Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category

The Six Thinking Hats

Friday, October 16th, 2009 by cindyedmonds

Someone tipped me off last year to a really useful technique. It may be one of those things that the rest of the world was aware of and I have been under a rock and missed it but in case there are some fellow rock-dwellers reading this blog I’m going to share the epiphany here. I’ve been working on a new business proposition over the past couple of weeks where it has been incredibly useful to apply this technique: Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.

The premise is that we all have a natural or preferred thinking style. For example, my thinking style is quite critical and ‘nit-picking’ whereas one of my colleagues is more optimistic and grandiose. When considering new business investments we need to apply both styles of thinking (and more) to the proposition to ensure we cover all bases. I’m sure everyone has worked with someone who you dread having a meeting with because they’re so negative or obstructive? I’m not saying I work with anyone like that right now but I have in the past and as a Project Manager it is imperative that I get the outcomes that I need from meetings and the Six Thinking Hats is a great enabler for this. (I have copied the following definitions from wikipedia)

  • Neutrality (White) - considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
  • Feeling (Red) - instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification)
  • Negative judgement (Black) - logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
  • Positive Judgement (Yellow) - logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
  • Creative thinking (Green) - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
  • Process control (Blue) - thinking about thinking

Six Hats Thinking means that in meetings, for example, the team considers the issues while imaginatively or figuratively wearing each of the Six Hats in turn. Some people stay quiet during Green Hat as they can’t think that way and then jump in with enthusiasm during Black Hat. Genius!

Which Hat are you?

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Posted in Project Management, Strategy, Team, Tips, Uncategorized, leadership | 2 Comments »

Why SIPOC is good!

Thursday, May 1st, 2008 by admin

If you go to http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c010429a.asp you’ll find a “how to” on SIPOC. SIPOC stands for: Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs and Customers. Its a good way of defining a process and then working out where the holes are. We did this today and the results were very structured. Basically, the method is as follows:

If you have a project that is ill-defined…

1. Get the relevant stakeholders in the room and work out 5 top level key processes that describe the scope of what you are trying to do. For instance selling a car would be: Attract Customer, Establish Need, Provide Options, Negotiate Deal, Hand Over Keys etc etc.

2. Next, for each part of the process try to document the outputs

3. Then document the customers

4. Next it should be easier to do the suppliers and the inputs.

Whilst you are doing all of this, note down any issues that come up in conversations, for instance, there is an issue trying to work out whether the customer wants a low emission car or not…

Once you’ve done all of this, what you basically have is a top level ideal process, a list of issues with the as-is process and finally, take each issue and try to assign an action to it.

In the end you should be able to construct an action plan for defining the project in more detail.

You should now:

  1. Have a better idea of scope
  2. Know the problem you are trying to fix
  3. Be able to establish some quick wins
  4. Be able to establish ownership of actions

TIP: Try to stay focused on the issues rather than the solution. Otherwise, you may “solve” a problem by the end of the workshop without fully appreciating what the problem really was!

Thanks to Jackie Jones of BT Expedite for teaching me this technique :-)

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Posted in Project Management, Scoping, Six Sigma, Strategy, Tips | 1 Comment »