De Bono Tools in Action 

By Lynda Curtin, The Opportunity Thinker

Bosch, a global leader in automotive technology, headquartered in Germany, generated $43 billion in sales during 2000. Bernard Balle, internal coordinator for the process improvement process, in the thermo technology division, shared this experience using the Six Thinking Hats tool with a cross culture group.

Four years ago Edward de Bono introduced the thermo technology group, an engineering based division within the company, to his thinking techniques. This sparked Bernard Balle to become a certified Six Thinking Hats instructor to conduct this training. He also facilitates meetings using the Six Thinking Hats tool. 

A catastrophe meeting was called with the mandate, "To develop a new appliance." Participants flew in from Germany, Great Britain, France, Turkey and Portugal. There was a wide variance in English proficiency among the group members, not to mention cultural assumptions about how the people from the different countries would contribute to the challenge. 

The Six Hats was used during a meeting that lasted one and a half hours. The group concluded they did not have enough white hat - information, data, and facts, to be able to productively participate in a meeting to develop a new appliance. Typically, groups would go on and on and on to fill up the time allotment, wasting time, accomplishing nothing. The tool enabled the group to recognize they needed to break, collect information, and plan another meeting, which they did.

Bernard reported, use of the Six Hats structure enabled: the quiet people to contribute; feelings and emotions to be expressed; discovery that everyone had clever ideas, not just one nation; everyone had something valuable to contribute to the challenge. 

Bernard also shared the following tips with us:

• Hang a Six Thinking Hat poster in every meeting room to signal permission to teams to use the tool.

• He had a tent card designed as a Six Thinking Hats reminder for everyone, which resulted from a marketing idea. Each month a different tent card is distributed to reinforce something important for employees. They discovered the only tent card that lasted longer than a month was the Six Thinking Hats card.

©2002 The Opportunity Thinker.

Six Thinking Hats Master Trainer, Lynda Curtin, is certified by Dr. Edward de Bono in all of his thinking methodologies. She an expert ideation facilitator, professional speaker, trainer and author in the fields of business creativity, marketing and speaking. To book Lynda for your event call 818-507-6055 or email info@LyndaCurtin.com For more information on her programs go to www.LyndaCurtin.com

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