6 Creative Thinking Hats for Ideas & Solving Problems by Richard Okiasi

6 Creative Thinking Hats for Processing Ideas & Solving Problems” 

By; Richard Okiasi


I just got off the phone with a friend; we have not talked to each other for a long time, so we had a lot to talk about, business, future plans, current project, women, marriage etc.

The highlight of our conversation was our undergraduate days, we had a lot to reminisce and laugh about. During the course of our conversation, he brought to my knowledge something I taught him back in school. It was the “6 hats” for creative thinking that I learnt in a leadership workshop from one coach Obafemi.

You see, my friend was a leader in the same organization with me back in school but he was having serious issues processing his thoughts/ideas or deciding how to approach his plans.

Things were getting out of hand as my friend was taking lots of error and was beginning to look incompetent. He was coming up with half processed ideas to meetings and when people probed further with critical questions; his wonderful ideas came crumbling because he didn’t think through the idea from all sides.

My friend was one of those “positive thinkers” who didn’t know that positive thinking also involves factoring all the negatives possible outcomes and finding a way to combat them before they ever happen. He needed a clear part to brain storm and process ideas with his team members but he didn’t have the required knowledge.

I had to savage the situation by introducing him to the technique I learnt. When I was new into leadership, I had same issues as my friend, I didn’t factor in all the possibilities and impossibilities until I attended a workshop where coach Obafemi drilled this into the heads of participants including me.

The technique was a simple step by step approach that can be used for any kind of creative thinking whether you were processing a new idea, trying to think through options to make a decision or solve an already existing problem. It focused on 6 imaginary hats that you must wear anytime you want to approach any form of decision making or problem solving. It provided a clear part for you, without any bias.

Like I said; these hats are imaginary; they are actually thought processes/strategies that you can adopt to ensure your creative solutions or ideas are not one sided.  It helps you move form a mere positive thinker to the point of a creative thinker because your thought pattern won’t only revolve around your options and why it must work. The process takes you through your options and why it may not work, so that you could have steps to overcome the obstacles when they surface.

I don’t know who came up with the 6 hats but I know I heard it first from Mr.Obafemi. Creative thinkers use the hats in this format:

White Hat

This is the hat you wear to find out specific known or needed information. When you wear this hat, you revalidate the information you have at hand, it is just like you going through the details you have and checking through them for a second time to be sure they are same and authentic. In summary, when you wear this hat, you seek for “the facts”, just the facts.

Yellow Hat

You put up all your optimism and hopes when wearing the yellow hat; you explore all the positives of your plans/ideas and probe further for values that will be attached or gained from your ideas.

Green Hat

Focus on creativity, possibilities and alternatives that can be swirled around the idea. What new thing can be added to the current idea, what can be adjusted?  You explore new concepts and perspectives; you rearrange what you already have at hand so you can get the best out of it.

Red Hat

Your feelings, hunches and intuitions have their place in your possible decision. What do you feel and why do you feel that way?

In what areas are you confident?

What are your fears?

Do you feel it’s worth all the energy you are putting?

What are your likes & dislikes?

The idea you are about to go in on, do you love or hate it? Etc.

Are you feeling confident or timid?

These questions help you probe yourself and your feelings e.g if you wanted to embark on a project and you were not feeling confident. Your feeling at that moment is fear, timidity etc. the next thing you do is to ask why you are feeling that way, is it because;

You’ve not done it before?

You saw someone who attempted it and failed?

You don’t have the resources? Etc. factoring in your feelings and why you feel the way you feel, will ultimately reveal some areas you need to work on. From my example lets say you were not feeling confident because you don’t have resources to carry out the project, it then means you will have to work out areas where you can raise the resources for the project. With this, you have succeeded in eliminating one of the major problems that would have affected the success of your work.

Black Hat

When you wear your black hat, you act like the devil’s advocate. You think about all the possible reasons why something may not work. You spot the differences, dangers, uncertainties and the things that might go wrong.

Your creative thinking cannot be complete without this hat. It basically helps you close up loop holes that exist or would have been missed out in the euphoria of your excitements about your idea.

When you can go through this, it will also help you decide if you should go on with your ideas or not. If you can’t do this, get someone to help you think of all the reasons why your idea will not work (please note that this is not negative vibe or energy). If you can’t do this, you may have to deal with a lot of big obstacles along the way that you never planned or thought of.

This is the part that most positive thinkers miss, but it’s the part that makes real creative thinkers because you will know all the impossibilities and see the ones that you can eliminate/combat. If the obstacles remaining after that are more than you can carry, you know then and there that the idea is not for you or it may have come too early or you would need a partner to execute it.

Blue Hat

The final creative thinking process is to harmonize the five hats. When you do this, you manage all the thinking processes from hat 1- hat 5.

Blue hat is your control mechanism to ensure that the thinking hats are not sitting out of proportion. To ensure that red hat is not ruling over your decision process as against black hat (that would show you the impossibilities and challenges).

Here you have it (The 6 creative thinking hats). Like I said, these hats are imaginary hats; what matters are the steps involved with each hats. Pass your thoughts through the first five processes and balance them with the last step to get the very best out of your ideas and problem solving.

PS:  As at the time I took it upon myself to teach my friend, I was already using it but I still read it off a book, now, I apply it without looking at a book to see if I have worn all hats (gone through all the stages).  I wear the hats unconsciously and it has produced the best results for me, little wonder why I had forgotten about them consciously until my friend called it to my attention.