Six Thinking Hats - By p r Ambedkar

8/14/2019 Six Thinking Hats - By p r Ambedkar

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Education = Knowledge + Intelligence + ThinkingMahanayak Kanshiramji School of Thinking is an organized voluntary activity.

Definition: Six Thinking Hats or Parallel Thinking simply means laying down ideas along side each other.There is no clash, no dispute, no initial true / false judgement. There is instead a genuine exploration of

the subject from which conclusions and decisions may then be derived through a “design” process.

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Six Thinking Hats (Looking at a Decision from All Points of View)

Introduction

'Six Thinking Hats' is a powerful technique that helps you look at important

decisions from a number of different perspectives. It helps you make better decisions byforcing you to move outside your habitual ways of thinking. As such, it helps you understand

the full complexity of the decision, and spot issues and opportunities to which you mightotherwise be blind. This tool was created by Edward de Bono in his book 'Six 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 underestimateresistance 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, sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning. How to Use the Tool: You can use the Six Thinking Hats technique 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 direction of thinking. These are explained in brief below:

• White Hat (Neutral and Objective Information 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 (Intuition/Emotions about Ideas without apology/explanation /justification) '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 fullyknow your reasoning.

• Black Hat (Sombre/Serious, Cautious/Careful, Pointing out difficulties, danger, weakness) Using black hat thinking, you look at all the bad points of the decision. You 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 (Optimistic, Benefits, Values, Feasibility of Ideas)

The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all thebenefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything

looks gloomy and difficult.

• Green Hat(Vegetation, Growth, Creativity, New Ideas, Innovative, Alternative, Possibility) 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 (Controller, Organizer, Thinking about Thinking, Conductor of Orchestra) 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.

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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, and activists.

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 Six 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 between 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. In practice, one of the most striking thinking about the use of the Six

Hats Method is that decisions seem to make themselves. When you come to final Blue Hat, the decision

is often obvious to everyone. This seems hard to believe in theory, but happens very often in

practice. It is well worth reading Edward de Bono's books Six Thinking Hats and Parallel

Thinking 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 'Six Thinking Hats Technique’ will be sounder

and more resilient than would otherwise be the case. It may also help you to avoid public relationsmistakes, and spot good reasons not to follow a course of action before you have committed to it.

The Six Thinking Hats Method may well be the most important change in Human

Thinking for the past twenty-three hundred years. The Governance of Ashoka the Great (295BC-

232BC) all over India in third century before the Christ was governed by thinking skill through

administration and education system for welfare, prosperity and advancement of the all people.

Because Thinking Skill is Life-Skill for each human being. It can be learnt, improve, taught,

advanced, taught, and enjoyed.

People do not choose argument because it is the preferred method.

They simply do not know any other way of Thinking.

The Six Hats Method provides another way.

Dheemant P R Ambedkar Director General,

Mahanayak Kanshiram School of Thinking, Pune

C-4/207, NATASHA ENCLAVE, NIBM, KONDHWA, PUNE-411048, Ph: 26835230, M: 9822406581

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Notes on Thinking Skill1

The Six Thinking Hats method may well be the most important change in

human thinking for the past twenty-three hundred years. Thinking is the ultimatehuman resource. Yet we can never be satisfied with our most important skill. No

matter how good we become, we should always want to be better. This shows the

remarkable adaptability of the Six Thinking Hats Method: it can be taught, with equal

success so top-level executives and to pre-school children.

The main difficulty of Thinking is complexity or confusion. We try to do too

much at once. Emotion, Ego, Information, Logic, Hope, Innovation and creativity

all crowd in on us. It is like juggling with too many balls at time. It is causing to all

of us the basic weaknesses such as “ Leg pulling tendency”, “Over-Emotional ness”,

“Over Ego ness”, “Complacency” and “Completeness” etc.

The Parallel Thinking or The Six Thinking Hats Method is a very simple

concept which allows a thinker to do one thing at a time. He or She becomes able to

separate emotion from logic, ego from performance, and creativity from information

and so on. The concept is that of the Six Thinking Hats. Putting on any one of these

hats defines certain type or direction of Thinking.

The six thinking hats allow us to conduct our thinking as a conductor might

lead an Orchestra. We can call forth what we will. Similarly, in any meeting it is

very useful to switch people out of their usual track in order to get them to think

differently about the matter in hand. It is the sheer convenience of the six thinking hats

that is the main value of the concept. These are six colour hats: White, Red, Black,Yellow, Green and Blue.

In Indian context, the Black Hat has been misinterpreted and a few people have

somehow regarded it as a bad hat. But the Black Hat is the most valuable of all the

hats and certainly the most used hat. Using the Black Hat means being careful and

cautious. The Black Hat points out difficulties, dangers, and potential problems.

With the Black Hat you avoid danger to yourself, to others and to the community. It is

under the black hat that you can point out possible dangers. For the most part, the

thrust of Indian Thinking has been “the Black Hat” with an emphasis on critical

thinking and caution. Actually, “the Black Hat” prevents mistakes, excesses and

nonsense. The Six Thinking Hats Method is, now, a matter of catching up as apowerful thinking method that has been practicing/ using across all ages, cultures and

abilities all over world, particularly by the India Business Classes and Elite Class.

The Effectiveness of the Method is much greater than I had ever imagined. It is

an alternative to the argument system, which was never intended to be constructive or

creative. With the Six Thinking Hats Method the emphasis is on “what can be” rather

than just on “what is”, and on “how we design a way forward” – not on who is right

and who is wrong.

Let us learn thinking skill! Let us teach thinking skill!






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During the Maurya Empire, Thinking Skill (or AmÝdr{jH$s ) was the

most important faculty of the Education and Training System in INDIA. The

Historians and Educationists has neglected this aspect of the Education System of ASHOKA the GREAT (295BC--232BC). He has initiated the Thinking Skill as

compulsory subject at all levels of Education System. Even he applied it to the

Training System of his Administrators for governing body of State for welfare and

prosperity of his subjects in the empire and beyond. He also strengthen the University

System of Education, not the so-called Gurukul Education System.

We can raise a simple question to ourselves: What was the secret of success of

Governance of Ashoka the Great, after Kaliga War, who had minimum Military

and minimum Police Force for his empire, even though, he had protected its

boundary well, maintained its sovereignty absolutely, and make its subjects

happy and prosper? Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar mentioned in his famous butundelivered speech in 1936 —‘Annihilation of Caste’, “There is only one period in

Indian History, which is a period of freedom, greatness and glory. That is the period

of the Mourya Empire. At all other times the country suffered from defeat and

darkness. But the Mourya period was a period when Chaturvarnya was completely

annihilated, when the Shudras, who constituted the mass of people, came into their

own and became the rulers of the country”

Answer lays in his Welfare Policy and Education System during the Ashoka

the Great, can be traced out easily. In the Education System, he made Thinking

Faculty as a compulsory subject at all level of Education and Training because, the

Thinking Skill is Life Skill. Thinking people never are attacked. Thinking subjectalways stand for prosperity, never create problem and maintain peace and prosperity.

Later on, Thinking Faculty from education was snatched by the policy of

Manusmriti and worst slavery culture was imposed upon the masses. And Caste-

Culture was imposed through the sanctity of Religious Scriptures i.e. in the name of

Vedas. Thus, the Thinking Majority People were made unthinking people by initiating

and perpetuating the worst slavery of caste-culture and the worst domination of

superior caste-culture.

Manusmriti was/is a successful project to convert the thinking majority

people in to the unthinking people (Shudras and Untouchables

) to initiate andperpetuate worst slavery culture of Castes in INDIA. Keeping these, the Directive

Principles of State Policy were framed in the constitution of India. In this regards, Dr.

Babasaheb Ambedkar has express his deep respect to Prof. John Dewey and mention

in his letter to his wife Mrs Savita Ambedkar (June 1952), “ I owe all my intellectual

life to Prof. John Dewey”.

It is notable that Prof. Dewey is regarded as father of Philosophy of Education

all over the world. He had initiated, first time, the thinking must be taught in School,

and ability to think must be part of Education Curriculum of School.






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After domination of the culture of Castes, Indian Thinking has concerned with

“what is”, which was/is determined by analysis, judgement and argument. Although it

is a fine and useful system, but there was/is another whole of aspect of thinking that is

concerned with “what can be”, which involves constructive thinking, creative

thinking, possibility thinking, lateral thinking and ‘designing a way forward’.

Thus, Indian have a natural need of different thinking Skills to be adopt as

part of syllabus of Schools, Collages, University and Professional and Technological

Aspects of Education. The Thinking is the ultimate human resource, must be

strengthened at each level.

Many cultures in the World, perhaps even the majority of cultures, regard

Argument or Logic as aggressive, personal, and non-constructive. That is called

Tradition Thinking. A thinking system based on ‘Argument or Logic’ is excellent

just as the front left wheel of a CAR is excellent. There is nothing wrong with it at all.But it is not sufficient. That is why so many cultures readily take up the Parallel

Thinking of the Six Thinking Hats Method.

”A doctor is treating a child with a rash. The doctor immediately thinks of

some possible “boxes”. Is it sunburn? Is it food allergy? Is it measles? The doctor

then examines the signs and systems and makes a judgement. If the doctor judges that

the condition fits in to the ‘measles’ box, then the treatment of measles is written on

the side of that ‘box’ and the doctor knows exactly what to do. That is Traditional

Thinking as its best.”

“From the past we create standard situations. We judge into which ‘standardsituation box’ a new situation falls. Once we have made this judgement, our course is

clear. Such a system works very well in a stable world. In a stable world the

standard situations of the past still apply. But in the changing world, the Standard

Situations may no longer apply. Instead of judging our way forward , we need to

design our way forward . We need to be Thinking about ‘what can be’, not just

about ‘what is’. Yet the basic tradition of Hindu Thinking has not provided a simple

model of constructive thinking or creative thinking. That is precisely what the Six Hats

Method or Parallel Thinking is all about.”

Using Parallel Thinking at each moment each person is looking in parallel from

the same point of view. This is almost the exact opposite of argument, adversarial,confrontational thinking where each party deliberately takes an opposite view to each

other. Parallel Thinking means that at any moment everyone is looking in the same

direction.

Hats are directions of thinking skill and views are put down in parallel. And at

all times the emphasis is on designing a way forward. Design has to cover all

possibilities. The essence of parallel thinking is that at any moment everyone is looking

in the same direction but direction can be changed. So we need some direction labels

for thinking. Hats are the directions in which thinker can be invited to look in parallel.






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There are six coloured hats corresponding to the Six Direction of Thinking:

White, Red, Black, Yellow, Green, Blue.

Each 'Thinking Hat' is a different direction of thinking. These are explained in

brief below:

• White Hat (Neutral and Objective Information Hat)

With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information youhave, 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 (Intuition/Emotions about Ideas without apology/explanation /justification)

'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 (Sombre/Serious, Cautious/Careful, Pointing out difficulties, danger, weakness) Using black hat thinking, you look at all the bad points of the decision. You look at itcautiously 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 getso used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance. This

leaves them under-prepared for difficulties.

• Yellow Hat (Optimistic, Benefits, Values, Feasibility of Ideas)

The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helpsyou to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helpsyou to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

• Green Hat(Vegetation, Growth, Creativity, New Ideas, Innovative, Alternative, Possibility)

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 (Controller, Organizer, Thinking about Thinking, Conductor of Orchestra) 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.

It is very important to note that the Hats are directions and not descriptions of

what has happened. It is a matter of setting out to think in that direction. It is

extremely important to appreciate the difference between description and direction.A description is concerned with what has happened .

A direction is concerned with what is about to happen.

There is a huge temptation to use the hats to describe and categorize people,

such as ‘she is a black hat ’ or ‘he is a green –hat person’. That temptation must be

resisted. The hats are not descriptions of people but modes of behabiour.








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5It is true that some people may be permanently cautious and inclined to look

for dangers. It is true that some people might always be bubbling with ideas and

others might be better at focusing on facts. People may prefer one mode to another.

People might be better at one mode than another. Nevertheless, the Hats are notcategories of people.

If you drive a CAR with manual gears, you use all the gears. In the engine of

the car all the cylinders are firing. The hats are directions of thinking. Every personmust be able, and skilled, to look in all the directions. For these reasons the use of the

hats as labels is dangerous because it destroys the whole point of the system, which is

that everyone can look in every direction. The essence of parallel thinking is that atany moment everyone is looking in the same direction. So we need some direction

labels for thinking. Hats are the directions in which thinker can be invited to look in

parallel. The whole point of parallel thinking is that the Experience and Intelligence

of everyone should be used in each direction. So everyone present wears same hat at the appointed time. That is the Parallel Thinking and it makes fullest use of

everyone’s intelligence and experience. The Ego is no longer tied to being right.

The biggest enemy of thinking is complexity, for that leads to confusion.

When thinking is clear and simple, it becomes more enjoyable and more effective.

The Six Thinking Hats Concept is very simple to understand. It is also very simple to

use. It can be taught with equal success.

Information Age is over. We have entered into the concept age or idea age.

There are two main purposes to the Six Thinking Hats Concept.

The first purpose is to simplify thinking by allowing a thinker to deal with one thing at a time. Instead of having to take care of Emotion, Logic, Information, Hope, and

Creativity all at the same time, the thinker is able to deal with them separately. Instead

of using Logic to support a half-disguised emotion, the thinker can bring the emotion

to the surface with the Red Thinking Hat without any need to justify it. The Black

Thinking Hat can then deal with the logic aspect.

The second main purpose of the Six Thinking Hats Concept is to allow a switch

in Thinking. If a person at a meeting has been persistently negative, that person can be

asked to take off the Black Thinking Hat. This signals to the person that he or she is

being persistently negative. The person may also be asked to put on the Yellow

Thinking Hats. That is a direct request to be positive. In this way the Six Hatsprovide an idiom that is definite without being offensive. What is most important is

that the idiom does not threaten a person’s EGO or Personality. By turning it into

role-playing or even a game, the concept of the Hats makes it possible to request

certain type of thinking. The hats become a sort of shorthand of instruction. In any

meeting it is very useful to switch people out of their usual track in order to get them

to think differently about the matter in hand. It is obvious that the framework will be

most useful if all the people in an organization are aware of the rules of the game.

The Concept works best when it has become a sort of common language.






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Car and Driving Skill v/s Intelligence and Thinking Skill

Thinking is the ultimate human resource. The quality of our future will depend

entirely on the quality of our thinking. This applies on a personal level, a community

level, and on the world level.

Intelligence is like the Horsepower of a Car. It is possible that the “Intelligence”

Potential of the Mind is determined, at least in part, by our genes. Even so there is evidencethat the use of the Mind can change the ENZYME CHARACTERISTICS just as the use of

muscles can change their characteristics. The biochemical basis of intelligence may beaffected by a challenging environment. We can do something about early environment. We

can do a great deal more about the operating skill with which the intelligence is used—the

Skill of Thinking. The Performance of a CAR does not depend on the Horsepower of the

CAR but upon the skill with which the CAR is driven by the driver. So if “Intelligence” is

the Horsepower of the CAR, then “Thinking” is the SKILL with which that Horsepower

is used. Intelligence is a Potential. Thinking is an Operating Skill. Thus, “Thinking is

the operating skill through which Intelligence acts upon experience.”

CAR Analogy

1. If you have a powerful CAR then you need to

improve your driving skills. If you do not

improve your driving skills then you will not

be able to make full use of the available power.

You may also be a danger to others.

2. If you have a less powerful car then you need

to develop a high degree of driving skill in

order to make up for the lack of power.

1. In a similar way, highly Intelligence people need

to improve their thinking skills in order to make

full use of that high intelligence. Much of the

potential of High Intelligence is otherwise

wasted.

2. So those who do not consider themselves to be

highly intelligence can improve their

performance by improving their Thinking Skill .

It all depends on how we look at Thinking and how we look at Intelligence.

Definition of THINKING framed by Dr. Edward de Bono is as follows: “Thinking is the

operating skill with which intelligence acts upon experience for a Purpose.” Thus, the

definition focuses attention on three elements:1) Operating Skill, 2) Intelligence, and 3) Experience.

The analogy of the Car and Driving Skill is that the Car may have a powerful engine,

a smooth gear box and wonderful suspension. But the skill of the driver is somethingdifferent. Indeed the very power of the Car may place extra demands upon that Skill. In no

way does the power of the Car ensure the Skill of the driver. In the analogy, the engineering

of the Car corresponds to innate intelligence and the driving skill of the driver correspondsto the operating skill we call Thinking. It is also the case that a more humble Car has a

better driver. Driving Skill can also be learned and practiced and improved.

“I am not especially interested in the measurement of Intelligence or, indeed, of Thinking Skills. I prefer to be in the “Roller Skates” Business. If you lineup a number of

people and ask them to race you will end up by comparing their natural running ability. If

you design suitable roller skates for all of them they will all go farther and faster than before.Training and Coaching will also make a difference. So I am more interested in designing

thinking tools and training methods than in measuring natural ability.”, said Edward de Bono.

There is nothing surprising in this. After all, the whole of mathematics is a matter of

notations, concepts and techniques. We would not get very far if we relied on

“NATURAL” MATHEMATICAL ABILITY.

‘Thinking is the operating skill through which Intelligence acts upon experience.’






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Beware of The Intelligence Trap

Many people consider themselves to be highly intelligence, are not necessarily

good thinkers. They get caught in the Intelligence Trap.These are two type Traps : --1. A highly intelligent person can take a view on a subject and then use his or her

intelligence to defend that view. The more intelligent the person, the better

the defense of the view. The better the defense of the view the less thatperson sees any need to seek out alternatives or to listen to anyone else. If you

know “ that you are right” why should you do either of those things? As a

result, many highly intelligence minds are trapped in poor ideas because theycan defend them so well.

2. Secondly, a person who has grown up with the NOTION that he or she is

more intelligent than those around ( possibly a correct view) wants to get the mostsatisfaction from that Intelligence. The quickest and most reliable way to be

rewarded for intelligence is to “ prove someone else wrong.” Such a strategy gives

you an immediate result and also establishes your superiority. Beingconstructive is much less rewarding. It may take years to show that a new idea

works. Furthermore, you have to depend on the listener liking your idea. So

it is obvious that being critical and destructive is a much more appealing useof intelligence. This is made even worse by the absurd Manu’s Notion that

‘Critical Thinking’ is enough.

There are a few schools that do have critical thinking on the curriculum.

Critical Thinking is a valuable part of thinking but totally inadequate on its own. It

is like the left front wheel on a Car: wonderful in itself but inadequate by itself.Critical Thinking perpetuates the old-fashioned or traditional view of thinking

established by the Schools of Manu’s and Vedant’s. This view is that Analysis,

Judgement, and Argument are enough. It is enough to “ find the TRUTH ” and all else

will follow. If you remove the “UNTRUTH ” then that is enough. These dogmatic

beliefs are that thinking can never be taught directly and explicitly. That there is no

such thing as “THINKING” but only “thinking in science” or “thinking in history.”

While it is true that each subject area has its own idioms, needs and models. And

there are certain fundamental processes that cut across all fields e.g. “assessing

priorities”, “seeking alternatives,” “forming hypotheses” and “generating new ideas”

are applicable to any field. Hence, those who say there in no practical way to teach thinkingis based on total ignorance or conspiracy to hide the Faculty of Thinking.

Chanakya wrote:

àXrn: gd©{dÚmZm_wnm`: gd©H$_m©Um_² &Aml`: gd©Y_m©Um§ eœXmÝdr{jH$s _Vm && (1.2.12)

The faculty of thinking Skill (AmÝdr{jH$s) is ever Light (thought/capability of )

as the lamp of all Sciences ({dÚm), as the means of all actions / solutions/remedies

(H$_© ), and as the support of all laws and duties (Y_© ). –Kautiliya Arthasastra, (1.2.12)






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Culturally, we desperately need to break loose, or to escape of the Notion

that critical thinking is enough. While we believe this we shall never pay sufficient

attention to the Generative, Constructive, Creative, and design aspects of thinking.Therefore, we must realize at early possible that the Critical Thinking is not enough.

We need much more thinking tools, thinking techniques, thinking methods, and

thinking strategies.

Our success in science and technology comes not from critical thinking but

from the “Possibility System”. The Possibility System moves ahead of our

information to create hypotheses and visions.

Outside highly technical matter, Perception is by far the most important part

of Thinking. Perception is how we look at the world , what things we take into account,

how we structure the world .

“Almost all errors of thinking are errors of perception.” --David PerkinsFor example, Bad Logic makes for bad thinking. Everyone would agree with

that. But the opposite is not true at all. Good Logic does not make for good thinking.

If the Perception is poor then good logic will give you a faulty answer. There is

even the added danger that good logic will give a false arrogance with which to hold

the false answer. So we need some ways of broadening perception and of changing

perception which can lead us to innovative, creative, constructive, or design a way

forward.

“The Main Purpose of Thinking is to abolish Thinking.” -- Edward de Bono Perception is the way we look at things. Processing is what we do with that

perception. In order to understand thinking we need to know/understand something

about how the mind works as an information processing system. The excellence

in processing does not make up for inadequacies of perception. In our thinking

we have accepted three fallacies.

1. It does not matter where you start your perception because if your

thinking is good enough you will reach the right answer.

2. From within the situation through the use of further processing, you

can tell where you ought to have started.

3. The traditional perception is sufficient because it has evolved through

trial and error over time.These three fallacies have made us concern ourselves with processing, for which we

have developed such marvelous tools as mathematics. We have neglected the perceptionarea because there did not seem to be much we could do about it.

Perception is how we look at things in the first place. Processing is what we do

with that perception.

Six Thinking Hats - By p r Ambedkar

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