Over the last few months, business leaders and owners have been faced with tough decisions about the stability and future growth of their businesses. This has greatly impacted the stakeholders of their businesses including employees, customers and suppliers.
The process for making decisions of this nature has to be rigorous and deliberate as ultimately, we will have to live with the outcomes.
One useful tool that I rely on, to improve quality of my decisions and to broaden the thinking behind them is “De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats”. Using the concept of parallel thinking, this technique allows you analyse the issue at hand from six different angles, as illustrated in the diagram below. It’s easy to learn and adopt, fosters fresh thinking and is excellent for team brainstorming sessions. You may want to give it a try at this time when we are all dealing with so much uncertainty and complexity.
We’ll explore De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats in part 2 of this post next week.