Have you ever been in a meeting where you’re discussing a new idea with your colleagues, and suddenly the room fills with arguments both for and against it?
What starts as a creative exchange quickly turns into a whirlwind of opinions, interruptions, conflicting views, and vague conclusions. These conversations often become chaotic — full of energy but lacking direction. And when the meeting ends, you leave feeling more confused than when you started: no decision, no clarity, and sometimes even less confidence in the idea than before.
This happens more often than we admit. And yet, it’s not necessarily because the idea was bad — but because we lacked a method. A structure. A way to allow the idea to breathe, evolve, and be examined without being strangled too early by criticism, nor distorted by blind enthusiasm.
That’s where Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats” come in — a powerful technique that invites teams to look at a single idea from six distinct perspectives, one at a time. Instead of everyone speaking at once from their own angle, the room aligns to explore a common mental framework, step by step. It doesn’t force consensus — it creates clarity. And from clarity, good decisions emerge.
A Case Study: Our Own Decision-Making Challenge
At The Elite Officer, we know what it’s like to face decisions that could shape the future of the entire project. As we continue developing our digital news platform and our print magazine — conceived as the go-to resource and daily companion for loan officers across the U.S. private lending ecosystem — we encountered a dilemma: should we launch a professional training course for new loan officers?
The idea checks every box. It’s aligned with our mission to empower professionals through quality content and real support. We secured a collaboration with Millennia Atlantic University (MAU) to provide academic backing. Major lenders across the country showed immediate interest, recognizing how this course could shorten the training curve and improve ROI by preparing loan officers faster and better.
But here’s the catch: time and resources are limited. And if the course project gets too big, too fast, it might pull us away from what matters most right now — finishing the core product: our news platform and magazine, the true foundation of the brand.
So… how do you make a decision like this without falling into the chaos of competing voices?
The Six Hats: A Way to Think Without Colliding
Each of De Bono’s six hats represents a distinct mental role. In most meetings, these roles get jumbled — one person focuses on facts, another on risks, someone else on optimism, and someone’s just going with their gut. With this method, the entire group adopts one hat at a time, allowing for full immersion in that perspective. The result: organized thinking and better outcomes.
- White Hat— Focuses on facts and information. What do we know? What’s missing?
- Red Hat— Emotions, intuitions, gut reactions. What do we feel about the idea?
- Yellow Hat— Optimism. What are the benefits? What could go well?
- Black Hat— Caution. What are the risks, weaknesses, and limitations?
- Green Hat— Creativity. What are the alternatives, improvements, innovations?
- Blue Hat— Control. Who moderates? What’s next? What have we decided?
Let’s see what happens when we apply each hat to our case.
Applying the Six Hats to the Training Course
White Hat: MAU guarantees academic rigor. There are an estimated 1,200 new loan officers every quarter in Florida alone. Lenders validate the need to cut training time significantly. The course will require about four to six months of intensive production, with high estimated cost. Meanwhile, the magazine already demands ongoing editorial, design, marketing, and commercial focus.
Red Hat: Excitement is high: pioneering specialized training could raise the magazine’s authority. Fear persists: losing focus on the core web platform and the magazine could weaken the foundation. Intuition suggests starting with a scaled-down pilot to test traction without risking everything.
Yellow Hat: The course would strengthen the magazine’s position as a true comprehensive support tool — not just for news but for real professional development. It addresses a genuine industry need, opens a new sustainable revenue stream, and deepens trust within the loan officer community.
Black Hat: There is a real risk of diverting human and financial resources away from the news platform and regular magazine production. Without a strong marketing plan, sign-ups could fall short.
Green Hat: Launch a free pilot module to gauge real interest without overburdening the team. Use microlearning formats for faster, more flexible production. Integrate the course with premium magazine content to boost subscription value. Seek co-investment or sponsorship from lenders to share production costs and offer perks to their staff.
Blue Hat: Appoint a dedicated project manager separate from the main editorial team. Outline clear phases: pilot in 60 days, full launch in 120 days. Protect the core team’s time and budget so the platform and magazine stay on track. Hold biweekly check-ins to review progress and adjust as needed.
Not Every Idea Dies Because It Was Wrong
Sometimes, good ideas don’t fail because they were flawed. They fail because they weren’t allowed to mature. They were thrown into the room without protection — exposed to criticism before they could even stand up. They were debated too early, abandoned too quickly, or simply lost in the noise of unstructured opinions.
Using the Six Thinking Hats is not about making better arguments. It’s about thinking better, together.
It’s the kind of method that prevents you from suffocating an idea before it shows its potential. The kind of method that could very well define whether your company grows carefully, intentionally — or gets lost chasing everything, achieving nothing.
Because in the end, the difference between a great idea that dies and a great idea that scales may not be the idea itself — but how you decide what to do with it.