191: Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono

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1. 00:00:00 I have a little surprise for you, Corey.
2. 00:00:02 There's a link in the show notes.
3. 00:00:03 If you want to go ahead and open that.
4. 00:00:06 - Oh, kiddokey, let's see what this surprise is.
5. 00:00:10 - And then you let me know what you see there.
6. 00:00:13 - I see an iPhone screen with the date on it
7. 00:00:18 on the top of it, a beautiful background.
8. 00:00:21 And then it says capture, mind maps, notes,
9. 00:00:24 community podcast, writing, message, mindfulness,
10. 00:00:27 and prayer.
11. 00:00:29 - Yeah, so that is my new iPhone home screen.
12. 00:00:32 And what's different about this
13. 00:00:34 for people who are listening to this audio podcast?
14. 00:00:36 - I have no idea.
15. 00:00:38 I mean, what's different about this?
16. 00:00:42 Can you interact with that?
17. 00:00:43 Like that's my first thing I'm gonna,
18. 00:00:44 I'm gonna just like, can I click on capture,
19. 00:00:46 or can I click on mine?
20. 00:00:47 - Yes, so this is my new iPhone home screen.
21. 00:00:50 And there are no icons and there is no doc.
22. 00:00:54 And I love it.
23. 00:00:55 - Okay, so how are you doing it?
24. 00:00:59 - Yeah, so I'm using an app called blank,
25. 00:01:03 I believe is the name.
26. 00:01:05 And it essentially lets you create these widgets,
27. 00:01:10 which then you can put on your home screen.
28. 00:01:14 So in the app, you can choose,
29. 00:01:16 these are the things that I want to set up.
30. 00:01:19 And that's kind of like the launcher.
31. 00:01:20 That's the middle part.
32. 00:01:21 So you can rename these.
33. 00:01:23 So capture is actually drafts.
34. 00:01:25 Mind maps is my note.
35. 00:01:26 Notes is obsidian.
36. 00:01:29 Community is circle, podcast is overcast.
37. 00:01:32 Writing is actually a web app that I had saved in my phone.
38. 00:01:35 I use typefully to post, to Twitter,
39. 00:01:39 Mastodon and LinkedIn, although not very consistently.
40. 00:01:43 So that's like the next thing on my creative checklist
41. 00:01:46 is to start writing more consistently.
42. 00:01:49 That allows me to post without having to go in
43. 00:01:51 and look at what is there.
44. 00:01:55 Then messages is just messages.
45. 00:01:57 Mindfulness is this mindfulness meditation app
46. 00:02:00 that I found called Do Nothing,
47. 00:02:02 where you literally just start a timer and then do nothing.
48. 00:02:05 - Wow, that sounds cool.
49. 00:02:06 - And then it builds the metric,
50. 00:02:09 they call it the chilometer at the end.
51. 00:02:12 And this is something that I really am trying to get
52. 00:02:15 into a habit of doing consistently again.
53. 00:02:18 Prayer is the echo app.
54. 00:02:20 And what's cool about this is that you can actually use it
55. 00:02:22 to just open the app.
56. 00:02:23 So they have, you can choose from the list.
57. 00:02:26 These are the apps that we know about
58. 00:02:27 and you can create a shortcut to that app
59. 00:02:30 just by selecting from the list.
60. 00:02:31 Some apps aren't on their list yet,
61. 00:02:33 so you can use either the URL scheme if you know it,
62. 00:02:37 or you can use a shortcut.
63. 00:02:38 So some of these are shortcuts that just open an app.
64. 00:02:42 I don't think I have any custom URL schemes,
65. 00:02:45 but you could do something like that as well.
66. 00:02:47 So that's like the middle widget.
67. 00:02:49 And then the top widget,
68. 00:02:51 you can just do a couple of things there.
69. 00:02:53 You can put the date,
70. 00:02:54 you can put the actual day of the week,
71. 00:02:56 you can put the weather,
72. 00:02:57 you can put like a five day forecast,
73. 00:02:59 or you can leave it blank.
74. 00:03:01 And then what you do is you download these wallpapers
75. 00:03:06 that they have several of them on their website,
76. 00:03:09 both light and dark mode.
77. 00:03:11 You can download those,
78. 00:03:12 put them as the background on your phone,
79. 00:03:15 and then you have to take a screenshot of that background.
80. 00:03:18 So you use that wallpaper,
81. 00:03:19 but then in the app itself,
82. 00:03:21 there's a button and it says import from this image.
83. 00:03:24 And it basically just like puts the appropriate slice of that
84. 00:03:29 in the background of the widgets.
85. 00:03:31 So it looks like they're just floating there
86. 00:03:33 and there's no colored background.
87. 00:03:36 And then essentially the doc is there,
88. 00:03:37 it just doesn't have any icons in it,
89. 00:03:39 and the bottom of the wallpaper is the exact same color
90. 00:03:41 as the doc, so you can't actually see it.
91. 00:03:44 (laughs)
92. 00:03:45 - That is crazy.
93. 00:03:47 And I realized where I made the mistake in my thinking,
94. 00:03:50 I thought this was your lock screen.
95. 00:03:52 This is your lock screen, this is your home screen.
96. 00:03:54 So this is like-- - This is my home screen, yes.
97. 00:03:56 - 'Cause I'm sitting here thinking through this
98. 00:03:57 and I'm like, okay, lock screen,
99. 00:03:58 I don't know, is this that interesting?
100. 00:04:02 And I was like, oh, but it's his home screen.
101. 00:04:04 It's his home screen.
102. 00:04:05 I was like, this is amazing.
103. 00:04:06 So I might actually be stealing almost all of this,
104. 00:04:11 except for what you actually have on the screen,
105. 00:04:15 the content of the screen,
106. 00:04:16 I might actually be making my own,
107. 00:04:17 'cause that sounds perfect.
108. 00:04:19 - Yeah, so the whole idea behind this
109. 00:04:21 is really just to force yourself
110. 00:04:24 down some specific intentionality paths
111. 00:04:26 whenever you reach for your phone.
112. 00:04:28 And without having any sort of icons on here,
113. 00:04:31 that really just kinda creases the effect.
114. 00:04:35 It sounds stupid, but you open up your iPhone
115. 00:04:37 and even if you don't do anything
116. 00:04:40 with those icons that are on the front,
117. 00:04:41 it's like, ooh, shiny.
118. 00:04:43 'Cause it's all colorful, yeah, so.
119. 00:04:46 - And the logos and the icons are made to do that, aren't they?
120. 00:04:48 - They are, yeah.
121. 00:04:49 - They're made to draw you and attract you to that thing.
122. 00:04:53 This is funny because I posted in your community,
123. 00:04:56 in the faith-based productivity community,
124. 00:04:57 the other day about brick,
125. 00:04:59 which basically bricks your phone in certain times.
126. 00:05:02 And then I've looked at light phone,
127. 00:05:04 I've looked at some of these other ways
128. 00:05:07 to reduce the functionality of your smartphone.
129. 00:05:09 This seems like a really cool way to do that,
130. 00:05:11 but in a customized way.
131. 00:05:13 I like that a lot.
132. 00:05:14 - This is inspired by the light phone.
133. 00:05:16 We actually have one of those for my oldest son.
134. 00:05:19 And I like it a lot.
135. 00:05:21 I have toied with the idea of getting one myself.
136. 00:05:23 I think I probably will at some point in the near future.
137. 00:05:28 The thing that is keeping me on the iPhone
138. 00:05:30 honestly is just the mind maps.
139. 00:05:32 Like I could move the podcast over,
140. 00:05:34 I could move the directions over,
141. 00:05:36 I really don't care about text messaging anyways.
142. 00:05:39 But the way that I take book notes,
143. 00:05:42 there's no alternative for that
144. 00:05:45 on the light phone.
145. 00:05:47 But this is like as close as you can get
146. 00:05:49 without actually having the light phone.
147. 00:05:52 I actually, there's one other thing you could do.
148. 00:05:54 I have an accessibility shortcut set up.
149. 00:05:56 So if you hit the home button on the side three times,
150. 00:06:00 it turns your phone into grayscale mode.
151. 00:06:02 So that makes it even less appealing.
152. 00:06:05 - But you really doubled down on that.
153. 00:06:06 (laughs)
154. 00:06:07 - Yeah.
155. 00:06:08 So yeah, I like this a lot and it's working for me.
156. 00:06:13 Now obviously you can do other things besides this.
157. 00:06:15 You can do focus modes and you can set up
158. 00:06:17 intentional home screens.
159. 00:06:18 And I've done all that kind of stuff in the past,
160. 00:06:21 but this is like that to the next level.
161. 00:06:23 And I gotta admit, I really like it.
162. 00:06:25 So I will actually be writing about this
163. 00:06:28 in the upcoming newsletter.
164. 00:06:30 It'll already be out by the time people hear this.
165. 00:06:33 So there will be a link to the actual newsletter
166. 00:06:37 where you can go read about this in the show notes
167. 00:06:41 because I use ConvertKit for those.
168. 00:06:42 And so you get like the public feed or whatever.
169. 00:06:45 So you can link to specific newsletters
170. 00:06:47 if people want to see this for themselves.
171. 00:06:50 But I thought you might appreciate this
172. 00:06:52 and wanted to share it with you.
173. 00:06:53 - I'm very much gonna appreciate this.
174. 00:06:54 And that will be another rabbit hole
175. 00:06:57 that I'll have to figure out
176. 00:06:58 when I'm gonna dive down into that one.
177. 00:06:59 So that's funny.
178. 00:07:01 (laughs)
179. 00:07:02 - Nice.
180. 00:07:03 - Thanks for sharing that.
181. 00:07:04 - Yep, yep.
182. 00:07:05 All right.
183. 00:07:06 And then we've got a couple of follow up items.
184. 00:07:09 Now you had mentioned the post
185. 00:07:12 in the faith-based productivity community.
186. 00:07:15 That was actually one of my action items
187. 00:07:17 was setting up the new community
188. 00:07:19 or at least having a landing page
189. 00:07:20 that people could go to sign up for
190. 00:07:24 when it's gonna be available.
191. 00:07:25 So I got that done by the skin of my teeth.
192. 00:07:29 (laughs)
193. 00:07:29 - Yeah, good job.
194. 00:07:31 - Yeah, so there'll be a link in the show notes for that as well.
195. 00:07:34 But the plan is we're going on vacation.
196. 00:07:36 We're recording this a little bit early.
197. 00:07:38 And then when we come back at the end of February,
198. 00:07:41 I am wanting to have that active.
199. 00:07:44 And everything basically from the faith-based productivity
200. 00:07:47 community and the Obsidian University community
201. 00:07:49 is gonna be brought there.
202. 00:07:50 It's gonna take me a little while
203. 00:07:51 to bring over all of the courses and things.
204. 00:07:55 But yeah, I wanna have one place for all that.
205. 00:07:57 And then also all of my book notes and things will
206. 00:08:00 will be there as well.
207. 00:08:02 So I don't have any specific details to share yet
208. 00:08:05 about signing up, but there is a page
209. 00:08:07 where you can go get a notification when it's ready.
210. 00:08:10 - Nice.
211. 00:08:11 Nice, I think that'll be very, very valuable for folks
212. 00:08:14 as you make this transition.
213. 00:08:16 So that's good.
214. 00:08:17 - Awesome.
215. 00:08:18 The other action item I had was try Cornell notes
216. 00:08:22 in Obsidian.
217. 00:08:24 And I followed your advice and I watched some videos
218. 00:08:27 on Cornell notes.
219. 00:08:29 Good notes actually had a pretty good resource
220. 00:08:32 for what are Cornell notes.
221. 00:08:34 And I have the plug-in, CSS snippet, whatever installed.
222. 00:08:39 And I'm not using it a ton, but I do think
223. 00:08:43 there are some specific places where this could be useful.
224. 00:08:47 I guess what I discovered was that when I am working
225. 00:08:51 with notes in Obsidian, a lot of times I don't have
226. 00:08:53 the need for these Cornell notes,
227. 00:08:55 because a lot of the ideas and things will come
228. 00:08:57 from the mind maps, from the books that we read,
229. 00:09:00 and then I bring those in and I break those apart
230. 00:09:02 into atomic notes, but there's no need
231. 00:09:04 for additional Cornell notes there.
232. 00:09:07 Where the Cornell notes could be useful, I think,
233. 00:09:10 in the future is as I'm going through it,
234. 00:09:12 I'm developing the maps of content or the MOCs,
235. 00:09:16 where it's kind of like my workbench
236. 00:09:17 where I'm working through some ideas.
237. 00:09:20 I will occasionally just like bring in links
238. 00:09:24 to other notes and add opinion notes.
239. 00:09:27 And this is what I think, and I have been using callouts
240. 00:09:31 for a lot of those opinion notes,
241. 00:09:33 but I think there could be some opportunity
242. 00:09:36 to add some additional context via these,
243. 00:09:38 like calling them Cornell notes,
244. 00:09:40 but they're basically just footnotes
245. 00:09:41 that appear on the side in Obsidian.
246. 00:09:44 - Yeah, I think where I would see this
247. 00:09:46 being the most effective for me and the way I work,
248. 00:09:49 which I know you don't consume a lot,
249. 00:09:51 but it's like if I'm watching a YouTube video
250. 00:09:52 to try to learn something,
251. 00:09:53 I think a Cornell note in Obsidian
252. 00:09:55 would make complete sense there.
253. 00:09:57 Me, seeing that and then translating that into something.
254. 00:10:02 What I'm curious with you,
255. 00:10:04 have you done a video or have you written about it anywhere
256. 00:10:08 about how you make your atomic notes,
257. 00:10:10 or is that part of one of your courses
258. 00:10:11 or part of one of your things?
259. 00:10:12 'Cause this is where my system always falls down.
260. 00:10:15 It's like, oh, I'm thinking about,
261. 00:10:17 I just took these notes on this book
262. 00:10:18 or I just processed through this book.
263. 00:10:21 And now I need to think about what do I do with this?
264. 00:10:24 And it's that next step.
265. 00:10:24 So what's your guidance for me there?
266. 00:10:27 - I do have a video that I've done on that.
267. 00:10:31 I'm not sure if it speaks directly to the specific thing
268. 00:10:34 that you're talking about,
269. 00:10:36 but it does kind of talk about the value of the atomic notes.
270. 00:10:39 So I'll put a link to that YouTube video
271. 00:10:41 in the show notes for people.
272. 00:10:43 But I think atomic notes are tricky
273. 00:10:47 because you kind of have to figure out
274. 00:10:49 your own level of atomicity.
275. 00:10:53 (laughs)
276. 00:10:55 It's a word I just made up.
277. 00:10:56 - I'm pretty sure that's not a word.
278. 00:10:57 Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not a word.
279. 00:10:58 Like you got to figure out when to break things apart
280. 00:11:02 and it's kind of just trial and error.
281. 00:11:05 You want to go into it thinking,
282. 00:11:07 what are the smallest component pieces that will be useful?
283. 00:11:10 And so the example I talk about in the cohorts
284. 00:11:13 is when I came into Obsidian,
285. 00:11:14 I wanted to build my own cross-reference library
286. 00:11:17 from sermon notes that I had taken.
287. 00:11:19 And I had kind of seen that in action
288. 00:11:22 in other like Bible software like Logos or Accordance.
289. 00:11:25 So I'm gonna use the individual verses
290. 00:11:28 as the smallest atomic piece
291. 00:11:31 because that's gonna be the link
292. 00:11:32 between these different things.
293. 00:11:35 Side note, isn't it crazy that you can basically replicate
294. 00:11:39 the functionality of those $1,000 software programs
295. 00:11:43 inside of a free app?
296. 00:11:45 - Oh man.
297. 00:11:46 They really are developing wizards, aren't they?
298. 00:11:50 I mean, the way they've given that thing,
299. 00:11:52 the ability to do essentially what you want with it.
300. 00:11:56 It's really cool and then all the community too.
301. 00:11:58 - Yep, absolutely.
302. 00:12:00 So I don't know if I have any specific advice for you
303. 00:12:03 other than maybe go watch that video,
304. 00:12:05 wrap your head around like how you would use
305. 00:12:07 those atomic notes and then that will probably spur some,
306. 00:12:10 some ideas when you are in your green hat thinking mode
307. 00:12:14 as we'll talk about.
308. 00:12:14 - That's right.
309. 00:12:15 - That's right.
310. 00:12:16 Okay, so my follow up item was to read a physical book
311. 00:12:19 and annotate it, which I did that this time.
312. 00:12:22 So I actually have the paper version of the book
313. 00:12:25 sitting right beside me.
314. 00:12:27 What I'll tell you is I liked that experience.
315. 00:12:30 I very much enjoyed that experience except for the fact
316. 00:12:33 that like I felt like I needed a second notebook
317. 00:12:36 to write down, I write down a lot, right?
318. 00:12:39 So I think the difference between you and I
319. 00:12:40 is I write down a lot more than you do
320. 00:12:43 when I'm going through this book.
321. 00:12:44 So I felt like I needed a second book
322. 00:12:45 and I was annoyed with the second notebook.
323. 00:12:48 So I have to figure out a better system for that.
324. 00:12:50 Like is it note cards per chapter?
325. 00:12:52 Is it something, you know, if I'm gonna read a physical book,
326. 00:12:55 how do I still collect all the things that I want
327. 00:12:59 but not have to carry around the second piece of material?
328. 00:13:04 I didn't like doing that.
329. 00:13:06 - Yeah, that makes sense.
330. 00:13:08 I don't know how you're gonna get around that.
331. 00:13:10 - I know.
332. 00:13:11 I don't either.
333. 00:13:12 I haven't figured it out yet.
334. 00:13:13 So I'm kind of, so dear listener,
335. 00:13:16 if you haven't figured this out,
336. 00:13:17 I'm figuring out my note system.
337. 00:13:18 So I've tried my maps.
338. 00:13:20 I've tried to put these notes into notion
339. 00:13:23 and then highlight different things out of there.
340. 00:13:26 I've now done a physical copy of the book
341. 00:13:28 with actually handwritten notes in a paper notebook.
342. 00:13:31 And what I'll tell you is that the thing I've learned
343. 00:13:33 from all of this, which is probably
344. 00:13:35 the most valuable reason for doing this,
345. 00:13:36 is I'm a write more summarize, summarize again,
346. 00:13:41 summarize again kind of guy.
347. 00:13:44 That is how my brain needs to process through things
348. 00:13:47 in order to be able to think about it across boundaries
349. 00:13:52 and then be able to talk about it
350. 00:13:53 and be able to actually use it,
351. 00:13:55 which I probably could have told you this
352. 00:13:57 from doing my PhD, that that's how I was,
353. 00:13:59 'cause I mean, I created, do you remember Voodoo Pad?
354. 00:14:02 Do you remember the software Voodoo Pad?
355. 00:14:04 - Yeah, back in the day.
356. 00:14:04 - Yeah, so before all of the stuff that we have now
357. 00:14:07 that'll link things, Voodoo Pad was a very, very simple,
358. 00:14:11 very, very good way to basically make your own wiki.
359. 00:14:15 And I did that with a lot of the work
360. 00:14:17 that fed into my dissertation as I made my own wiki
361. 00:14:19 about connecting different ideas and different thoughts.
362. 00:14:22 So I probably could have told you that I was a summary,
363. 00:14:24 summary, summary kind of guy before,
364. 00:14:25 but I'm confirming that right now as we read these books.
365. 00:14:29 So yeah, so if you think of a good idea
366. 00:14:31 or if anybody thinks of a good idea
367. 00:14:33 about how I could take the notes
368. 00:14:35 and also have the physical copy of the book
369. 00:14:39 together at the same time, I would even be willing,
370. 00:14:41 I'm not sold on physical books yet.
371. 00:14:43 So I would even be willing to have my digital book,
372. 00:14:47 but then I think the handwritten notes
373. 00:14:51 is very, very valuable for me.
374. 00:14:52 I really think that is.
375. 00:14:54 And it almost makes me wonder,
376. 00:14:55 I'm not gonna go buy one.
377. 00:14:57 But what's the big Android tablet that flips open?
378. 00:15:01 Are they Android phone that flips open?
379. 00:15:02 Is it the Z Flip?
380. 00:15:03 No, I don't know.
381. 00:15:05 - I don't know.
382. 00:15:06 I do have an Android, actually two Android devices.
383. 00:15:09 They are Eink, there's an Eink tablet on the Onyx books
384. 00:15:13 and then I got the Onyx Palma,
385. 00:15:16 the like phone size e-reader.
386. 00:15:20 But I don't think that's what you're talking about.
387. 00:15:21 You're talking about the things where you can have
388. 00:15:23 two screens essentially side by side.
389. 00:15:25 - Essentially, if I could have the one screen
390. 00:15:27 be the book on the left and then the right hand side
391. 00:15:30 of the screen be my pen that I can take notes on,
392. 00:15:33 I actually think that's my ideal setup.
393. 00:15:35 But I'm not willing to go to Android
394. 00:15:38 because everything else I have works so well
395. 00:15:42 and is all Apple stuff, so.
396. 00:15:44 - What if you used like the Kindle app or Apple Books
397. 00:15:49 and split screen on an iPad and then on the other side
398. 00:15:52 you had like good notes?
399. 00:15:54 - I can try that.
400. 00:15:55 My limitation right now and the reason why
401. 00:15:57 that doesn't resonate with me right now
402. 00:15:58 is I have the largest iPad.
403. 00:16:00 So for that to hold that is it's too bulky
404. 00:16:04 but that works really well for my teaching.
405. 00:16:06 So it's like I wonder if I would get an iPad mini,
406. 00:16:09 is that like the right size or is the text too small
407. 00:16:12 in the book and then do I have enough space to write?
408. 00:16:13 Like I bet you if I could do that in the iPad mini
409. 00:16:16 that'd be very compelling, I think very compelling.
410. 00:16:20 - I have an iPad mini, I like it a lot
411. 00:16:22 but I feel like if you put stuff in split screen
412. 00:16:24 and then try to use one side as a notebook
413. 00:16:25 it's probably a little too small.
414. 00:16:27 - Yeah, okay.
415. 00:16:28 Well, like I told you, so I told Mike before we started
416. 00:16:30 recording, I'm gonna go try out the Vision Pro today.
417. 00:16:33 I have a demo and while I'm there I'll look
418. 00:16:36 at the iPad mini and I'll hold it my hand and say,
419. 00:16:38 "Do I think I could do this?"
420. 00:16:39 And you know, it's probably not worth the money
421. 00:16:41 but at the same time, you know, it'd be fun to try.
422. 00:16:44 - Yeah, hasn't been updated in a long time.
423. 00:16:45 So don't buy one yet but maybe when they update it.
424. 00:16:49 - Yeah, what's the website that tells you
425. 00:16:51 how long it's been since they've updated something?
426. 00:16:53 - I think it's Mac rumors, I can't remember
427. 00:16:55 but they had like the buyer's guide and I know
428. 00:16:57 what you're talking about is like green is like
429. 00:16:58 go ahead and buy now, gray is like neutral, eh,
430. 00:17:01 you know, it's middle product cycle
431. 00:17:03 then there's the red like don't buy this,
432. 00:17:05 update is imminent.
433. 00:17:06 - It hasn't been updated in 287 days,
434. 00:17:08 like please don't, please are 700 days or whatever it was.
435. 00:17:12 - Cool.
436. 00:17:13 - All righty, you wanna talk about a book?
437. 00:17:15 - Let's do it.
438. 00:17:16 So today's book is Six Thinking Hats by Edward Dibano
439. 00:17:21 who I had never heard about before
440. 00:17:23 but after reading this, it sounds like he's a pretty big
441. 00:17:26 thinker in the business world
442. 00:17:28 and I probably should have at some point.
443. 00:17:30 - Well, what got me there was when he says
444. 00:17:33 in one part of the book, I invented this type of thinking
445. 00:17:35 in 1967 and I was like, "Oh, okay, I guess you are
446. 00:17:40 a big deal."
447. 00:17:41 - Kind of a big deal.
448. 00:17:43 - Yeah, and then he mentions very casually
449. 00:17:46 a couple other books that he has written
450. 00:17:48 which sound fascinating to be honest.
451. 00:17:51 So this is sort of like an introduction
452. 00:17:56 to this concept of the Six Thinking Hats
453. 00:17:59 but it sounds like there's even a whole company
454. 00:18:02 and training materials and probably certified coaches
455. 00:18:06 and all that kind of stuff around actually implementing this
456. 00:18:09 and at the very end of the book,
457. 00:18:10 they actually have someone you can write to
458. 00:18:12 to get more information on those training resources.
459. 00:18:16 So that kind of dates, I think how old this material is.
460. 00:18:21 I know I have the International Best Seller
461. 00:18:25 which is revised and updated.
462. 00:18:26 Is that the version that you got?
463. 00:18:28 - That is the version I got.
464. 00:18:29 - Okay, 'cause I know you had sent me a link at one point
465. 00:18:33 and you're like, "Is this the right one?"
466. 00:18:34 'Cause the covers are very, very different.
467. 00:18:36 We're reading the one that has like the hand drawn
468. 00:18:39 six colored top hats on both the front.
469. 00:18:42 - Yeah, and the copyright on the one we're reading
470. 00:18:45 is 1999, that's the latest copyright on the one we're reading.
471. 00:18:49 - Cool.
472. 00:18:50 It's broken down into sections based on the hat colors.
473. 00:18:54 So there's an introduction which has three chapters,
474. 00:18:57 talks about the general approach.
475. 00:18:59 And then there's a section on the white hat,
476. 00:19:01 a section on the red hat, a section on the black hat,
477. 00:19:04 a section on the yellow hat, a section on the green hat,
478. 00:19:07 a section on the black hat.
479. 00:19:09 Last one was a blue hat.
480. 00:19:10 - Oh, you're right, yeah.
481. 00:19:11 Did I say black again?
482. 00:19:13 - Yeah, you said black again.
483. 00:19:14 - Whoops, I haven't written down as blue in my mind map.
484. 00:19:18 Guess I need more coffee, I don't know.
485. 00:19:21 - Well, the funny thing is,
486. 00:19:21 when I was writing my notes on this,
487. 00:19:23 I did BHT for black hat thinking
488. 00:19:26 and then I did BHT for blue hat thinking
489. 00:19:28 and I didn't realize I did that until I went through
490. 00:19:29 my summary, I was like, "Huh, I didn't realize
491. 00:19:32 I gave it the same acronym."
492. 00:19:37 - So I like the structure of this book,
493. 00:19:39 I do have to ask you a question.
494. 00:19:41 Can you, 'cause I see you have the book in your hands,
495. 00:19:44 can you turn to page 169 for me?
496. 00:19:47 And tell me what chapter number you have there.
497. 00:19:50 - Yes, I noticed it too, yep, they're wrong.
498. 00:19:52 - Okay.
499. 00:19:53 - So it should be 42, 169 should be 42,
500. 00:19:56 and then once, what is it, 170 should be 43.
501. 00:20:00 - Yes, but that is also chapter 42 again.
502. 00:20:02 (laughs)
503. 00:20:04 - Yeah, it's typo.
504. 00:20:05 I noticed that too, I was like,
505. 00:20:06 "That actually usually doesn't happen,
506. 00:20:08 especially in chapter titles."
507. 00:20:10 You know, that's especially in like big business books.
508. 00:20:14 - Yeah.
509. 00:20:15 - So that was kind of weird, but.
510. 00:20:17 - I wanna double down with you though,
511. 00:20:19 on the fact that his other books
512. 00:20:21 sound really interesting as well,
513. 00:20:23 and I had this little mini thought of like,
514. 00:20:25 "Do we go down the DiBono rabbit hole?"
515. 00:20:28 Right, like the next three weeks,
516. 00:20:30 I was like, "Man, we probably shouldn't do that."
517. 00:20:31 But at the same time, I think I could, right?
518. 00:20:33 Like, lateral thinking is one of the books.
519. 00:20:35 Teach your child how to think is another one.
520. 00:20:39 Yes, what was the other one?
521. 00:20:40 Yes, something no.
522. 00:20:42 - I don't remember, I didn't-
523. 00:20:44 - But it sounded really interesting too,
524. 00:20:47 so I agreed with you on that aspect.
525. 00:20:49 - Yeah, so this, I think, is probably the thing
526. 00:20:54 that he is most well known for based on how it was positioned
527. 00:20:59 and like, go get more training at the end.
528. 00:21:02 But maybe not, because he did invent that term,
529. 00:21:04 lateral thinking in 1967, and that is the name of another book,
530. 00:21:09 and there's a lot of other, you're right,
531. 00:21:11 rabbit holes that could be gone down
532. 00:21:14 after using this as the springboard here.
533. 00:21:18 But I really like the premise of this book,
534. 00:21:22 which is that there's these six different types of hats
535. 00:21:24 that you can wear, and you have to put them on
536. 00:21:29 at different times, and it kind of changes your focus,
537. 00:21:33 and that is what allows you to have more effective meetings,
538. 00:21:38 think more completely about things, get better ideas,
539. 00:21:40 make better decisions, yada, yada, yada.
540. 00:21:43 So I think for the outline here,
541. 00:21:45 probably makes sense to talk about the intro,
542. 00:21:48 because that's kind of the format,
543. 00:21:50 and then there's 42 plus one chapters in a conclusion,
544. 00:21:57 (laughs)
545. 00:21:58 but we won't tackle it by chapter,
546. 00:22:01 we'll tackle it by the groupings of the colored hats,
547. 00:22:05 probably.
548. 00:22:06 - That's the same way I was thinking about doing it,
549. 00:22:07 so that's great.
550. 00:22:08 - Cool.
551. 00:22:09 All right, well, let's do the introduction here first.
552. 00:22:13 So the introduction has three chapters.
553. 00:22:16 The first one is an introduction,
554. 00:22:18 and he's trying to juxtapose traditional thinking,
555. 00:22:21 which is arguing until one side is proved right,
556. 00:22:23 with this idea of parallel thinking,
557. 00:22:24 where both views are put down in parallel,
558. 00:22:27 and then the way to embrace that parallel thinking
559. 00:22:30 is to wear these different hats.
560. 00:22:32 So there's six different directions of thinking
561. 00:22:34 that are represented by these hats, white,
562. 00:22:37 which is neutral and objective,
563. 00:22:39 it's concerned with facts and figures.
564. 00:22:41 The red hat is the emotional view,
565. 00:22:43 and the color kind of suggests anger.
566. 00:22:45 Black hat is like somber and serious,
567. 00:22:48 cautious and careful,
568. 00:22:49 points out the weaknesses of an idea.
569. 00:22:52 The yellow hat is sunny and positive, optimistic,
570. 00:22:54 covers hope and positive thinking.
571. 00:22:57 The green hat is abundant, fertile growth,
572. 00:22:59 indicates creativity and new ideas,
573. 00:23:01 and then the blue hat is kind of at another level
574. 00:23:04 above this cool color of the sky,
575. 00:23:06 it's above everything else,
576. 00:23:07 it's concerned with control
577. 00:23:08 and the organization of the thinking process.
578. 00:23:11 So this is more about thinking, about thinking,
579. 00:23:14 kind of meta.
580. 00:23:16 And there are different pairs of these
581. 00:23:18 that you can use in conjunction with one another,
582. 00:23:22 which I thought was interesting,
583. 00:23:23 so like white and red, black and yellow, green and blue.
584. 00:23:26 But really, the whole idea is that you're,
585. 00:23:30 let's say you're in a meeting with your team.
586. 00:23:33 And instead of just like naturally responding
587. 00:23:37 in a way that seems appropriate,
588. 00:23:39 the facilitator can say,
589. 00:23:41 okay, that's enough black hat thinking,
590. 00:23:43 now we need to switch into yellow hat thinking,
591. 00:23:46 give me some reasons why this idea might be a good one.
592. 00:23:51 And so you can kind of direct the thinking paths there
593. 00:23:53 and explore things more completely,
594. 00:23:56 which I can tell you,
595. 00:23:57 having been in enough team meetings
596. 00:24:00 that have gone off the rails,
597. 00:24:02 because someone just gets stuck in one of these modes,
598. 00:24:06 this is brilliant,
599. 00:24:07 and I wish I had come across this a lot sooner.
600. 00:24:10 - I could not agree more,
601. 00:24:13 I could not agree more in terms of the fact
602. 00:24:14 that just simplifying it down to these six hats
603. 00:24:18 and then basically giving everybody a common ground
604. 00:24:21 to talk on around that hat
605. 00:24:23 and giving some control or some direction of the meeting.
606. 00:24:26 I mean, it's just a really interesting concept.
607. 00:24:30 And whether you agree with all the hats
608. 00:24:32 and whether you agree with the way he breaks down all the hats
609. 00:24:34 or whatever that is,
610. 00:24:35 the general idea was revolutionary,
611. 00:24:39 sounds like too strong of a word,
612. 00:24:40 but I mean, it really kind of shocked me.
613. 00:24:43 I was like, wow, this is actually a really clever way
614. 00:24:45 to think about running a meeting,
615. 00:24:47 running an organization, trying to make a decision.
616. 00:24:50 One of the things I want to drive home here
617. 00:24:52 in the intro section is this idea of
618. 00:24:56 we're trying to set a direction for decision making, right?
619. 00:24:59 So he calls out the fact that the six hats
620. 00:25:02 in themselves really who cares.
621. 00:25:06 But what we're trying to do is we're trying to use those
622. 00:25:08 as a tool to set a direction.
623. 00:25:09 And then what he's going to do later on in the book
624. 00:25:11 and as he works through the book,
625. 00:25:12 he's going to start talking about it as a map.
626. 00:25:14 And I loved when he started talking about it as a map
627. 00:25:16 'cause that made so much sense to me is like,
628. 00:25:19 all right, the six, essentially the six hats
629. 00:25:21 allow us to develop the different components of the map.
630. 00:25:23 And then once we've developed the map,
631. 00:25:25 he says at one in here, the rest of it, it just unfolds, right?
632. 00:25:29 Like the decision just unfolds once we've developed the map.
633. 00:25:31 And I thought the way he frames the whole thing
634. 00:25:34 is just really, really clever.
635. 00:25:36 - I love the analogy of the map as well.
636. 00:25:39 There were a couple of analogies in here
637. 00:25:40 that I thought were really great.
638. 00:25:43 And it's kind of interesting.
639. 00:25:44 So like the map one resonates with me
640. 00:25:46 because of the great mental models by Shane Parrish
641. 00:25:50 and Rianna Bobbin, where that's where I first encountered
642. 00:25:52 the mental model of the map is not the territory.
643. 00:25:56 And I think that's a really powerful idea.
644. 00:25:59 I talk about that in my practical PKM cohort.
645. 00:26:04 So I literally just harped on that whole thing
646. 00:26:08 about you had to embrace the role of the cartographer
647. 00:26:10 and you get to choose what should be on this map.
648. 00:26:14 And essentially, like what he's talking about here
649. 00:26:16 is the same sort of process with the people in a group.
650. 00:26:21 And then you got to charge your way forward
651. 00:26:23 based on the information that you decided should be on there.
652. 00:26:25 There's another one in here about ideas as like plants
653. 00:26:30 and having like a greenhouse and developing them.
654. 00:26:32 And that's like the basis of the creativity flywheel thing
655. 00:26:36 that again, I taught in the practical PKM cohort.
656. 00:26:40 And it's using a little bit of a different context,
657. 00:26:43 but the lot of the same perspective,
658. 00:26:47 same ideas are there.
659. 00:26:50 So in some ways, selfishly, I liked it as validation
660. 00:26:54 for some of the stuff that makes sense to me
661. 00:26:57 and haven't teach other people.
662. 00:26:58 Like they seem to like it, but then it's like,
663. 00:27:00 oh, well, actually, here's someone else
664. 00:27:01 who thinks about it that way.
665. 00:27:03 That's kind of cool.
666. 00:27:04 - Yeah, I'll call out a couple other things
667. 00:27:06 that I got out of this intro is this came from him
668. 00:27:09 working with actual clients
669. 00:27:12 and trying to support them in a consulting effort.
670. 00:27:15 So on the very back of the book,
671. 00:27:18 he's worked with IBM, Exxon DuPont,
672. 00:27:21 Prudential, Procter & Gamble, General Foods, Shell,
673. 00:27:23 and all these other companies.
674. 00:27:25 And basically he calls out and he says,
675. 00:27:27 hey, this came from me working with these people.
676. 00:27:29 And he throws out some stats or some like,
677. 00:27:33 look how successful this is.
678. 00:27:35 And that's less relevant, but it comes from practice,
679. 00:27:38 which I like that idea.
680. 00:27:40 I like that there's a theory behind it
681. 00:27:42 and you can tell that there's a theory
682. 00:27:43 of lateral thinking behind it, which is a different book.
683. 00:27:46 This is the, look how this has worked in practice.
684. 00:27:49 I really like that.
685. 00:27:50 And then he drives home this idea of argument,
686. 00:27:52 which we're gonna get to when we get to Black Hat.
687. 00:27:54 But like he drives him this idea of,
688. 00:27:55 most of the time when we're trying to do this,
689. 00:27:57 we end up just arguing with each other for the most part.
690. 00:28:00 And this helps get rid of that argument
691. 00:28:02 and allows it to exist in a certain phase of the process,
692. 00:28:06 not across the entire meeting,
693. 00:28:08 which being a faculty member and sitting through meetings,
694. 00:28:11 all I can tell you is the amount of useless arguments
695. 00:28:14 that happen is just absolutely crazy.
696. 00:28:18 And we waste so much time because we're arguing
697. 00:28:20 over silly little things that like don't drive us forward at all.
698. 00:28:23 So yeah, he resonated with me there as well.
699. 00:28:27 - Yeah, well, we're gonna get to that sooner than you think.
700. 00:28:30 I believe because let's go into the first part here,
701. 00:28:33 which is the White Hat.
702. 00:28:35 And right away in chapter four, he talks about
703. 00:28:38 how the White Hat is just the facts without the argument.
704. 00:28:42 And this is where he really leans into this Western thinking,
705. 00:28:46 which is that we give a conclusion
706. 00:28:49 and then we share facts to support it.
707. 00:28:51 So if everybody takes that approach,
708. 00:28:53 it's really easy to see how the arguments arise.
709. 00:28:56 (laughs)
710. 00:28:57 It reminds me of something that I wrote about actually
711. 00:29:01 in last week's newsletter that I picked up
712. 00:29:04 from Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray,
713. 00:29:07 which is that the internet specifically
714. 00:29:10 is a grocery store for facts.
715. 00:29:12 And you can find whatever fact you want to support
716. 00:29:16 whatever belief you want to have.
717. 00:29:20 And then you have people who are going through all this
718. 00:29:23 information to find specific things to reinforce
719. 00:29:25 these beliefs that they already have.
720. 00:29:28 And is it any wonder why like that's not productive
721. 00:29:32 and why there's so many internet philosophers
722. 00:29:34 who are willing to argue about anything and everything?
723. 00:29:39 So the White Hat is essentially don't view
724. 00:29:44 the information that way.
725. 00:29:46 And it actually talks about there's two types of facts here.
726. 00:29:50 There are believed facts and there are checked facts.
727. 00:29:52 And I don't think it's quite that simple.
728. 00:29:54 Like you can manipulate data to say whatever you want.
729. 00:30:00 So I think there has to be a little bit more nuance there
730. 00:30:02 with check facts.
731. 00:30:04 However, the way to have the most productive conversation
732. 00:30:08 with the people in your group is not to put forth
733. 00:30:11 something at a higher level than actually is the case.
734. 00:30:14 And one of the things I liked about this book,
735. 00:30:16 which is a recurring theme throughout all these chapters,
736. 00:30:18 is there's like a short paragraph or two about the concept
737. 00:30:22 and then like five different examples of how it might
738. 00:30:26 manifest through the mouth of somebody in a meeting,
739. 00:30:29 which is always in the book denoted by like three dots
740. 00:30:32 before the example.
741. 00:30:34 And there are so many that by the end of the book
742. 00:30:36 it does feel a little bit laborious to keep reading those.
743. 00:30:41 But I do think that they provide excellent context
744. 00:30:44 and help you generalize like how this stuff
745. 00:30:46 can actually be used.
746. 00:30:48 - Yeah, going back to that fact and truth.
747. 00:30:51 Actually, let me start where you were.
748. 00:30:53 I agree, I got tired of those towards the end,
749. 00:30:55 but I don't think it was because they weren't valuable.
750. 00:30:57 I think it was because you had just seen so many of them
751. 00:30:59 by that time.
752. 00:31:00 It makes me think that this book would be really, really good
753. 00:31:03 if I was a facilitator or a leader or one of the people
754. 00:31:06 working people through the six hats process
755. 00:31:08 or the six hats method before I hit that hat,
756. 00:31:12 I'm gonna review and I'm gonna say,
757. 00:31:14 okay, what would this look like in practice?
758. 00:31:15 What would this look like in practice?
759. 00:31:16 Going back to the facts, he makes a claim here
760. 00:31:20 that truth is not always fact.
761. 00:31:22 And then you talked about the internet being a repository
762. 00:31:24 of facts and it's like, it all kind of gelled in my head.
763. 00:31:27 It's like the way he describes facts are,
764. 00:31:29 they're like the by and large on the whole,
765. 00:31:32 mostly aligns, right?
766. 00:31:34 And you can do that with anything, right?
767. 00:31:36 Like if you look hard enough or if you dig down
768. 00:31:38 the right rabbit holes, you can say,
769. 00:31:39 well, for the most part, this is true.
770. 00:31:42 And then you call that a fact.
771. 00:31:44 And then he can contrast that with truth.
772. 00:31:47 And truth is always something that aligns
773. 00:31:50 with a certain definition.
774. 00:31:52 So therefore, okay, here's the definition
775. 00:31:53 and then here is truth.
776. 00:31:55 And those are the things that support that definition
777. 00:31:57 or those are the pieces of data that go into that definition.
778. 00:32:00 And I thought that was a really interesting way
779. 00:32:02 to kind of separate those two ideas in my head.
780. 00:32:05 I'd never heard anybody present it that way.
781. 00:32:07 - Yeah, he's got a whole spectrum of likelihood,
782. 00:32:09 which is great, you know, where you start at the top,
783. 00:32:11 always true, usually true, generally true, by and large,
784. 00:32:14 more often than not, about half the time, often,
785. 00:32:16 sometimes true, occasionally true,
786. 00:32:17 but no one to happen, never true, cannot be true.
787. 00:32:20 And I feel like just having those definitions,
788. 00:32:23 not that I'm going to memorize those or anything,
789. 00:32:25 having those in your vocabulary for when you're trying
790. 00:32:27 to figure out what are these facts
791. 00:32:30 and these figures that people are sharing,
792. 00:32:32 like which one of those does that apply to?
793. 00:32:35 Could be really helpful.
794. 00:32:36 The other thing I loved in this section
795. 00:32:38 is chapter six, Japanese style input.
796. 00:32:41 You talked about how Japanese meetings
797. 00:32:43 are not consensus meetings,
798. 00:32:44 which is really what most meetings devolve into
799. 00:32:49 that I've been a part of.
800. 00:32:50 - Yes, yes.
801. 00:32:53 So everyone can have their own ideas
802. 00:32:55 and multiple ideas can be true.
803. 00:32:59 With the Western meetings that I've been a part of,
804. 00:33:01 it's like, let's get everybody convinced
805. 00:33:02 that this is the best thing to do.
806. 00:33:05 And there's a Jeff Bezos idea, like disagree,
807. 00:33:08 but commit, which is helpful to kind of combat that.
808. 00:33:10 But this is even more effective, I think,
809. 00:33:12 the way that he's describing this,
810. 00:33:14 where you can have your idea, I can have my idea,
811. 00:33:17 and we're not going to have these preformed ideas.
812. 00:33:19 The goal of this meeting is not for me to win you over.
813. 00:33:22 It's just to listen.
814. 00:33:24 And then the other thing from this,
815. 00:33:25 which is the beginning of the greenhouse idea,
816. 00:33:29 there's a Japanese notion that ideas emerge as seedlings
817. 00:33:31 and then are nurtured and allowed to grow into shape.
818. 00:33:34 And I think this is absolutely spot on.
819. 00:33:36 I said in the cohort, just a couple of weeks ago,
820. 00:33:39 that you don't know what an idea is when you have it.
821. 00:33:42 You have to give it time to mature.
822. 00:33:43 Everything seems like the best idea in the world,
823. 00:33:45 the moment that you have it.
824. 00:33:47 And actually, there's a quote that I share that,
825. 00:33:49 "Ideas are dangerous when they're the..."
826. 00:33:53 An idea is most dangerous when it's the only one you have,
827. 00:33:56 because you're like, "This has to work."
828. 00:33:59 And I can totally see, as he's describing it here,
829. 00:34:01 how that's the Western approach is like,
830. 00:34:03 let's get an idea.
831. 00:34:04 Okay, this seems plausible, let's make this happen,
832. 00:34:06 whether considering any of the other alternatives,
833. 00:34:09 which we'll get into in the other hats.
834. 00:34:11 - Chapter six is where I called out
835. 00:34:13 the first discussion of a map,
836. 00:34:16 where he first calls out the map idea.
837. 00:34:18 And basically, that neutral input, and then just listening.
838. 00:34:21 So you state your neutral input,
839. 00:34:23 and then you step back and you listen.
840. 00:34:25 And what we're doing there is we're building the map.
841. 00:34:27 We're putting all the features on the map,
842. 00:34:28 and all the features on the map are the facts.
843. 00:34:30 And it's funny, 'cause I just had this happen to me
844. 00:34:33 earlier this week, where we've been thinking about a thing
845. 00:34:38 for quite a while now, and then we got some more information,
846. 00:34:41 and we started to do some analysis on it,
847. 00:34:43 and we went, "Oh my, the facts are very different
848. 00:34:46 "than what we thought they were."
849. 00:34:47 Like, if we just look objectively at the spreadsheet,
850. 00:34:49 and the way things are, that's very different
851. 00:34:51 than what we thought they were.
852. 00:34:52 And it changed the way we thought about the map, right?
853. 00:34:55 We had this assumption, or we had this thing before.
854. 00:34:58 So I really liked that idea.
855. 00:35:01 I think the last thing I'll do,
856. 00:35:02 'cause I feel like we're heading towards the next hat,
857. 00:35:05 would say the way he summarizes this at the very end
858. 00:35:08 was good to me.
859. 00:35:10 Basically imitate a computer.
860. 00:35:13 Like the computer doesn't do any argumentation,
861. 00:35:15 the computer doesn't do any, kind of trying to sway you
862. 00:35:18 in any way, you ask it a question,
863. 00:35:20 and it says, "There are 100,000 records."
864. 00:35:24 Boom, like stop.
865. 00:35:25 And I like that idea, 'cause that put a good mental mindset.
866. 00:35:28 When I go into this, it's like, "What's the white hat?"
867. 00:35:30 The white hat is, "You asked me a question,
868. 00:35:32 "I'm spitting back an answer, and I'm giving you information,
869. 00:35:34 "and I'm gonna stop right there."
870. 00:35:35 Now, whether AI is changing that,
871. 00:35:37 that's a whole other story, or large language models,
872. 00:35:40 whether they're changing that's a whole other story,
873. 00:35:41 but I like that analogy.
874. 00:35:43 I like the way to think about that like a computer.
875. 00:35:46 - Yeah, so when you're talking about thinking
876. 00:35:48 like a computer, essentially what you're saying
877. 00:35:49 is decoupling the emotion from the information,
878. 00:35:53 and you're right, that is the place
879. 00:35:55 to go into the next section.
880. 00:35:57 So the next part of this is the red hat,
881. 00:36:02 and the red hat is all about emotion and feeling.
882. 00:36:06 And this is another thing that I have been frustrated with
883. 00:36:12 in meetings is trying to remove this from the process.
884. 00:36:17 I mean, there are times when you want to do that,
885. 00:36:19 like you were just talking about the computer
886. 00:36:21 and the facts and the white hat thinking mode,
887. 00:36:24 but it's kinda stupid and naive to say,
888. 00:36:28 "Don't make emotional decisions,"
889. 00:36:30 'cause they're going to weigh in
890. 00:36:32 at some point in the process.
891. 00:36:34 That's actually one of the big takeaways for me
892. 00:36:36 from this section is that if emotions and feelings
893. 00:36:39 are not permitted as inputs in the thinking process,
894. 00:36:42 they're going to lurk in the background.
895. 00:36:45 And he calls out, he's got a lot of these little lists,
896. 00:36:47 which are kinda spot on,
897. 00:36:49 but he talks about three points
898. 00:36:50 where emotion can affect your thinking.
899. 00:36:53 First, it can be affecting it by being a background emotion.
900. 00:36:57 Second, it can be triggered by an initial perception,
901. 00:37:00 so something that happens in a meeting, for example.
902. 00:37:03 And then the third way, and this is the productive way,
903. 00:37:05 is after the map has been put together.
904. 00:37:08 So kinda the brilliance of these hats is,
905. 00:37:11 someone is responding emotionally
906. 00:37:13 to something in a meeting.
907. 00:37:15 You could say, "Okay, I recognize those emotions,
908. 00:37:17 "but we're gonna put on the white hat for right now."
909. 00:37:21 And we'll come back to that later.
910. 00:37:23 And that frees you to make the switch.
911. 00:37:27 One of the most frustrating things for me in a meeting
912. 00:37:32 is feeling like I am not being heard.
913. 00:37:36 And a lot of this comes down to crappy facilitation.
914. 00:37:39 But one of the ways that you can put someone
915. 00:37:44 who is in that position, make them feel heard,
916. 00:37:47 and instantly make the meeting more productive
917. 00:37:51 is not to say, just put a pin in that,
918. 00:37:55 but to recognize like, okay, yeah, that's red hat thinking,
919. 00:37:58 that's good in its proper place,
920. 00:38:01 but that's not the place that we are right now.
921. 00:38:03 So I need you to switch to this other mode.
922. 00:38:06 And that doesn't mean that it happens automatically
923. 00:38:08 or that you always are in the right mode.
924. 00:38:11 That's the job of a good facilitator
925. 00:38:13 is to make sure everybody's thinking about things
926. 00:38:15 the same way.
927. 00:38:16 But I love the fact that he calls out essentially
928. 00:38:19 that this is really important,
929. 00:38:21 but you also have to use it in the proper place.
930. 00:38:25 - Yep, I like that he also says,
931. 00:38:28 everybody must tell their red hat
932. 00:38:30 or everybody must tell their emotion,
933. 00:38:33 which I think is really, really valuable
934. 00:38:34 because it's there, right?
935. 00:38:36 We've established the baseline
936. 00:38:37 that everybody has emotion on this.
937. 00:38:39 Even if your emotion is neutral
938. 00:38:40 and he calls that out, he goes,
939. 00:38:41 maybe you don't have a very strong feeling on this,
940. 00:38:43 you're not excited or angry or whatever that is,
941. 00:38:46 you're just kind of neutral about it, state that.
942. 00:38:48 Like make sure you state that.
943. 00:38:49 And I think what that does is that force is in a good way.
944. 00:38:53 I don't mean this in a bad way,
945. 00:38:53 it forces people to actually go, oh, this is,
946. 00:38:57 like if I'm willing to say this,
947. 00:38:58 this is actually what I feel about this.
948. 00:39:00 And then if you have established the baseline
949. 00:39:02 to where there is no bad emotion,
950. 00:39:05 you can feel however you need to feel about this
951. 00:39:07 or however you want to feel,
952. 00:39:07 or whatever your gut is telling you you feel about this,
953. 00:39:10 that's okay, what we're doing right now
954. 00:39:12 is acknowledging the emotion
955. 00:39:13 because he calls out here that you don't have to justify it.
956. 00:39:17 And if you start justifying the emotions
957. 00:39:19 in red hat thinking, you're doing it wrong
958. 00:39:22 because all you should be doing right now
959. 00:39:23 is calling out the emotion and saying,
960. 00:39:25 "I'm excited about this fact,
961. 00:39:28 "I'm excited about this decision
962. 00:39:29 "or this thing we're thinking through.
963. 00:39:31 "I'm gonna keep harp on this
964. 00:39:32 "because I just love the connection so much."
965. 00:39:36 He states here that thinking makes the map,
966. 00:39:39 values and emotion determine the root.
967. 00:39:42 And I really, really like thinking about it this way
968. 00:39:45 because sure, thinking makes me lay out the land
969. 00:39:49 and these are all the facts I'm thinking about
970. 00:39:50 and these are maybe the paths through that.
971. 00:39:52 And then how do I make my decision?
972. 00:39:54 I always make my decision based on emotions.
973. 00:39:56 I like that one, I don't like that one.
974. 00:39:58 That one feels the best,
975. 00:39:59 I'm the most confident in this other one.
976. 00:40:00 It's like, I always make it based on values in emotion
977. 00:40:04 even if it's wrong.
978. 00:40:05 Like even if I make the wrong decision
979. 00:40:07 and I know I'm making the wrong decision,
980. 00:40:09 I'm usually gonna make it based on values and emotion
981. 00:40:11 which I really connected with that piece too.
982. 00:40:15 - Yeah, I think this is maybe the most important section
983. 00:40:20 of the book for me because I tend to be pretty passionate
984. 00:40:29 and I have long fought for like productive meetings
985. 00:40:33 being ones where we have healthy conflict.
986. 00:40:37 And healthy conflict is where you're able to separate
987. 00:40:41 the ideas from the people who have them,
988. 00:40:44 the groups that I've been a part of,
989. 00:40:46 it feels like I can enter into that mode a lot easier
990. 00:40:51 than a lot of the other people
991. 00:40:55 that I've been in those situations with.
992. 00:40:57 And it's hard for me to hold back
993. 00:41:01 because I care so much about we gotta work through this.
994. 00:41:06 Let's not meet for two hours
995. 00:41:09 and then not accomplish anything
996. 00:41:12 and have the same meeting again next week.
997. 00:41:14 Like why is that okay with anybody?
998. 00:41:18 - I agree.
999. 00:41:18 - It boggles my mind.
1000. 00:41:20 So like there's obviously something here.
1001. 00:41:23 Let's put our big boy pants on and let's just talk about it
1002. 00:41:27 but there are things that you can do in the meeting structure
1003. 00:41:31 like starting in on a positive focus.
1004. 00:41:33 That's something we did at the day job prior to this.
1005. 00:41:35 That was really helpful.
1006. 00:41:37 Definitely move the needle here.
1007. 00:41:39 But I've also seen how like whenever people get emotional
1008. 00:41:44 about things, the default reaction in a lot of the meetings
1009. 00:41:47 I've been in is to just kind of sweep it under the rug.
1010. 00:41:51 It's like, well, that's a bad thing
1011. 00:41:53 and you just gotta cool down and come back tomorrow
1012. 00:41:56 when you don't feel so strongly.
1013. 00:41:58 And I'm like, that just makes it worse.
1014. 00:42:01 - Yes it does.
1015. 00:42:02 - He talks in here about legitimizing the emotions
1016. 00:42:05 and you hit on something.
1017. 00:42:06 He said that you don't have to have a justification for it.
1018. 00:42:10 Now, I think that's the other thing that I feel
1019. 00:42:14 because of the responses I've seen from people.
1020. 00:42:16 It's like, I have to have a justification for these emotions.
1021. 00:42:19 So it's kind of freeing to me to hear like,
1022. 00:42:21 no, you can just feel what you feel.
1023. 00:42:23 But I think there's another thing
1024. 00:42:25 that this ties to something from a previous book
1025. 00:42:27 that we read and I'm blanking on the book,
1026. 00:42:28 but I know that I talked to you about this
1027. 00:42:31 in the last couple of episodes
1028. 00:42:32 where one of my action items was not saying,
1029. 00:42:36 "You did this and then it made me feel this way
1030. 00:42:39 but I feel this way because this happened."
1031. 00:42:42 And for me, this is like the perfect combination
1032. 00:42:45 of like the white and the red hat.
1033. 00:42:47 The red hat is I'm feeling this way
1034. 00:42:49 and I don't have to justify why I feel this way
1035. 00:42:52 but the thing that has triggered this emotion
1036. 00:42:53 if I look at it objectively is this information,
1037. 00:42:56 which is not coupled to positive negative judgment,
1038. 00:43:00 but this thing that happened,
1039. 00:43:02 we're not gonna discuss whose fault it is,
1040. 00:43:04 but it's a thing that happened
1041. 00:43:06 and that is the thing that caused me to feel this way.
1042. 00:43:08 I feel like understanding that connection
1043. 00:43:10 can be really valuable.
1044. 00:43:12 It's just when you attach it to somebody else
1045. 00:43:15 and we judge other people by their actions,
1046. 00:43:17 ourselves by our intentions and we say,
1047. 00:43:18 "Oh, well, you did this on purpose to get under my skin."
1048. 00:43:22 That's where things get unhealthy.
1049. 00:43:25 - Yeah, I agree.
1050. 00:43:26 I mean, he talks about how one of the reasons
1051. 00:43:29 why you don't justify is because they can be fickle
1052. 00:43:32 and I can tell you from personal experience,
1053. 00:43:34 there are times when I'm just,
1054. 00:43:36 I get into a meeting and something happens
1055. 00:43:38 and I'm like, "Well, that's dumb."
1056. 00:43:40 Like, that's just a dumb idea.
1057. 00:43:41 And then 30 minutes later, an hour and a half later,
1058. 00:43:44 I'm like, "Actually, that really wasn't a dumb idea.
1059. 00:43:46 I don't know why I thought it was a dumb idea in that meeting
1060. 00:43:48 but I had that strong emotion, which is fine,
1061. 00:43:50 like it was there."
1062. 00:43:51 And then later on, I have a completely different emotion
1063. 00:43:54 to round that out.
1064. 00:43:55 The book you're referencing was
1065. 00:43:58 the Difficult Conversations book.
1066. 00:43:59 That's where that was. - Oh, right.
1067. 00:44:00 - That's where that was. - Obviously.
1068. 00:44:01 Yeah. (laughs)
1069. 00:44:02 Should've thought of that one.
1070. 00:44:03 - Yep.
1071. 00:44:05 - All right.
1072. 00:44:06 - Black hat?
1073. 00:44:07 - Yeah, let's go to the black hat.
1074. 00:44:08 So the black hat is maybe the one
1075. 00:44:11 that I operate in most naturally. (laughs)
1076. 00:44:16 And I don't think I'm naturally a negative
1077. 00:44:19 or pessimistic person,
1078. 00:44:21 but I guess after reading through this whole book
1079. 00:44:24 and realizing the different hats,
1080. 00:44:26 I kinda noticed that I go back and forth
1081. 00:44:30 in these different modes sort of naturally.
1082. 00:44:34 And I feel like not always 'cause I'm the facilitator
1083. 00:44:37 of the meetings, but I see the need
1084. 00:44:40 for these additional perspectives.
1085. 00:44:42 This is the one that traditionally
1086. 00:44:45 the groups I've been involved in,
1087. 00:44:46 people don't wanna touch this one.
1088. 00:44:49 - Really?
1089. 00:44:50 - Yeah, yeah.
1090. 00:44:51 And it's hard for me because someone
1091. 00:44:54 will be sharing an idea, oh, this is amazing.
1092. 00:44:56 We should just totally go for it.
1093. 00:44:57 And in the back of my mind, I'm like holding backs.
1094. 00:44:59 I'm like, I see about a dozen ways
1095. 00:45:02 that this could go sideways.
1096. 00:45:04 And I'm gonna let somebody else say something.
1097. 00:45:06 And then the longer it goes with nobody else saying anything,
1098. 00:45:09 I feel like more bricks get put in the backpack
1099. 00:45:12 that I'm carrying.
1100. 00:45:13 And I feel this stress and anxiety.
1101. 00:45:15 I'm like, how does nobody see this?
1102. 00:45:18 So then I'll say it because I feel like it needs to be said.
1103. 00:45:23 And then if you don't have a healthy atmosphere,
1104. 00:45:26 that comes across as well.
1105. 00:45:28 You're attacking my idea, therefore you're attacking me.
1106. 00:45:32 I don't know, maybe I just haven't been
1107. 00:45:34 in enough really high functioning teams.
1108. 00:45:37 - What I think's interesting is he calls this out
1109. 00:45:40 as the most used.
1110. 00:45:41 He says in most meetings, this is the most used.
1111. 00:45:44 And you have the opposite scenario
1112. 00:45:45 where the meetings you're in for whatever special magic group
1113. 00:45:49 of people that you have, they are the opposite of this.
1114. 00:45:52 They are the yellow hat people.
1115. 00:45:54 And you're the black hat person in the room.
1116. 00:45:57 So that's interesting.
1117. 00:45:58 I do not have that same experience.
1118. 00:46:00 Most of the meetings I'm in, this cautious, careful,
1119. 00:46:03 survival, ethical kind of thing,
1120. 00:46:06 that's 100% what governs 99% of the meeting.
1121. 00:46:09 And then we have to really fight for anything else
1122. 00:46:12 in the meeting.
1123. 00:46:13 - Yeah, well, I should clarify this a little bit
1124. 00:46:15 because I feel like there is a baseline level
1125. 00:46:19 for an effective meeting, which is you have to have
1126. 00:46:22 an agenda.
1127. 00:46:23 And there are some groups that I'm in
1128. 00:46:25 that don't even get to that point.
1129. 00:46:27 (laughs)
1130. 00:46:28 - So that would be, for those of you who want to know
1131. 00:46:29 where we're going, that would be the blue hat thinking
1132. 00:46:31 of this whole situation.
1133. 00:46:33 - So once you have the agenda, then I think the default
1134. 00:46:38 can be to go into the black hat thinking.
1135. 00:46:40 And there are definitely times in my working life
1136. 00:46:44 specifically where we have the agenda
1137. 00:46:46 and this is the purpose of the meeting.
1138. 00:46:48 And I can totally see how not me, but other people
1139. 00:46:52 have gotten stuck in this particular area.
1140. 00:46:54 And in that instance, it's frustrating to me
1141. 00:46:57 because I feel like, okay, we're gonna talk about this thing
1142. 00:47:00 and the black hat just keeps throwing out
1143. 00:47:02 more and more scenarios.
1144. 00:47:03 Oh, well, we gotta get more and more information.
1145. 00:47:06 And so I had to embrace a different role
1146. 00:47:08 where it's like, no, we have enough information.
1147. 00:47:12 Let's just make a decision.
1148. 00:47:14 There's 10 things on our agenda for this 90 minute meeting
1149. 00:47:17 and we've spent 75 minutes talking about the first one,
1150. 00:47:21 which is not even the most important one.
1151. 00:47:23 So let's move along here, people.
1152. 00:47:25 It's gonna be okay. (laughs)
1153. 00:47:27 Which is not a natural thing for me,
1154. 00:47:32 but I guess I see the need to embrace a different role
1155. 00:47:37 and so I'll jump in there.
1156. 00:47:38 It's always uncomfortable for me to do that.
1157. 00:47:41 And I think side note here that these different hats,
1158. 00:47:45 he talks about how everyone needs to be able to go back
1159. 00:47:47 and forth between these different hats.
1160. 00:47:49 So you can't hide behind the justification
1161. 00:47:52 of, oh, well, my personality is naturally this way.
1162. 00:47:56 That's a data point.
1163. 00:47:57 That's fine.
1164. 00:47:58 You can use that, but you need to get over that
1165. 00:48:02 at some point and learn to think different ways.
1166. 00:48:05 And I do think that the way that he's talking about
1167. 00:48:08 these different approaches, this is thinking is a skill.
1168. 00:48:12 He actually talks later on about how creativity is a skill.
1169. 00:48:14 I totally agree, those two are very much linked,
1170. 00:48:17 but if you can learn to think better,
1171. 00:48:20 then you can have more productive meetings.
1172. 00:48:25 And that's really, there's another aspect of this
1173. 00:48:27 where you can switch between these different modes
1174. 00:48:29 at an individual level, but I really do think
1175. 00:48:32 where this gets multiplied exponentially
1176. 00:48:34 in terms of its effectiveness is when you have
1177. 00:48:38 a team of people, probably at least five or six people,
1178. 00:48:41 where you have to have some sort of baseline framework
1179. 00:48:45 of this is how we're going to do this.
1180. 00:48:48 Like a shared rules of engagement.
1181. 00:48:51 - I would agree with you.
1182. 00:48:52 I think he calls out a couple of different things
1183. 00:48:55 that you were touching on and you may be hitting.
1184. 00:48:57 I wanna re-hit those is we're all gonna have
1185. 00:48:59 some way that we're wired.
1186. 00:49:01 So I can tell you I'm wired green hat yellow hat.
1187. 00:49:03 If I look at this, I'm wired green hat yellow hat.
1188. 00:49:05 So for me to do the other things,
1189. 00:49:07 I have to think about those a little bit harder,
1190. 00:49:10 but like you said, you can't hide behind that.
1191. 00:49:12 You still have to engage in the full process.
1192. 00:49:14 Another one, he calls out the fact that
1193. 00:49:17 black is the most used hat to be critical.
1194. 00:49:21 Most people find it easy to be critical.
1195. 00:49:23 And he says, do that, that's great.
1196. 00:49:26 We need you to be critical,
1197. 00:49:27 but if we're not in black hat thinking mode,
1198. 00:49:30 just write it down and let it go.
1199. 00:49:32 Because if not, you're going to be that person
1200. 00:49:35 who's always going to throw out that critical idea
1201. 00:49:37 when we're not in that part of our thinking.
1202. 00:49:39 And it's not that you shouldn't capture that.
1203. 00:49:41 It's just a matter of this isn't
1204. 00:49:42 when we're supposed to think about this.
1205. 00:49:43 And you're gonna end up derailing the meeting,
1206. 00:49:45 which is what you're getting at is 75 minutes of,
1207. 00:49:48 we're still on agenda item number one.
1208. 00:49:49 Why? Because everybody just kept harping on these things.
1209. 00:49:53 I think he does a really good job
1210. 00:49:58 where he says it comes from past experience.
1211. 00:50:01 And essentially our black hat thinking is,
1212. 00:50:03 how does this fit with past experience?
1213. 00:50:06 How does this fit with our strategy?
1214. 00:50:07 How does this fit with the ethics and the values
1215. 00:50:09 that we hold?
1216. 00:50:10 And what we're doing in black hat thinking is
1217. 00:50:12 we're trying to resolve all of that at the same time
1218. 00:50:16 and resolve, I don't think it's the right word,
1219. 00:50:17 but you know what I mean?
1220. 00:50:18 We're trying to figure that out at the same time is,
1221. 00:50:20 does this fit with my past experience?
1222. 00:50:22 Does this fit with my ethics and my values?
1223. 00:50:24 Does this fit with the strategy
1224. 00:50:25 that I think we're supposed to be going on?
1225. 00:50:26 And that's where the critical nature of it comes in.
1226. 00:50:28 And that's good, just don't do it too much.
1227. 00:50:31 Don't go overboard, overboard with it.
1228. 00:50:34 - The other thing with this is that
1229. 00:50:37 overuse of the black hat can be ego driven.
1230. 00:50:41 So it's tied to like, I need to make sure I get my way
1231. 00:50:46 or a less distasteful version of that maybe is
1232. 00:50:52 I need to make sure that I'm being heard.
1233. 00:50:54 So a lot of times I feel like the overuse of the black hat
1234. 00:50:57 is simply a bad facilitator.
1235. 00:50:59 But then the other thing that goes with this,
1236. 00:51:03 and you were kind of hitting on this,
1237. 00:51:04 that it's easy to be critical.
1238. 00:51:06 So you mentioned this chapter 20,
1239. 00:51:07 it's easier to be critical than it is to be constructive.
1240. 00:51:12 So anytime that you're gonna be in black hat thinking,
1241. 00:51:16 you have to have the understanding
1242. 00:51:18 that we're talking about the idea,
1243. 00:51:19 not about the person who had it.
1244. 00:51:21 Okay, so now let's pick this apart,
1245. 00:51:23 but then let's not just pick it apart to be like,
1246. 00:51:25 oh, well, that's a terrible idea,
1247. 00:51:27 but maybe there's a way we can redeem this.
1248. 00:51:30 Maybe we can turn this around in some way
1249. 00:51:32 'cause black hat is all about like pointing out the problems,
1250. 00:51:35 but those problems can be overcome.
1251. 00:51:37 And so I think that's the other thing
1252. 00:51:38 that frustrates me with this is that's how I tend
1253. 00:51:43 to view things is like, okay, so you wanna do this?
1254. 00:51:47 Well, I don't think that's a great idea because XYZ,
1255. 00:51:50 but I understand where you're coming from,
1256. 00:51:52 and maybe we should try a different approach
1257. 00:51:56 with that same thing.
1258. 00:51:59 And what if we did it this way instead?
1259. 00:52:02 I kinda go back and forth between that pretty easily,
1260. 00:52:05 but it bothers me when people get stuck and like,
1261. 00:52:09 no, no, no, this is why we can't, we can't, we can't,
1262. 00:52:11 we can't, we can't.
1263. 00:52:12 And then I've seen other people who are like
1264. 00:52:13 at the top of the food chain in the meetings
1265. 00:52:15 and like, I'm sick of you telling me
1266. 00:52:17 that we can't do this stuff all the time.
1267. 00:52:19 Like, can we do something, please?
1268. 00:52:22 Seems like a lot of visionaries are like that.
1269. 00:52:24 They just wanna do something.
1270. 00:52:25 So maybe they're more naturally yellow hat
1271. 00:52:28 and the integrators like me are more naturally black hat.
1272. 00:52:30 I don't know.
1273. 00:52:31 Well, and what you're calling out is you're calling out
1274. 00:52:33 what he would call, so you said problems, right?
1275. 00:52:36 But you're calling out obstacles, risks,
1276. 00:52:38 these caution points, and this was the point
1277. 00:52:41 I was trying to get to at the very end,
1278. 00:52:42 if you heard me trying to trail off on the last thing,
1279. 00:52:44 I was trying to get to tying it into the map, right?
1280. 00:52:46 So these are when we're drawing our map,
1281. 00:52:48 these are where we put the caution points is,
1282. 00:52:50 oh, we need to be careful here, we need to be careful here,
1283. 00:52:52 we need to be cautious in this area.
1284. 00:52:54 And again, if you think about this from a,
1285. 00:52:57 what are we trying to do?
1286. 00:52:58 We're trying to make a decision, we're trying to take action.
1287. 00:53:00 So the point of all of the six hats thinking
1288. 00:53:03 is to be able to make a decision and take action.
1289. 00:53:06 We need that.
1290. 00:53:07 We need to know the caution points.
1291. 00:53:09 We need to know where the risks are
1292. 00:53:11 in order to see our way through the map
1293. 00:53:13 and actually figure out a route and make our way through.
1294. 00:53:16 And I think what he's trying to get at here
1295. 00:53:19 and really trying to drive home in this chapter is,
1296. 00:53:21 just don't do it too much.
1297. 00:53:23 If your whole map is caution points,
1298. 00:53:25 there's no route through there, right?
1299. 00:53:27 Like if everything is sharks and lasers,
1300. 00:53:29 you're never gonna make it, never gonna make it through.
1301. 00:53:32 I like that, everything is sharks and lasers.
1302. 00:53:36 I'm totally stealing that.
1303. 00:53:38 Anything else on the black hat?
1304. 00:53:39 'Cause that actually is a great segue
1305. 00:53:40 into the next section here.
1306. 00:53:42 Nope, let's go yellow.
1307. 00:53:44 Okay, so the next section is the yellow hat
1308. 00:53:46 and this is kind of the yin for the yang with the black hat.
1309. 00:53:51 If the black hat is about, I'll say negativity,
1310. 00:53:56 but not necessarily, it's more nuanced than that,
1311. 00:53:59 but that's how it can come across.
1312. 00:54:01 Well, the yellow hat is explicitly being positive.
1313. 00:54:04 And one of the things that I appreciate
1314. 00:54:06 about the description here of the yellow hat
1315. 00:54:09 is that being positive is a choice.
1316. 00:54:11 So you can't hide behind that,
1317. 00:54:13 well, I'm just naturally a glass
1318. 00:54:15 is half empty type of person.
1319. 00:54:17 No, you can choose to be positive.
1320. 00:54:20 If you don't want to choose to be positive,
1321. 00:54:23 then maybe there are some other issues
1322. 00:54:24 you gotta work through.
1323. 00:54:26 But it's something that you can click into.
1324. 00:54:31 And he says in the very first section here,
1325. 00:54:34 chapter 22, that self-interest is a strong basis
1326. 00:54:38 for positive thinking.
1327. 00:54:40 And just like all of the other hats,
1328. 00:54:42 it does require discipline.
1329. 00:54:44 So it's not just, well, I feel good today.
1330. 00:54:46 So I'm naturally a little bit more optimistic.
1331. 00:54:50 And I think the yellow hat and the black hat
1332. 00:54:54 are kind of two different modes
1333. 00:54:56 that probably are next to each other.
1334. 00:54:58 They talk about how there's a lot of different ways
1335. 00:55:00 that you can implement this.
1336. 00:55:01 The role of the facilitator is to say
1337. 00:55:03 we're gonna be in this mode now
1338. 00:55:04 and then we're going to this mode.
1339. 00:55:06 There are several points throughout the book
1340. 00:55:07 where they lay out kind of some examples of how,
1341. 00:55:10 if you're going through something,
1342. 00:55:11 you might go from this to this to this to this.
1343. 00:55:13 However, with the black and the yellow hat,
1344. 00:55:15 I feel like this is the one
1345. 00:55:16 that I can naturally see going back and forth
1346. 00:55:18 between these most effectively.
1347. 00:55:21 And just as an example, you got your agenda items,
1348. 00:55:24 these different decisions that we have to make.
1349. 00:55:26 And we're looking at these one by one.
1350. 00:55:28 Okay, that's black hat this.
1351. 00:55:29 Okay, let's yellow hat this.
1352. 00:55:30 What's the decision that we're gonna make?
1353. 00:55:32 Next item, okay, black hat, yellow hat.
1354. 00:55:34 Like this seems pretty easy
1355. 00:55:36 to at least in principle to implement.
1356. 00:55:39 Although probably it's a little bit tricky
1357. 00:55:42 to get people thinking in this way.
1358. 00:55:45 I've experienced this too with the previous job of,
1359. 00:55:50 okay, so now we have a whole bunch of reasons
1360. 00:55:52 why this thing might not work.
1361. 00:55:53 But what if this were successful?
1362. 00:55:55 And this is literally part of the life theme cohort too.
1363. 00:55:57 It's like, well, what if what you did
1364. 00:55:59 was gonna be successful no matter what?
1365. 00:56:00 You couldn't fail, what would you possibly do?
1366. 00:56:03 And so I've recognized the value
1367. 00:56:06 of having those questions or those prompts
1368. 00:56:08 kind of funnel you down a specific path
1369. 00:56:11 because it's not natural to me whenever I do it,
1370. 00:56:14 I get excited.
1371. 00:56:14 Like, wow, this is really cool.
1372. 00:56:16 Let's do this thing.
1373. 00:56:18 Yeah, I think in 23 he calls out the positive spectrum.
1374. 00:56:24 And I can't remember how many levels he gave on the spectrum.
1375. 00:56:27 What I wrote down in my notes is basically
1376. 00:56:28 there's the logical practical,
1377. 00:56:31 optimism, benefits, positive spectrum.
1378. 00:56:33 And then there's the over-optimistic.
1379. 00:56:35 And this really got me
1380. 00:56:38 because I can picture the people in the meetings
1381. 00:56:40 I've been in where it's like, okay,
1382. 00:56:42 you are the logical, practical, optimist or positive thinker.
1383. 00:56:47 And then you are the person who's like,
1384. 00:56:49 you're just too much, right?
1385. 00:56:51 Like, come on, you gotta tone that down a little bit.
1386. 00:56:53 And I'm not saying we don't need
1387. 00:56:55 both of those people in the meeting,
1388. 00:56:56 but it was like really good.
1389. 00:56:58 And we're probably gonna say this later
1390. 00:57:00 when we do "Style and Rating."
1391. 00:57:02 I think one of the reasons why this book
1392. 00:57:04 hit so well with me is because it is not difficult.
1393. 00:57:10 If you've done any meeting leadership, any facilitation,
1394. 00:57:13 if you've done any working with groups
1395. 00:57:15 trying to make a decision or trying to steer the group
1396. 00:57:19 into decision making,
1397. 00:57:21 I mean, you see all of this in practice.
1398. 00:57:23 Like you absolutely see almost everything he points out
1399. 00:57:27 to a T and you're like, wow,
1400. 00:57:28 I've witnessed that quite a few times.
1401. 00:57:30 I've done that.
1402. 00:57:31 So my buddy's done that or this other thing.
1403. 00:57:34 So I really like that.
1404. 00:57:36 Key point he makes in chapter 23 is optimism
1405. 00:57:39 needs to lead to action.
1406. 00:57:41 There needs to be an expectation to succeed.
1407. 00:57:43 So we can't just be optimistic
1408. 00:57:45 for the sake of being optimistic.
1409. 00:57:47 We need to be optimistic because it actually gets us
1410. 00:57:49 to making a decision, taking an action,
1411. 00:57:53 some level of success or else it's just fruitless, right?
1412. 00:57:56 Like what's the point of us being optimistic about a thing?
1413. 00:57:59 We gotta make sure we can see that vision going through there.
1414. 00:58:03 - Yeah, he mentions that without yellow hat
1415. 00:58:08 thinking there's no progress.
1416. 00:58:12 And he talks about how yellow hat thinking is positive judgment.
1417. 00:58:17 So it's exploring and probing for value and benefit.
1418. 00:58:23 And when you see that stuff,
1419. 00:58:25 I feel like that's when motivation and clarity comes.
1420. 00:58:28 So a lot of this is tied for me
1421. 00:58:30 to like the personal retreat process.
1422. 00:58:33 But I have to admit like having reading,
1423. 00:58:35 having read this book, I'm kind of Jonesin
1424. 00:58:38 for another opportunity to be in a meeting
1425. 00:58:41 with a bunch of other people
1426. 00:58:42 and practice some of this stuff.
1427. 00:58:43 Like I don't see a day-to-day application for a lot of this
1428. 00:58:46 and I'm kind of disappointed.
1429. 00:58:47 - So you're gonna go back and get a real JOB job
1430. 00:58:51 and you're not just meeting to you six-hatrick.
1431. 00:58:54 But that would be cool.
1432. 00:58:55 I mean, the idea of being like a business coach
1433. 00:59:00 has always been interesting to me.
1434. 00:59:02 We were working with a business coach
1435. 00:59:04 and they were following this, it's called Pinnacle.
1436. 00:59:08 And it's like a mashup of different stuff
1437. 00:59:11 from Patrick Lencioni and scaling up
1438. 00:59:14 and a big game of business.
1439. 00:59:17 Like there's all these different tools essentially
1440. 00:59:20 and you can pick the ones that you wanna use
1441. 00:59:22 when you're facilitating a group.
1442. 00:59:23 And I always thought like the role that the guy was
1443. 00:59:26 that we were working with was doing
1444. 00:59:28 was something that would be really awesome.
1445. 00:59:30 But you would have to have the right group of people.
1446. 00:59:32 It was always the thing that kind of held me back
1447. 00:59:34 because I saw how our team kind of got stuck
1448. 00:59:37 in some of this stuff and he's trying to pull us back out.
1449. 00:59:40 And so I almost wanna like go over to his office
1450. 00:59:42 and give him a copy of this book and be like here.
1451. 00:59:44 Next time you work with annoying people like us,
1452. 00:59:46 you should totally use this.
1453. 00:59:48 - And that's great.
1454. 00:59:50 So I'm the opposite.
1455. 00:59:52 I mean, I have the opportunity to use this
1456. 00:59:55 multiple times a week.
1457. 00:59:57 And when we get to action items,
1458. 00:59:58 I'll talk more in more detail about this.
1459. 01:00:00 But I was so excited about what was being presented here
1460. 01:00:05 and it was so relevant that I basically started using this
1461. 01:00:10 in my Capstone Design course.
1462. 01:00:12 Where in a Capstone Design course,
1463. 01:00:13 we start out with basically a problem space.
1464. 01:00:16 And our goal by the end of the Capstone Design project
1465. 01:00:19 would be to deliver value for the client.
1466. 01:00:22 Now, I don't wanna say make a thing.
1467. 01:00:24 I don't wanna say write a report.
1468. 01:00:26 I don't wanna say give a presentation.
1469. 01:00:28 It all just depends on what the client needs, right?
1470. 01:00:30 So the client is gonna help us determine
1471. 01:00:31 what value makes the most sense for them.
1472. 01:00:33 And then we're gonna also contribute into that value.
1473. 01:00:36 But like, this was so relevant into the world
1474. 01:00:39 of working with my Capstone Design students
1475. 01:00:41 that we actually implemented it.
1476. 01:00:42 And I'll tell you about it when we get to action items
1477. 01:00:44 'cause that's gonna be one of my moving forward action items.
1478. 01:00:48 But that value idea or that vision,
1479. 01:00:50 he calls out in chapter 26,
1480. 01:00:52 basically vision proceeds design.
1481. 01:00:55 And this is one of the things that I think really resonates
1482. 01:00:57 with what you do with like the life theme
1483. 01:00:59 and with what you do with a lot of the work
1484. 01:01:00 that you're doing is,
1485. 01:01:02 if we don't have that vision,
1486. 01:01:03 if we don't have that understanding,
1487. 01:01:05 we can't really design a system
1488. 01:01:07 or we can't really design a work life
1489. 01:01:10 where a framework that actually helps us
1490. 01:01:13 to get to where we wanna go
1491. 01:01:14 and get to the value that we wanna add into the world.
1492. 01:01:17 And it's what we do with the academic workshop that I lead.
1493. 01:01:22 It's like, we're trying to help people get to that vision
1494. 01:01:24 and get to that idea.
1495. 01:01:25 And one of the things you have to do in vision
1496. 01:01:27 is you have to figure out what are the benefits
1497. 01:01:29 and what is the feasibility.
1498. 01:01:30 And when you figure out what the benefits
1499. 01:01:31 and the feasibility are,
1500. 01:01:32 that sets your direction or it helps you set your direction,
1501. 01:01:35 which then gets you to that overall design
1502. 01:01:38 that's gonna let you actually produce value
1503. 01:01:41 and provide value for people.
1504. 01:01:42 So again, I mean, I know I keep going on
1505. 01:01:45 and the number of things that kind of really stood out
1506. 01:01:48 and really resonated with me,
1507. 01:01:49 but that was a huge one,
1508. 01:01:50 is that vision proceeds design and how you work through that.
1509. 01:01:54 Are you good for me to transition us into Green Hat?
1510. 01:01:58 - Yeah, let's do it.
1511. 01:01:59 - Okay, so the last thing he calls out in chapter 27
1512. 01:02:03 is the fact that constructive thinking,
1513. 01:02:06 which is what we're doing in yellow hat, right?
1514. 01:02:09 It's value, it's benefit, it's how is this effective, right?
1515. 01:02:11 That's your yellow hat thinking.
1516. 01:02:13 It is not creative thinking.
1517. 01:02:15 So the constructive idea doesn't necessarily mean
1518. 01:02:18 you're being creative or whatever that is.
1519. 01:02:19 It really just means you're adding value.
1520. 01:02:21 You're figuring out ways to provide benefit.
1521. 01:02:24 Creative comes into change, innovation, newness.
1522. 01:02:27 It's how do we make the thing and make it new?
1523. 01:02:30 And that leads us into Green Hat thinking.
1524. 01:02:32 So I really liked his separation between those two
1525. 01:02:35 because a lot of people, and I've heard you say this before,
1526. 01:02:38 it's like, oh, I'm not creative, I'm not creative.
1527. 01:02:40 Well, hold on, right?
1528. 01:02:41 Like what is creative, right?
1529. 01:02:43 Creative doesn't mean constructive.
1530. 01:02:45 So maybe you are just naturally wired to be more yellow
1531. 01:02:49 and you're not as green naturally,
1532. 01:02:51 but that doesn't mean you can't be green.
1533. 01:02:52 It just means you have to think about it
1534. 01:02:53 in a little bit of a different way
1535. 01:02:54 and now I'll let you enter into our green forest.
1536. 01:02:57 - Well, I actually think I'm a little bit more green
1537. 01:02:59 than yellow because the thing that I always struggled with
1538. 01:03:03 was that initial brainstorming piece.
1539. 01:03:06 So that was a perfect segue.
1540. 01:03:08 Thanks for setting that up.
1541. 01:03:09 But the yellow hat thinking can identify an opportunity
1542. 01:03:12 is how he framed it in chapter 27.
1543. 01:03:16 But then they leave it to the green hats
1544. 01:03:18 to figure out a way to take advantage of it.
1545. 01:03:20 If someone were to tell me,
1546. 01:03:21 this is what we're doing, figure out how to make it happen,
1547. 01:03:24 that's my wheelhouse.
1548. 01:03:25 Now we're talking.
1549. 01:03:26 (laughs)
1550. 01:03:27 But it was the generating the initial ideas
1551. 01:03:31 that I struggled with for a while.
1552. 01:03:36 So I really like the fact that he decoupled those
1553. 01:03:39 because it's really easy to meld those together in your brain.
1554. 01:03:44 It's like, oh, well, the idea and then the execution of it
1555. 01:03:48 are all like the same step.
1556. 01:03:50 It's not. (laughs)
1557. 01:03:52 And when you go into the yellow hat mode,
1558. 01:03:55 you get all the options.
1559. 01:03:57 What are all the possibilities?
1560. 01:03:58 The green hat is kind of, we're like, okay,
1561. 01:04:01 so let's consider each one of these.
1562. 01:04:03 How do we actually make this happen?
1563. 01:04:07 And this requires you to look at things in a different way.
1564. 01:04:11 And for whatever reason, this has always been
1565. 01:04:13 kind of the easy part for me.
1566. 01:04:14 It's like, well, we wanna do this,
1567. 01:04:16 but we can't do it this specific way.
1568. 01:04:18 So what are the other ways that we could do this?
1569. 01:04:21 Okay, so that one makes sense now.
1570. 01:04:23 Bing, bing, bing, bing, here's all the things
1571. 01:04:24 that need to happen in order for us to get to that point.
1572. 01:04:28 And I like the term that he uses in chapter 29
1573. 01:04:31 of deliberate creative thinking.
1574. 01:04:34 I never really thought about that thought process
1575. 01:04:37 as deliberate creative thinking, but I totally can see it now.
1576. 01:04:42 And again, you're right, I did say it at one point.
1577. 01:04:45 I guess I'm just not creative.
1578. 01:04:47 If I had read this book before and I understood
1579. 01:04:50 what the green hat really was,
1580. 01:04:52 I don't think I ever would have said that.
1581. 01:04:54 I might have said it a different way.
1582. 01:04:56 I might have said something along the lines of,
1583. 01:04:59 I'm not good at coming up with ideas,
1584. 01:05:01 but I wouldn't have defined the generation
1585. 01:05:05 of those ideas specifically as creativity,
1586. 01:05:08 which is what it was in my mind for a really long time.
1587. 01:05:11 - Yeah, I like that he calls out that
1588. 01:05:14 green hat thinking is what we could do.
1589. 01:05:16 So it's all of these different ways of what we could do
1590. 01:05:19 to achieve the yellow hat, to achieve the benefit,
1591. 01:05:22 to achieve the effectiveness.
1592. 01:05:23 It's all the different ways we could do that.
1593. 01:05:24 And then he links it directly to red hat.
1594. 01:05:27 And he said, if you make too many of those,
1595. 01:05:29 which if you've got some good green hats there,
1596. 01:05:32 or people were really doing well in the green hat,
1597. 01:05:34 you're gonna have too many ideas.
1598. 01:05:35 You can't act on them all.
1599. 01:05:37 So how do we figure out which one we work on?
1600. 01:05:39 We red hat it, right?
1601. 01:05:40 Which one do I like?
1602. 01:05:41 Which one do I feel good about?
1603. 01:05:42 Which one do I have the hunch?
1604. 01:05:43 Do the intuition, the thing that says,
1605. 01:05:45 oh, we should move forward there.
1606. 01:05:47 And I think what I like about this is,
1607. 01:05:51 it ties into a thing that he doesn't talk about directly.
1608. 01:05:53 And if he did correct me where I'm wrong,
1609. 01:05:55 but he doesn't talk about it directly is,
1610. 01:05:57 there's this experience level
1611. 01:06:01 where we're gonna be able to tap into.
1612. 01:06:03 And it's within red hat, I believe, right?
1613. 01:06:05 That's where I think I would put it,
1614. 01:06:07 and probably he would put it.
1615. 01:06:08 There's this experience level
1616. 01:06:10 where we're gonna have all these ideas,
1617. 01:06:12 and we're gonna see the map,
1618. 01:06:13 and we're gonna be able to know the direction,
1619. 01:06:14 and we're gonna say, we should pick this idea.
1620. 01:06:17 And you're gonna go, why?
1621. 01:06:18 And the reason why you're gonna pick that idea
1622. 01:06:20 is because it just feels right.
1623. 01:06:23 And if you have the right people in that room,
1624. 01:06:25 they're all gonna go, yeah, we think you're right.
1625. 01:06:27 Like we think you're right, we think like,
1626. 01:06:28 that's the one we would pick too.
1627. 01:06:30 And honestly, I think that's the right idea, right?
1628. 01:06:33 Because you're bringing collective intelligence
1629. 01:06:34 into the room, and you're letting people group together
1630. 01:06:37 and say like, okay, we all feel confident on that.
1631. 01:06:39 But then the other thing you're doing
1632. 01:06:40 is you're tying into ownership.
1633. 01:06:43 Oh, we made a choice together collectively to do that.
1634. 01:06:47 And then you can bring your other thinking in, right?
1635. 01:06:50 Like you can, so you can bring your argumentative thinking in
1636. 01:06:52 and say, hold on, there's a whole group of people over here
1637. 01:06:55 that thinks this other way,
1638. 01:06:57 and then you can have another session essentially,
1639. 01:06:58 like a mini session through this to say,
1640. 01:07:00 all right, we feel really good about these two.
1641. 01:07:02 Which one do we pick, and how do we pick that?
1642. 01:07:04 And then you run through these other thinking,
1643. 01:07:06 hat thinking processes.
1644. 01:07:07 So I really liked kind of how all of this
1645. 01:07:11 is coming together full circle, if you will, right?
1646. 01:07:13 Like you can see this actually happening in practice,
1647. 01:07:16 and you can see this actually going into being
1648. 01:07:20 a productive thing where in the beginning when he says,
1649. 01:07:22 hey, this has worked at like all these different companies,
1650. 01:07:25 and we've saved them time, and we've saved them all this money,
1651. 01:07:27 and you're like, okay, really?
1652. 01:07:28 Like, I mean, yeah, sure, that's easy for you
1653. 01:07:30 to say about your own technique that you're developing.
1654. 01:07:32 But then you're kind of like, you know, you're in chapter 29,
1655. 01:07:34 and you're like, well, okay, maybe I can actually see
1656. 01:07:37 how this would be that effective.
1657. 01:07:40 - It does require you, though, to have a team
1658. 01:07:45 that is built on trust.
1659. 01:07:46 You're talking about like green hat generating options.
1660. 01:07:49 That's one of the main things that stood out to me from this
1661. 01:07:51 is that most people stop thinking
1662. 01:07:53 when they get an answer to a problem,
1663. 01:07:54 and then they try to force it,
1664. 01:07:56 force it like a square peg in a round hole.
1665. 01:08:00 Actually, says in chapter 33, life isn't like school.
1666. 01:08:03 There's often more than one right answer,
1667. 01:08:05 which I thought was pretty brilliant.
1668. 01:08:07 So the scenario that you're describing there
1669. 01:08:09 is like, okay, this feels like the right answer.
1670. 01:08:12 Even if it's not, I trust you,
1671. 01:08:13 and I know that we'll give this an honest shot,
1672. 01:08:17 and then if it doesn't work, we'll come back
1673. 01:08:19 and we'll try one of the other options.
1674. 01:08:21 So it's not like I really have to fight to the death
1675. 01:08:24 for my idea because it's now or never,
1676. 01:08:27 which is a really negative mindset
1677. 01:08:29 that people fall into when you're in these meetings
1678. 01:08:33 that are way longer than they have to be,
1679. 01:08:34 and you're trying to collect all the information.
1680. 01:08:37 You want to get to the point
1681. 01:08:38 where you're constantly having movement
1682. 01:08:41 and you're constantly trying things.
1683. 01:08:44 That's where I think the green hat is really positive
1684. 01:08:48 and really helpful,
1685. 01:08:50 is that you constantly have all of these alternatives
1686. 01:08:54 that you can fall back on
1687. 01:08:56 if that one thing doesn't work.
1688. 01:08:59 And because you have these other options,
1689. 01:09:01 you don't have to put all your stock into this one idea.
1690. 01:09:04 This really has to change the company.
1691. 01:09:05 This one idea, like this is gonna change
1692. 01:09:07 our entire working life.
1693. 01:09:09 Nah, you can just be curious with it.
1694. 01:09:11 You can hold it lightly and be like,
1695. 01:09:13 well, that one didn't work.
1696. 01:09:14 I'll go try the next one.
1697. 01:09:15 And eventually you do find something that works.
1698. 01:09:17 If that is the approach.
1699. 01:09:20 - And the crux of it is the fact that they're all good ideas
1700. 01:09:24 'cause you've evaluated them with yellow hat thinking
1701. 01:09:26 or with black hat thinking.
1702. 01:09:27 So they're all viable ideas, right?
1703. 01:09:30 And it kind of sets that baseline.
1704. 01:09:31 So no, I like that a lot.
1705. 01:09:34 Okay, Mike, here's where the book kind of
1706. 01:09:36 takes a little digression for me.
1707. 01:09:38 So chapters 30, 31, 32, 33,
1708. 01:09:43 maybe 34, right?
1709. 01:09:49 But actually more just, it stops at 33.
1710. 01:09:51 I feel like he was just like, okay,
1711. 01:09:52 I got a nerd out for a minute.
1712. 01:09:53 Like I really have to,
1713. 01:09:54 I got to tap into this lateral thinking thing.
1714. 01:09:56 And I really just need to like put my Uber nerd hat on
1715. 01:10:00 and here we go.
1716. 01:10:02 Like here is lateral thinking.
1717. 01:10:03 And the thing that sold it for me on the nerd out
1718. 01:10:06 was he introduced the idea of Poe.
1719. 01:10:09 - Yeah.
1720. 01:10:10 - So when this Poe thing came in,
1721. 01:10:11 I was like, wait a minute,
1722. 01:10:13 like what are we talking about here with Poe?
1723. 01:10:15 So let me try to give you a decent summary.
1724. 01:10:19 Oh, and that's the other name of the book.
1725. 01:10:20 So that's funny, I forgot it.
1726. 01:10:22 The book is called Poe Beyond Yes and No, right?
1727. 01:10:26 Which, I mean, like all of this stuff here is,
1728. 01:10:28 it sounds like a preschool book.
1729. 01:10:31 - Exactly, like I'm starting to go,
1730. 01:10:33 like okay, what do we get ourselves into?
1731. 01:10:35 Okay, lateral thinking, right?
1732. 01:10:37 So movement forward, we're thinking about stepping stones.
1733. 01:10:40 But what we're trying to think about is,
1734. 01:10:42 how do we introduce a provocation
1735. 01:10:46 that shifts us into some other pattern
1736. 01:10:49 or that allows us to get into some other pattern?
1737. 01:10:51 Go ahead.
1738. 01:10:52 - So real quick, lateral thinking,
1739. 01:10:53 the definition here, which I think will be useful,
1740. 01:10:55 is pattern switching on asymmetric,
1741. 01:10:58 an asymmetric patterning system.
1742. 01:11:00 So you get stuck in a single pattern.
1743. 01:11:02 Lateral thinking is like taking the train off of that set of tracks,
1744. 01:11:05 putting it on another set of tracks.
1745. 01:11:07 - That's a really good analogy.
1746. 01:11:08 I had not thought about it as a train moving over
1747. 01:11:10 to the other set of tracks, I like that a lot.
1748. 01:11:13 So he talks about this lateral thinking,
1749. 01:11:15 and then the Poe idea is this Poe is this provocation.
1750. 01:11:19 The Poe is this push.
1751. 01:11:20 The Poe is this thing that gets us to think about it
1752. 01:11:23 in a different way.
1753. 01:11:24 And it's got three results, we are unable to do that.
1754. 01:11:28 So we can't actually move the train to another set of tracks.
1755. 01:11:31 We drift back, so we move it to another set of tracks,
1756. 01:11:34 and then it makes its way back.
1757. 01:11:36 - Oh, get back here.
1758. 01:11:37 - Yeah, exactly.
1759. 01:11:38 Which I think more often than not,
1760. 01:11:40 that's a very common thing is like,
1761. 01:11:42 oh, well we tried this thing, and then a week later,
1762. 01:11:45 we're like, yeah, we're just back to where we've always been.
1763. 01:11:47 Which, 'cause that makes sense,
1764. 01:11:48 you're in a group, right?
1765. 01:11:50 You get into that rut and you get into that group.
1766. 01:11:52 And then his last one, and I think where he really wants you
1767. 01:11:56 to move is you switch to that actually new pattern.
1768. 01:11:58 And that new pattern is what allows you
1769. 01:12:00 to advance and allows you to move forward in a good way.
1770. 01:12:05 And then he gives some ideas on this.
1771. 01:12:06 But this is like, so I'll stop my little soapbox here.
1772. 01:12:10 This was, it felt different.
1773. 01:12:12 It was like, wait a minute, what are we doing?
1774. 01:12:14 Like you were six hats and practical and all this stuff,
1775. 01:12:18 and now we're gonna go,
1776. 01:12:19 a lot of oral thinking and po, and then we come back
1777. 01:12:23 in chapter 34, but I'm intrigued
1778. 01:12:25 to what you thought about that little section.
1779. 01:12:28 I guess having heard you describe it,
1780. 01:12:31 I can see how it feels a little bit shoehorned in,
1781. 01:12:36 but I didn't really have that impression
1782. 01:12:38 when I was reading it.
1783. 01:12:39 I mean, he does talk about how lateral thinking
1784. 01:12:42 was the term that he invented in 1967.
1785. 01:12:45 And then the po idea, I thought, was a little bit weird,
1786. 01:12:50 like a cutesy name on a concept
1787. 01:12:53 that maybe we don't need an acronym for that.
1788. 01:12:55 Although he does give a bunch of examples.
1789. 01:12:57 I was gonna say, do you remember him, how he got to him?
1790. 01:13:00 - Yeah, I do.
1791. 01:13:01 So I see it as like a triggering mechanism.
1792. 01:13:04 Like you could use this strategic ways,
1793. 01:13:07 just let's blue sky, different hat,
1794. 01:13:11 but big picture, like what are all the possibilities here,
1795. 01:13:16 even if it doesn't seem like it's something
1796. 01:13:17 we can possibly do, just like give me all the ideas.
1797. 01:13:21 So I think it's an effective vehicle.
1798. 01:13:25 Maybe the description feels a little bit weird,
1799. 01:13:28 but you're right, he definitely wants to know
1800. 01:13:30 about this and he's got a whole other book
1801. 01:13:32 on lateral thinking.
1802. 01:13:33 So it kind of makes me want to go deeper onto that concept,
1803. 01:13:38 but I didn't actually buy any other books
1804. 01:13:43 having read this one.
1805. 01:13:45 I'm not sure if I will, and I don't know.
1806. 01:13:48 I kind of, when I got done was like,
1807. 01:13:50 that's good enough for me.
1808. 01:13:53 I feel like a lot of the things that he talks about
1809. 01:13:55 in this book, and in this section specifically,
1810. 01:13:57 'cause it's kind of tied to this idea of creativity,
1811. 01:14:00 are things that I've been thinking about for a long time,
1812. 01:14:04 and he brought a different perspective,
1813. 01:14:06 which I was appreciative of,
1814. 01:14:08 but it wasn't anything that felt like revolutionary
1815. 01:14:10 or new to me necessarily.
1816. 01:14:13 He's got some specific frameworks for how do you actually
1817. 01:14:16 use this with a group,
1818. 01:14:17 which are probably a little bit more effective.
1819. 01:14:19 I tend to just be like, how am I gonna use this?
1820. 01:14:22 So I don't need to codify all this for like,
1821. 01:14:23 hey everyone, when we're doing this,
1822. 01:14:25 these are the rules, until I do a cohort,
1823. 01:14:27 then I have to explain it to people.
1824. 01:14:28 That's my forcing mechanism.
1825. 01:14:30 - Yep. - Good.
1826. 01:14:31 - So just to round it out, let's put a bow on this.
1827. 01:14:35 Poe stands for provocation operation.
1828. 01:14:39 So that's what PO stands for.
1829. 01:14:41 And where you talked about not necessarily needing,
1830. 01:14:45 feeling like you needed to go read more on this,
1831. 01:14:47 where this trip to me that said,
1832. 01:14:49 oh, this is actually interesting,
1833. 01:14:51 and I would probably use this in a different way.
1834. 01:14:53 If I was still doing a lot of educational research,
1835. 01:14:57 this idea would have probably found its way
1836. 01:15:00 into my educational research is because
1837. 01:15:02 what is the provocation operation
1838. 01:15:05 that gets lateral thinking into the educational process
1839. 01:15:09 for engineers?
1840. 01:15:09 What is the hypothesis, or how do I suppose something,
1841. 01:15:14 or how do I make this possible idea
1842. 01:15:16 that takes somebody who comes in and says,
1843. 01:15:17 I'm not cut out to be an engineer,
1844. 01:15:19 or I can't pass math or whatever it is,
1845. 01:15:21 and shifts them, moves them to that other set of tracks
1846. 01:15:24 that says, oh no, I can do this.
1847. 01:15:26 Or like, I belong here, I'm supposed to be here.
1848. 01:15:28 This is where this idea comes in,
1849. 01:15:30 and I could see myself moving it forward.
1850. 01:15:32 I don't have that context anymore.
1851. 01:15:33 Like, that's not the kind of work that I do anymore.
1852. 01:15:35 But I could really see myself digging into this
1853. 01:15:37 if I was still in that space.
1854. 01:15:40 - Yeah, it makes sense.
1855. 01:15:42 All right, ready to blue hat?
1856. 01:15:43 - I am ready to blue hat.
1857. 01:15:45 - All right, so this is the last official section.
1858. 01:15:47 The blue hat, as mentioned previously,
1859. 01:15:50 is at another level.
1860. 01:15:51 So this is kind of like above all of the other hats.
1861. 01:15:55 I wish there was a visual for like a org chart for the hats.
1862. 01:16:00 But I guess that would really be it.
1863. 01:16:04 It's like the blue hat on a separate level of everything else.
1864. 01:16:06 I just, that seems kind of funny to me.
1865. 01:16:10 But with the blue hat, specifically what we're doing
1866. 01:16:12 is we're no longer thinking about the subject.
1867. 01:16:14 We're thinking about the thinking instead.
1868. 01:16:17 So I think it's in this section where he talks about
1869. 01:16:20 how blue hat is not concerned about like where the car is going,
1870. 01:16:24 but it's watching the driver.
1871. 01:16:26 And I like that analogy a lot.
1872. 01:16:31 I feel like this one is pretty easy to grock.
1873. 01:16:34 Very difficult to administer because essentially
1874. 01:16:37 a lot of the blue hat stuff is like the role of the facilitator.
1875. 01:16:41 Now you don't have to be the facilitator.
1876. 01:16:43 He even calls that out specifically that anybody
1877. 01:16:45 can be in the blue hat mode.
1878. 01:16:47 But basically says that if you are the facilitator,
1879. 01:16:51 you have to be functioning in the blue hat mode.
1880. 01:16:54 Because the blue hat thinker is kind of like the conductor
1881. 01:16:57 of the orchestra.
1882. 01:16:58 And I like that analogy a lot too,
1883. 01:17:01 because I grew up playing violin.
1884. 01:17:02 I played in orchestras.
1885. 01:17:04 And I get this picture of like a conductor who
1886. 01:17:07 has no idea what he's doing, no idea how to communicate
1887. 01:17:10 to any of the instruments.
1888. 01:17:12 And a whole bunch of like middle school kids who just
1889. 01:17:15 like banging things together and making a noise.
1890. 01:17:18 And then trying to like coordinate all of that
1891. 01:17:20 into a pleasant sound.
1892. 01:17:24 Like it's really, really hard.
1893. 01:17:26 So I was a percussionist, right?
1894. 01:17:28 And I can tell you right now.
1895. 01:17:30 You were that guy.
1896. 01:17:31 As soon as we put mallets in our hands
1897. 01:17:33 or you put cymbals in our hands, I mean, what are we going to--
1898. 01:17:36 it's like telling us not to push the red button.
1899. 01:17:37 And we just want to push the red button.
1900. 01:17:39 So if the conductor's not going to give you the cue,
1901. 01:17:42 I mean, you're just going to start pushing the red button.
1902. 01:17:44 And then you get yelled at and all that.
1903. 01:17:45 So I agree here.
1904. 01:17:47 The other analogy he makes is the choreographer.
1905. 01:17:52 Sorry, the choreographer.
1906. 01:17:54 I knew I wasn't saying that right.
1907. 01:17:56 But he says, you know, you're choreographing
1908. 01:17:58 the sequence of steps that we're going to run through here.
1909. 01:18:01 And what I like about this is he said, blue hat,
1910. 01:18:03 if you were the facilitator, there
1911. 01:18:05 is no one standard way to work through this.
1912. 01:18:08 You have to think about what your goal is.
1913. 01:18:09 You have to think about what you need out of the meeting.
1914. 01:18:11 You have to think about what you need out of the session.
1915. 01:18:13 And then choreograph it in a way that makes sense
1916. 01:18:16 and set it up in a way.
1917. 01:18:18 And then we get into the conductor side,
1918. 01:18:19 where now I'm going to actually try
1919. 01:18:21 to make that happen in real life.
1920. 01:18:23 So I like the fact that he has a lot of different word
1921. 01:18:27 pictures here that really bring out
1922. 01:18:29 the idea of what it would be like to be a blue hat.
1923. 01:18:33 And then, like I've done so many times this episode,
1924. 01:18:35 he still links it back to that map.
1925. 01:18:37 We're still trying to build that map.
1926. 01:18:39 What does the blue hat do?
1927. 01:18:42 The blue hat is the person who helps us build that map.
1928. 01:18:46 So our input through the different hats
1929. 01:18:48 and putting on the different hats
1930. 01:18:49 is providing what's going to go on that map.
1931. 01:18:52 But how do we build the map?
1932. 01:18:53 Well, that's the blue hat's job to help us work through that.
1933. 01:18:57 That's the structure.
1934. 01:18:58 He or she is structuring our conversations.
1935. 01:19:01 They're also responsible for breaking up the arguments,
1936. 01:19:06 which is kind of interesting.
1937. 01:19:08 And it makes sense.
1938. 01:19:09 The blue hat is essentially the one
1939. 01:19:11 that is saying, okay, we're going to go into this specific mode.
1940. 01:19:15 So I can totally see scenarios where it's like,
1941. 01:19:18 okay, that's black hat thinking,
1942. 01:19:20 but we're done with that for now.
1943. 01:19:22 You need to put on the yellow hat or the green hat,
1944. 01:19:24 whatever, instead.
1945. 01:19:26 That's red hat thinking that's valid,
1946. 01:19:28 but we'll get to that later.
1947. 01:19:31 And I feel like this is really where the method works
1948. 01:19:36 or doesn't work, is if you have that type of facilitator.
1949. 01:19:39 Like, I don't think it's enough to just share this book
1950. 01:19:42 or these descriptions with your team and be like,
1951. 01:19:45 okay, now we're going to do this.
1952. 01:19:49 We're going to self organize and make this happen.
1953. 01:19:51 Like there has to be a conductor for this orchestra.
1954. 01:19:55 I agree.
1955. 01:19:56 The last part in this one before we roll is
1956. 01:19:59 the fishing questions and the shooting questions.
1957. 01:20:01 Yeah.
1958. 01:20:02 If I thought about this harder,
1959. 01:20:03 I might not land on fishing and shooting,
1960. 01:20:06 but I like the fact that he caught out the fact
1961. 01:20:09 that there's different questions.
1962. 01:20:10 So there are questions that as the facilitator or the leader,
1963. 01:20:13 I'm going to say, basically we want to explore a space
1964. 01:20:16 with this question.
1965. 01:20:17 So that's the fishing question.
1966. 01:20:18 He would call it the fishing question is,
1967. 01:20:20 what are we doing?
1968. 01:20:21 We're really just fishing for information.
1969. 01:20:22 We're fishing for ideas, we're fishing for emotions,
1970. 01:20:24 we're fishing for benefits and values,
1971. 01:20:26 so all the different hats.
1972. 01:20:27 Like we're fishing in that area to figure out
1973. 01:20:28 what that might be.
1974. 01:20:29 Then other ones are shooting questions
1975. 01:20:31 where we're basically trying to shoot a target
1976. 01:20:32 and we're trying to get to a yes or no
1977. 01:20:34 and we say, hey, let's check out this point.
1978. 01:20:37 Let's think about this point.
1979. 01:20:38 And what it might mean is let's put the white hat on,
1980. 01:20:41 think about this point and somebody comes in with a fact
1981. 01:20:43 and we go, oh, okay, boom, that's done.
1982. 01:20:45 Like that factor doesn't exist or they come out
1983. 01:20:48 with a black hat thinking and the risk is just too high
1984. 01:20:50 and we know that the risk is just too high.
1985. 01:20:52 So boom, like that type of thinking gets done.
1986. 01:20:54 So we're trying to get to essentially like a quicker
1987. 01:20:56 decision on that.
1988. 01:20:58 And I thought that was a really good way
1989. 01:20:59 'cause I've used that in meetings,
1990. 01:21:01 not calling it this at all, but it's like,
1991. 01:21:03 here we're just exploring a space,
1992. 01:21:05 here we're actually trying to, is that true?
1993. 01:21:07 Like, are we actually, is it,
1994. 01:21:08 was what we're saying actually true here
1995. 01:21:09 or is that emotion valid in this situation?
1996. 01:21:13 - Yeah, I like those different types of questions a lot too
1997. 01:21:16 and that is from the chapter on Focus,
1998. 01:21:19 which obviously I like that chapter.
1999. 01:21:22 - You would like that chapter.
2000. 01:21:24 - So this is interesting though
2001. 01:21:25 because you've probably heard Focus described as a muscle
2002. 01:21:30 and it's the kind of ability that you can develop.
2003. 01:21:35 And in this chapter, they kind of talk about how you can
2004. 01:21:38 kind of push people into a Focus mode
2005. 01:21:41 by asking them a question.
2006. 01:21:44 Asking a question is the simplest way to focus thinking
2007. 01:21:46 and that's where they get into the two types of questions
2008. 01:21:48 where we're gonna explore all the options
2009. 01:21:50 or just give me a simple yes or no.
2010. 01:21:52 They also talk about how Focus could be broad or narrow.
2011. 01:21:54 We probably typically think of it as narrow.
2012. 01:21:56 I'm gonna focus on this one specific thing
2013. 01:21:59 and disregard everything else,
2014. 01:22:00 but that's not really what Focus is.
2015. 01:22:03 If you think about it in terms of a camera
2016. 01:22:05 and you can have the thing in the foreground,
2017. 01:22:06 you can have the thing in the background.
2018. 01:22:08 So there's a lot of different elements to this.
2019. 01:22:11 And I think this is a new perspective
2020. 01:22:15 on the whole idea of Focus, which is really powerful,
2021. 01:22:18 but it also kind of highlights
2022. 01:22:20 and helps me understand,
2023. 01:22:22 even though I could never really codify it this way
2024. 01:22:24 previously, the thinking time questions,
2025. 01:22:28 like I've always had a thing for questions.
2026. 01:22:29 That's why I love personal Socrates so much
2027. 01:22:31 by Mark Champagne.
2028. 01:22:32 It's these little character studies.
2029. 01:22:34 And then each section, there's like 50 or 60 of them,
2030. 01:22:37 has a question that you can use to kind of reflect on
2031. 01:22:40 and then it kind of opens up some different ideas,
2032. 01:22:45 kind of helps you to think about things different ways.
2033. 01:22:48 So I like and have long believed for a long time
2034. 01:22:52 that if you ask the right question,
2035. 01:22:53 you will find the right answer,
2036. 01:22:55 but didn't really make the connection at least
2037. 01:22:59 as explicitly as he did here,
2038. 01:23:00 that when you ask the question in a certain way,
2039. 01:23:04 what that does is it focuses your thinking.
2040. 01:23:08 I don't know why, I never really thought about it that way.
2041. 01:23:10 I've got like the retrospective parts of my personal retreat
2042. 01:23:13 and that's exactly what I've been doing for years,
2043. 01:23:16 but I never defined it that way.
2044. 01:23:19 And so it helped me understand it a little bit more completely.
2045. 01:23:23 - Yeah.
2046. 01:23:24 All right, then the last thing he talks about
2047. 01:23:25 is the blue hat thinking would be the idea
2048. 01:23:27 that a blue hat thinker summarizes.
2049. 01:23:30 They are the record keeper.
2050. 01:23:32 They are the person who is essentially responsible
2051. 01:23:34 for the final report,
2052. 01:23:35 not necessarily has to write the whole final report,
2053. 01:23:37 but they're the person who makes sure that that gets done
2054. 01:23:40 so we don't lose it and we don't lose all the work that we did.
2055. 01:23:43 And this just ties back into what you've said
2056. 01:23:46 a few different times is they're the facilitator,
2057. 01:23:48 they're the leader, they're the person
2058. 01:23:50 who is mainly high level accountable, or sorry,
2059. 01:23:53 the person who is mainly high level accountable
2060. 01:23:55 tends to wear the blue hat in terms of guiding the process,
2061. 01:24:00 controlling the show, monitoring progress through that.
2062. 01:24:03 And that's actually the title of chapter 41,
2063. 01:24:06 is control and monitoring
2064. 01:24:07 and how does the blue hat play into control and monitoring?
2065. 01:24:10 - Right.
2066. 01:24:11 Should we go to the conclusion?
2067. 01:24:13 - Let's do it.
2068. 01:24:14 Is this chapter, hold on a minute, are we doing chapter 4242?
2069. 01:24:16 Or are we doing, now I'm getting it.
2070. 01:24:19 - Well, okay, so chapter 42,
2071. 01:24:22 the first chapter 42 is in the blue hat section.
2072. 01:24:26 So it's a summary of the blue hat thinking,
2073. 01:24:28 which I kind of liked how they have those summary,
2074. 01:24:30 it's just like a one page thing at the end of every section.
2075. 01:24:33 That must have been, those summaries must have been added
2076. 01:24:36 in the revised and updated because there is a separate chapter
2077. 01:24:39 after that section, which is still labeled chapter 42.
2078. 01:24:42 (laughs)
2079. 01:24:43 And I honestly don't have a whole lot from that.
2080. 01:24:46 I didn't take any notes from that.
2081. 01:24:48 I incorporated one specific idea from that
2082. 01:24:50 into a separate section in my MyNote file,
2083. 01:24:52 which I just called the conclusion.
2084. 01:24:55 So I guess if we're gonna call out that piece specifically,
2085. 01:24:58 the thing I jotted down from there
2086. 01:24:59 is that in the end, all decisions are emotional.
2087. 01:25:02 - Yes.
2088. 01:25:03 - So there is no, like this is obviously the right decision
2089. 01:25:06 because of all these facts.
2090. 01:25:08 You do have to just, I believe this is the right decision
2091. 01:25:10 and make a choice.
2092. 01:25:12 But I think that actually fits nicely
2093. 01:25:16 with a lot of the other stuff that's in the conclusion.
2094. 01:25:18 So if I were to rework this,
2095. 01:25:20 I would actually just combine those,
2096. 01:25:22 get rid of that second chapter 42.
2097. 01:25:24 And there is just the conclusion.
2098. 01:25:26 But a couple of big ideas from the conclusion,
2099. 01:25:28 it's pretty short, it's like a page or two,
2100. 01:25:30 if I remember right.
2101. 01:25:32 The biggest enemy to thinking is complexity.
2102. 01:25:34 So we want to simplify things.
2103. 01:25:37 And that's what the six hats does,
2104. 01:25:38 is it simplifies thinking by allowing the thinker
2105. 01:25:40 to deal with one thing at a time.
2106. 01:25:42 And then it also gives you an escape hatch
2107. 01:25:44 that allows you to switch between different thinking
2108. 01:25:46 and not every moment of thinking
2109. 01:25:48 is going to require the six hats model.
2110. 01:25:51 And also it works best when used
2111. 01:25:52 as a common language for a group.
2112. 01:25:54 And I totally can see that.
2113. 01:25:56 And it's a great way to summarize this.
2114. 01:25:59 And I feel like that last part,
2115. 01:26:01 part specifically, the works best when used
2116. 01:26:03 as a common language for a group sets up for,
2117. 01:26:06 okay, I'm reading this,
2118. 01:26:06 I'm getting excited, I want to implement this with my team.
2119. 01:26:10 That kind of leads naturally into the action item,
2120. 01:26:13 which is essentially, I don't have one specifically
2121. 01:26:15 because I don't have a group that I'm gonna use this with.
2122. 01:26:18 But it would be to present this to the groups and teams
2123. 01:26:22 that I'm a part of potentially and be like,
2124. 01:26:24 hey, I think this is really helpful.
2125. 01:26:26 Can we try this out?
2126. 01:26:27 Get everybody on board and then follow up with,
2127. 01:26:29 okay, who's gonna be the facilitator?
2128. 01:26:30 They're gonna wear the blue hat, yada, yada, yada.
2129. 01:26:33 So it's a great way to summarize
2130. 01:26:35 and kind of lead into what you would do with this short book.
2131. 01:26:40 I mean, I say short, it's like 170 pages,
2132. 01:26:42 but it felt a lot shorter than that.
2133. 01:26:45 - I agree, I agree completely.
2134. 01:26:46 I'm admittedly a slow reader
2135. 01:26:49 and this book did not, it was not hard to consume.
2136. 01:26:53 Like it was not hard to work through.
2137. 01:26:55 I felt like it was written in a way that actually made,
2138. 01:26:57 made a lot of sense and then flowed really well.
2139. 01:27:00 The only addition I'll have for the conclusion from my notes,
2140. 01:27:04 it's funny 'cause three out of the four,
2141. 01:27:06 three out of my four, you hit on right on the money.
2142. 01:27:09 I mean, they were exactly what I had written down.
2143. 01:27:12 The other one I have is that the six hats thinking
2144. 01:27:14 makes the final choice obvious.
2145. 01:27:16 And here is where I'm a tiny little bit skeptical
2146. 01:27:19 because I wanna run this.
2147. 01:27:21 I mean, I trust that it made it obvious for him
2148. 01:27:23 and the groups he's worked with,
2149. 01:27:25 but I would wanna run this and say,
2150. 01:27:26 hold on, does it actually make it obvious?
2151. 01:27:28 I think it might, I think setting the map,
2152. 01:27:31 figuring out the route through the map,
2153. 01:27:32 sure that has a potential to make it obvious,
2154. 01:27:33 but does it really make it obvious?
2155. 01:27:36 So we'll roll into my action items now
2156. 01:27:38 'cause you gave yours.
2157. 01:27:40 So I'm going to use this
2158. 01:27:43 throughout the rest of the semester
2159. 01:27:44 with my senior capstone design.
2160. 01:27:46 So this is a long-term action item.
2161. 01:27:48 It won't necessarily be something
2162. 01:27:49 that's easy to follow up on next time.
2163. 01:27:51 From the tiny little bit that I used it
2164. 01:27:52 with my capstone design course
2165. 01:27:53 that I talked about a little bit before,
2166. 01:27:55 I already saw the value in it.
2167. 01:27:57 Now, we weren't at the point where we needed
2168. 01:27:59 to make any specific decisions,
2169. 01:28:01 but we needed to think through some complex ideas
2170. 01:28:03 and I could sense a little bit of frustration
2171. 01:28:05 with some of the students in the capstone design course
2172. 01:28:07 about the way the project was going
2173. 01:28:09 or where certain aspects of the projects were going.
2174. 01:28:12 And what I think it brought is I think it brought clarity to it.
2175. 01:28:15 The thing that was really fun for me
2176. 01:28:18 was I thought they were going to roll their eyes,
2177. 01:28:20 like monster roll, like, oh my gosh,
2178. 01:28:23 he wants us to do the six hats thinking blah, blah, blah, blah.
2179. 01:28:27 But when I pitched it to them and I said,
2180. 01:28:28 this is a way to simplify your thinking,
2181. 01:28:30 it's a way to kind of keep us all on the same page
2182. 01:28:32 and not let us get distracted in these conversations.
2183. 01:28:34 So just for a little context,
2184. 01:28:36 there are, what are there, 11 students in the room?
2185. 01:28:40 So there's a lot of voices in the room,
2186. 01:28:42 plus me, so there's a decent number of voices in the room.
2187. 01:28:45 And they actually all engaged really well.
2188. 01:28:49 Like they were all like, okay, like we'll give it a shot,
2189. 01:28:51 like let's see how this goes.
2190. 01:28:52 And I think through the very short session that we did with it,
2191. 01:28:54 there was clarity, like we actually gained clarity.
2192. 01:28:57 We thought about things in a way that made sense
2193. 01:29:00 for people to think about them,
2194. 01:29:01 not in a muddled way as we work through.
2195. 01:29:04 So one of my action items is I want to keep trying
2196. 01:29:06 to apply this to my capstone design course.
2197. 01:29:08 The second action item I have is I want to look up the book,
2198. 01:29:11 "Poe Beyond the Esterno."
2199. 01:29:13 And I really, I'm not gonna tell you I'm gonna read it.
2200. 01:29:16 I just want to look it up and see if I think it's worth reading.
2201. 01:29:19 - Okay.
2202. 01:29:20 - So there's an interest enough there
2203. 01:29:24 that I want to see if it's worth reading
2204. 01:29:25 or if I think lateral thinking might be a better one to read.
2205. 01:29:29 - I have to admit, when I hear the word "Poe,"
2206. 01:29:31 I think of "Legend of Zelda," "Tears of the Kingdom."
2207. 01:29:34 - I don't know the reference, so help me understand.
2208. 01:29:36 - It's really not worth explaining there like,
2209. 01:29:38 yeah, it's a form of currency in the game.
2210. 01:29:42 (laughs)
2211. 01:29:43 - Okay.
2212. 01:29:45 - So not at all related to what he talked about.
2213. 01:29:47 I don't actually don't have any specific action items
2214. 01:29:52 with this, but I think this is awesome.
2215. 01:29:55 Like if I had an action item,
2216. 01:29:57 it would be to go back to the business coach
2217. 01:29:59 that we worked with and tell them about this
2218. 01:30:01 because I think it would be helpful.
2219. 01:30:03 We even had, when we were doing our meetings,
2220. 01:30:06 a different version of this,
2221. 01:30:08 which was not nearly as effective.
2222. 01:30:09 And I forget the specifics of it
2223. 01:30:11 because it was like a year ago,
2224. 01:30:13 but he had little animals that he placed on the table.
2225. 01:30:17 And basically when we felt that we were
2226. 01:30:20 being steamrolled or something,
2227. 01:30:22 we could grab the elephant or felt like someone
2228. 01:30:25 was just making things a little too personal.
2229. 01:30:27 We could grab the donkey, you know?
2230. 01:30:29 And I feel like, get rid of those stupid animals
2231. 01:30:31 because with those, it's essentially saying,
2232. 01:30:33 like, you're doing this and I'm feeling this way.
2233. 01:30:35 - Yeah.
2234. 01:30:36 - It's not explicit, but it kinda is.
2235. 01:30:38 Like the fact that I'm saying something
2236. 01:30:40 and somebody grabs something,
2237. 01:30:41 I'm like, well, why do you feel that way?
2238. 01:30:42 Like I'm just talking about this idea.
2239. 01:30:44 Just decouple it from your identity and we're fine.
2240. 01:30:48 But I feel like having the visuals in the meeting
2241. 01:30:51 is a really cool idea.
2242. 01:30:52 So I can see him like totally loving this idea
2243. 01:30:55 of like he's got these six different colored hats
2244. 01:30:56 on the table and he's like, okay folks, black hat.
2245. 01:30:59 (laughs)
2246. 01:31:00 You know?
2247. 01:31:01 - Well, and it gives the facilitator permission.
2248. 01:31:03 You know, it's one of the things he talked about.
2249. 01:31:05 It gives the facilitator permission to look at somebody
2250. 01:31:07 and go, you're doing red hat thinking right now.
2251. 01:31:10 We're in yellow hat thinking.
2252. 01:31:11 - Yes.
2253. 01:31:12 - And it has not, like you're not a terrible person.
2254. 01:31:13 Everything's okay. - Exactly.
2255. 01:31:14 - You're just in the wrong mode.
2256. 01:31:16 You're just in the wrong mode.
2257. 01:31:17 We need you to get into the mode everybody else is in.
2258. 01:31:19 And I love that.
2259. 01:31:19 Like I love the way that would work.
2260. 01:31:21 - Yeah.
2261. 01:31:22 So I don't have any specific action items with it.
2262. 01:31:25 However, going into style and rating now,
2263. 01:31:28 I love this book.
2264. 01:31:29 (laughs)
2265. 01:31:31 So this may be really weird
2266. 01:31:33 to not have a single action item from this
2267. 01:31:36 and still give it five stars, but I don't care.
2268. 01:31:39 (laughs)
2269. 01:31:40 This book is great.
2270. 01:31:40 - I don't think that's weird at all.
2271. 01:31:42 And I don't know if you and I
2272. 01:31:45 are either picking books that make sense for us
2273. 01:31:48 or if we're just too easy on the rating,
2274. 01:31:49 but I'm rating it a five too.
2275. 01:31:50 Right?
2276. 01:31:51 I really, really like this book.
2277. 01:31:53 And more importantly, I feel like I got a lot out of it
2278. 01:31:56 that'll be applicable to my life.
2279. 01:31:58 So I really like that.
2280. 01:31:59 - Yeah, I don't have a specific avenue where like,
2281. 01:32:01 this is how I'm gonna use this in the near future.
2282. 01:32:05 But I have no doubt that whatever I am doing
2283. 01:32:08 five, 10 years from now, like this is gonna come back.
2284. 01:32:12 This idea is going to stick with me.
2285. 01:32:15 And even if I don't ever master the whole idea
2286. 01:32:19 of the six hats thinking, I think it's something
2287. 01:32:20 that I can easily incorporate in other places
2288. 01:32:23 into other meetings that can make those meetings
2289. 01:32:26 more effective.
2290. 01:32:27 I mean, if all this did was make meetings more effective,
2291. 01:32:31 it's worth absolutely whatever investment
2292. 01:32:34 you have to make in this.
2293. 01:32:36 Regardless of your working situation,
2294. 01:32:39 I don't care if you've got like one meeting a week
2295. 01:32:41 or you have five meetings every day,
2296. 01:32:43 you're gonna get value from this
2297. 01:32:45 and I would recommend that everybody pick this one up.
2298. 01:32:48 I can't really think of anything negative to say about it.
2299. 01:32:51 I guess you could say that there are some,
2300. 01:32:55 the way that the information is presented,
2301. 01:32:57 he obviously could go deeper into some of the stuff
2302. 01:32:59 and he doesn't.
2303. 01:33:00 I actually like that approach.
2304. 01:33:02 I feel like this book could very easily have been twice as long
2305. 01:33:06 if somebody else had written it,
2306. 01:33:09 but I like the brevity.
2307. 01:33:10 I feel like it's very clear.
2308. 01:33:11 I feel like it's very concise and it's not prescriptive.
2309. 01:33:15 It's kind of like this is what this does.
2310. 01:33:17 This is how you might use it.
2311. 01:33:18 Here's a whole bunch of examples,
2312. 01:33:20 but the actual application,
2313. 01:33:22 you have flexibility to use it how you see fit.
2314. 01:33:26 And I think that's the genius of it, to be honest.
2315. 01:33:30 Yeah, I think if I was going to call out my negatives,
2316. 01:33:34 and these are super surface level,
2317. 01:33:37 I fully admit that they're very surface level.
2318. 01:33:40 At times I got fatigued with the number of dot dot dot examples.
2319. 01:33:44 It was just like, okay, I got it, I got the point.
2320. 01:33:47 But maybe other people like more of them,
2321. 01:33:49 so that's a personal thing more than anything.
2322. 01:33:52 And then this one is super surface level, but it's there.
2323. 01:33:55 At times I got confused,
2324. 01:33:57 I know that dot dot dot were giving me examples,
2325. 01:34:00 but I wanted a clear understanding of when we were going back
2326. 01:34:04 into his explanation versus his example.
2327. 01:34:07 And at times I thought that his paragraphs,
2328. 01:34:10 or they're not even paragraphs,
2329. 01:34:12 his chunking of the text was so short at times
2330. 01:34:15 and everything was indented.
2331. 01:34:16 I was like, hold on, like, thought, thought, thought.
2332. 01:34:19 It wasn't like a normal, but again,
2333. 01:34:22 those are very, very surface level.
2334. 01:34:25 You had called out about using this.
2335. 01:34:27 If I, let's say I didn't have time to read
2336. 01:34:30 all 170-something pages,
2337. 01:34:32 if you just grabbed this book,
2338. 01:34:34 or if you went on and figured out a summary of it,
2339. 01:34:36 and you just got those summary chapters,
2340. 01:34:38 I think you could grab a decent amount of this
2341. 01:34:42 to where you could try to implement it in a group,
2342. 01:34:45 or in a session and just see how it works.
2343. 01:34:48 I mean, I think he's made it so accessible
2344. 01:34:51 that I really think it's able to be understood
2345. 01:34:55 at that level to where you can throw that
2346. 01:34:57 into implementation relatively quickly.
2347. 01:35:00 I mean, but I agree with you.
2348. 01:35:01 I highly recommend it's a really short read.
2349. 01:35:03 It's a really good read that if you're interested
2350. 01:35:05 in this at all, just pick it up and read it.
2351. 01:35:07 - I totally agree with you.
2352. 01:35:08 However, I will throw out a caveat there
2353. 01:35:10 because this is kind of like the five disc functions
2354. 01:35:13 of a team is sort of like this too.
2355. 01:35:14 It's like, oh, I understand the five disc functions.
2356. 01:35:17 Do you really because you're still stuck on level one?
2357. 01:35:20 So you can get a cursory knowledge of what the stuff is
2358. 01:35:24 and you could probably start applying it certain ways,
2359. 01:35:26 but I've seen like the five disc functions of a team
2360. 01:35:29 go off the rails.
2361. 01:35:29 Like I've heard stories of people who have brought in
2362. 01:35:32 like these books to their teams
2363. 01:35:33 and been like, you're dysfunctional, here you go.
2364. 01:35:36 That's not the way to do it.
2365. 01:35:38 So I think you could probably get maybe
2366. 01:35:40 a little bit of benefit from a baseline level,
2367. 01:35:44 like a very surface level understanding of this.
2368. 01:35:47 However, where you're really gonna get exponential benefit
2369. 01:35:49 from it is when you really get into the details.
2370. 01:35:52 And that's what I like about,
2371. 01:35:53 that's the most powerful idea is like,
2372. 01:35:55 okay, I can rock this in one go easily,
2373. 01:35:59 but then when I go deeper with it,
2374. 01:36:01 I will actually extract even more value from it.
2375. 01:36:04 Like that's good business book material right there.
2376. 01:36:08 The other thing that you're mentioning the examples
2377. 01:36:13 and it kind of got me thinking,
2378. 01:36:14 I've just brought up the five disc functions of a team.
2379. 01:36:19 The only thing I think that this book would be,
2380. 01:36:22 'cause you could say is potentially missing,
2381. 01:36:25 would be if someone took the six hats concept
2382. 01:36:28 and wrote a Patrick Lencioni style fable about it,
2383. 01:36:32 that would be kind of cool.
2384. 01:36:33 - That's funny.
2385. 01:36:35 So.
2386. 01:36:37 - You should do that.
2387. 01:36:38 Are you saying you're gonna do that?
2388. 01:36:39 Is that an action item?
2389. 01:36:41 - Ah, no, I've got other books I wanna write before that one,
2390. 01:36:44 but come back to me in a year or two maybe.
2391. 01:36:47 (laughs)
2392. 01:36:49 - All right, let's put six thinking hats on the shelf.
2393. 01:36:53 What's next, Corey?
2394. 01:36:55 - So the next book is my book
2395. 01:36:57 and we're gonna read The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly.
2396. 01:37:00 And I, so we were reading a little bit faster
2397. 01:37:04 than we normally do, so I wasn't able to start reading
2398. 01:37:06 this one yet, but I actually was able to get the audio book
2399. 01:37:09 and I started listening to it
2400. 01:37:10 because I could do that while I was driving.
2401. 01:37:12 And I was just like, okay, let's prime myself on reading
2402. 01:37:15 the book and I started listening to it.
2403. 01:37:17 And what I'll tell you is the book was written in 2016,
2404. 01:37:20 but so far I'm really surprised at how well it's held up.
2405. 01:37:23 I mean, we're seven, we're sorry, eight, eight-ish years past,
2406. 01:37:27 you know, when the book, actually it would probably be nine years
2407. 01:37:29 or so past when the book was written
2408. 01:37:31 through the publication process.
2409. 01:37:33 But what I can tell you is it's held up well
2410. 01:37:35 and I'm excited to read it.
2411. 01:37:36 It's about 12 technologies and how they will impact us
2412. 01:37:40 moving forward.
2413. 01:37:42 And I think it's gonna be a fun book to think about
2414. 01:37:43 from a business perspective, productivity perspective,
2415. 01:37:47 just getting better at life or living life perspective.
2416. 01:37:50 So I'm excited to read it.
2417. 01:37:52 - Awesome, I'm looking forward to this one.
2418. 01:37:55 And then after that, I have a brand new book
2419. 01:37:58 that you cannot even buy right now as we record this,
2420. 01:38:01 but it will be out at least nine to 10 days prior
2421. 01:38:06 to when we've recorded it.
2422. 01:38:10 - We're talking about cutting it close.
2423. 01:38:12 - So hopefully that's enough time for you,
2424. 01:38:14 but I really wanna cover this one the moment
2425. 01:38:16 that it gets out.
2426. 01:38:18 Cal Newport is writing a new book called Slow Productivity.
2427. 01:38:22 And I think this is the book that he was always meant to write,
2428. 01:38:27 just based on how I hear him talking about it on his podcast.
2429. 01:38:31 I really think this one's gonna be amazing.
2430. 01:38:33 So I'm really looking forward to going through this one
2431. 01:38:36 and definitely wanna cover it for bookworm
2432. 01:38:39 as soon as we possibly can.
2433. 01:38:40 So that's what we're gonna do.
2434. 01:38:42 You can pre-order it by the way.
2435. 01:38:43 And there's some bonuses that you can get if you pre-order it.
2436. 01:38:46 Apparently that's a thing now with productivity books
2437. 01:38:50 is pre-order it and then you get like $9,000 worth of free value.
2438. 01:38:55 I don't know how that works.
2439. 01:38:56 - It's the new infomercial, that's what it is.
2440. 01:38:58 - Yeah.
2441. 01:38:59 All right, you got any gap books?
2442. 01:39:02 - So I'm still working on the gap book that I've been working on
2443. 01:39:05 and I'm going to be working on it.
2444. 01:39:06 It's much more of a slow read, much more of a study
2445. 01:39:11 than it is a kind of get-through-it type of a book.
2446. 01:39:15 So it's called "Tryin' For The Lamb."
2447. 01:39:17 It's about book revelation
2448. 01:39:18 and that's gonna be the gap book for now.
2449. 01:39:22 - All right, well I don't have any gap books currently.
2450. 01:39:25 I guarantee you I will have read gap books
2451. 01:39:28 by the time I come back from vacation
2452. 01:39:30 because I'm gonna bring a stack of them
2453. 01:39:32 and I intend to do nothing but sit by the pool and read.
2454. 01:39:35 - How many do you think you're gonna take?
2455. 01:39:39 Like you're planning a week.
2456. 01:39:42 - Yeah, I'm thinking six, but I don't,
2457. 01:39:46 I don't know, I haven't packed yet
2458. 01:39:48 so we'll see how many fit in the suitcase.
2459. 01:39:50 - Okay.
2460. 01:39:52 - All right, thanks everyone for listening.
2461. 01:39:54 If you are reading along with us,
2462. 01:39:57 then pick up The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly
2463. 01:39:59 and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.