realized that the brain can be forced from an unproductive emotional train of thought and disciplined into following a more rational mindset. However, the synthetic, overly structured nature of setting a thinking style agenda in advance as well as the ridiculous, overly jolly image of the silly hats is ridiculous.

I don't know if the concept of controlling your thought patterns can only be attractive through a simple and visually appealing message or if the author actually had the moment of epiphany through the visualization of six different hats, but I wish that Mr. de Bono had stuck to more scholarly theory and skipped the whole hat metaphor.

Bravo for the underlying message of rationalism - even the emotional thinking pattern serves to recognize and identify emotional subtexts to bring them to the open and hopefully to bring to light the self-serving and ignoble nature of most people's innermost thoughts. However, a trip to the embarrassing book list was earned by being so doggone silly!