Six thinking hats

In human resource management course of MBA, the professor made mention of "six thinking hat" method for using in decision making. I am so interesting for this topic so I searched the relatied info and shown roughly below,

Early in the 1980s Dr. Edward de Bono invented the Six Thinking Hats method. The method is a framework for thinking and can incorporate lateral thinking. Valuable judgmental thinking has its place in the system but is not allowed to dominate as in normal thinking. Dr. de Bono organized a network of authorized trainers to introduce the Six Thinking Hats.

The key point is that a hat is a direction to think rather than a label for thinking. The key theoretical reasons to use the Six Thinking Hats are to:

encourage Parallel Thinking

encourage full-spectrum thinking

separate ego from performance

There are six metaphorical hats and the thinker can put on or take off one of these hats to indicate the type of thinking being used. This putting on and taking off is essential. The hats must never be used to categorize individuals, even though their behavior may seem to invite this. When done in group, everybody wear the same hat at the same time.

White Hat thinking (Objective)
This covers facts, figures, information needs and gaps. "I think we need some white hat thinking at this point..." means Let's drop the arguments and proposals, and look at the data base."

Red Hat thinking (Intuition)
This covers intuition, feelings and emotions. The red hat allows the thinker to put forward an intuition without any need to justify it. "Putting on my red hat, I think this is a terrible proposal." Ususally feelings and intuition can only be introduced into a discussion if they are supported by logic. Usually the feeling is genuine but the logic is spurious.The red hat gives full permission to a thinker to put forward his or her feelings on the subject at the moment.

Black Hat thinking (Negative)
This is the hat of judgment and caution. It is a most valuable hat. It is not in any sense an inferior or negative hat. The prior or negative hat. The black hat is used to point out why a suggestion does not fit the facts, the available experience, the system in use, or the policy that is being followed. The black hat must always be logical.

Yellow Hat thinking (Positive)
This is the logical positive. Why something will work and why it will offer benefits. It can be used in looking forward to the results of some proposed action, but can also be used to find something of value in what has already happened.

Green Hat thinking (Creative)
This is the hat of creativity, alternatives, proposals, what is interesting, provocations and changes.

Blue Hat thinking (Process)
This is the overview or process control hat. It looks not at the subject itself but at the 'thinking' about the subject. "Putting on my blue hat, I feel we should do some more green hat thinking at this point." In technical terms, the blue hat is concerned with meta-cognition.

Personal comment: We are suggested to think in six sides on one matter, it is comprehensive thinking method not only included postive side and negative side. Green hat thinking recommends us to think out of the box. We can get more creative and better ideas based on the original proposal! Blue hat thinking is the evaluation of overall thinking or proposal, it aimed to a process control function. The red hat thinking shown us the side which is not covered by the physical data.

Yes! I got some ideas from the theory right now!

5E Culture

Once I heard this term, it made a deep image in my mind. 5E culture is a simply term which is easy to memorize. If we can implement the 5E culture in the company, it activates the vigor of the employee in the organization. Below, I summarized the details I got and some of my experience to list out the items which are included in 5E.

1. Ethics
The vision and mission of company must connect to social responsibility. Tax in legal way, provide job opportunity to local district, supporting in charity, are some of the social responsibility for enterprise. The company with good ethics, the morale and agressive of employee will increased. Also, she can win the respectation from the related customer and industry.

2. Environment
It is the responsibility of everyone to protect our environment. The company which has the process with producing pollution must face the duty to reduce the pollution. On other hand, the company can has cost saving when she implement the enegry saving action. Enegry reduction is also a important factor of environment protection, such as, electrical power, water usage, hot water usage, etc.

3. Exploration
In order to increase the competitive force of company, the company must encourage the new technique development to upgrade her productivity. The new technique was including different scopes, for technical manufacturing process and management methodolgy are also consider to be the item for exploration. The upgrade of technical process can directly improve the productivity from existing situation, the upgrade of management method can support the productivity indirectly, and both of them are compensating each other.

4. Excellence
The concept of excellence, is inluding the continuous improvement to push upgrade of themselves. Also, we needed to provide the good quality product to keep satisfcation of customers. On the way to excellence, we must consider to reduce the wastes continuously and use the saved resource to create more value.

5. Education
The enterprise wants the improve of technical process or management method, she need to keep improve her employee first. Education of people means to upgrade by learning, out of this, the information sharing between departments, and knowledge management are also the important factors here. Education is the nutrient of all the above items.

Leadership styles and lean

Daniel Goleman describes six leadership styles: Coercive, Authoritative, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting and Coaching. He asserts, "Leaders who have mastered four or more styles, especially the Authoritative, Democratic, Affiliative and Coaching styles, have the best climate and business performance.

COERCIVE LEADER always demands immediate compliance, they request their subordinates to do what they tell them. The subordinates are drove to achieve, initiative and self-control. The leadership style is suitable in a crisis, to kick start a turnaround, or with problem employees. For long term, it caused a negative morale and working atmosphere. Also, this kind of leadership would cause a high risk in business because the leader usually can not accept different idea or comment from the colleagues or underlings.

AUTHORITATIVE LEADER mobilizes people toward a vision, they always say "Come with me". They shown self-confidence, acted as change catalyst in revolution. When changes require a new vision, or when a clear direction is needed, authoritative leader is the best one to lead for changes. This kind of leadership is strongly positive in working atmosphere and their subordinates are willing to follow the leaders with confidence.

AFFILIATIVE LEADER creates harmony and builds emotional bonds. They are good in building relationships in working environment, also can setup a good communication channel between the subordinates. In the situation for healing rifts in a team or to motivate people during stressful circumstances, this kind of leader would be the best choice. This is also making a positive working climate.

DEMOCRATIC LEADER forges consensus through participation. We lalways hear the leader said "What do you think?". This kind of leader shown us collaboration, team leadership and also good in communication. In situation to build buy-in or consensus, or to get input from valuable employees, the leader becomes the motivator for the team. This is also making a positive working climate.

PACESETTING LEADER sets high standards for performance. Maxim from them is "Do as I do, or I am your model." They are conscientiousness, drive to achieve and initiative. To get quick results from a highly motivated and competent team is need the kind of leader. However, they would cause a negative working atmosphere for the team because lack of suggestion system and not encourage of comment from subordinates.

COACHING LEADER develops people for the future. We always hear they say "Try this." to encourage the others to strengthen. The leader is good in developing others, empathy and self-awareness. To help an employee improve performance or develop long-term strengths is suitable for this kind of leader. Positive working environment came from this kind of leadership.

The different characteristics of leadership are just like the different numbers of golf club. It is hard to say which kind of leadership is the best or worst. When we implement the lean transformation, we should select the suitable kind of leadership to lead the Kaizen according to the change of company culture. A trope in golf, during we just start to implement lean, we need the immediately culture change in a big jump. We need to use the coercive leadership to lead just like we use the club in number "0" for issueing ball to more than 200 yards. During the culture is improved, we need to motivate the member to improve by themselves. We can use coaching leadership to lead by encourage for trial, just like we use club of number "P" (putter) to put the ball close to the hole around 50 yards.

The important factor is how to select the suitable leadership style for different period and change selectively. In simply say, the different leadership styles like our set of golf club. Select the club in right time. How many clubs do you have right now? Or, actually you don't know what is the number of club you are using?

Hong Kong Flower Show 2009

I went to Hong Kong Flower Show 2009 today and took some photos, share with you!

Have a good day.

Rainbow again! 又见彩虹!

很久以前，一个雨的下午，看到过一次彩虹。

今天中午，又再次看到彩虹。我以最快的速度跑回家中，把我所有的照相机都拿出来，用不同的光暗调节，拍了很多照片。

这条彩虹跟以前见过的不一样，因为它不是那种横跨天空，从左到右像跨桥般的彩虹，而是环绕着太阳成圈形的。若你没有带上太阳眼镜，就比较难看到了。

五年前看到过彩虹，过了几年不错的日子。听说看到彩虹会走好运，看看这次又怎么样!!!

祝所有关心我的家人及好朋友都走好运!!!

若你没有看到彩虹，就多看我拍的照片吧，保证有一样的行运效果！