6 Thinking Hats & Productive Thinking Model

6 thinking hats and a productive thinking model are two methods that work great together to think about the strengths, weaknesses, potential, and possible improvements of an idea.

What can you do?
Focus on the developing idea and follow the steps in any order (it is recommended you think about attractions before the worries).
Not all steps need to be used.
The whole group should focus on a particular step/perspective at once to achieve more collaboration. You can initiate a few minutes long individual thinking before the collective discussion or even during an open discussion.
Keep in mind that you focus on one step/perspective at the time and avoid frequent switching between the perspectives. You shouldn’t think in your own way and then say it’s a specific perspective, but opposite: you should start thinking in a direction that the step commands.

• WHAT DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE IDEA? – Explore and express the emotions, feelings and hunches about the idea.
• WHAT ATTRACTS YOU TO THE IDEA? – Explore positives, values, benefits of the idea.
• WHAT WORRIES YOU ABOUT THE IDEA? – Spot difficulties and possible obstacles of the idea. Think why something might not work or could go wrong.
• DOES THE IDEA MEET THE CRITERIA? – If you developed success criteria when your tried to better understand the problem, think if the idea meets your success criteria and why it does or does not.
• CAN YOU UPGRADE THE IDEA? – Based on your reflections of the idea, express new possible perspectives and concepts. What can make it better? If you developed success criteria, you can think how can you make the idea meet the success criteria more

To help yourselves, you can repeat the necessary previous steps/activities of ideation and assessment.
If you don’t find any attractions or sense in the idea, there is no point of developing it further.