Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono

One of my most influential recent reads: Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono. His books have been recommended to me by various people since I was back in first year university. Writing this blog entry has also inspired me to check for his web site and find the Edward De Bono Portal which makes it easy to access other online resources related to him/his thinking creations.

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

I read Six Thinking Hats directly after reading Lateral Thinking. Both are really excellent reads, but I discovered that I knew quite a bit about lateral thinking already having been exposed to that mode of thought through many people I know socially and have worked with over the years, in some respects it is a natural way for me to approach problems already. Whilst I highly recommend Six Thinking Hats, it contains many references to a number of thinking concerns, thus I believe you need to read at least one of his others, of which I believe none are better choice than Lateral Thinking.

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

Why I recommend Six Thinking Hats:
Reason 1: Increase in productivity, both my own, and during team based activities such as meetings or workshops.
Reason 2: I, and many software industry people I have met, pretty much rely on a single very useful and relevant style of creating solutions for problems - namely extreme pragmatism. This works well, but is very limited for a future vision, and business people (aka clients) generally are more interested in the future and the environment created for their people.
Reason 3: Increased knowledge of how I think and how others think is invaluable as we are all knowledge workers - aka thinkers.