We're so glad that you guys are here and we'd love to hear from you.
One thing that has changed in the way that you see
yourself or in how you view your contributions to your organization.
If you guys would just drop that in the chat and let us know,
one thing that's changed for you from our weekly gatherings here.
Thank you to all of you who completed the surveys.
I know that those are hugely important to us,
so thank you again.
I don't know, do we have folks in the chat popping in?
There we go.
Nicole, the value of working from a place of rest.
Yes, so that you're fully charged for deep work.
That's a huge one, isn't it?
That's a huge one and that will change the way that you
work, working from a place of rest.
Does anybody else want to weigh in here?
We don't have to be shy.
There's no right or wrong answers.
We're all here learning together,
so feel free to pop that in.
You guys, I have a hot tip for the QBook for you.
Remember, start a new to-do list every Monday or Sunday.
For me, I actually like to do it on Fridays when everything is
fresh in my brain and I won't forget the importance
of a certain task.
Circle the critical items for you.
So what is your priority?
What are you going to focus on first?
And then if you find items that are being copied week to week,
ask yourself, can I delete this?
Can I delay?
Can I delegate or can I automate?
And, you know, one time this was so critical because one time we
were in a huge transition within the company and I found myself
coming under pressure and Dion just said this comment.
He said, when we come under pressure,
we can default to old behaviors.
And I found out that I was defaulting to an old behavior.
And when I went back to my QBook and I went back to those hot
tips of recording every Monday, circling the priority items,
and then asking for items that were repetitive week after week,
if I could delete, delegate, automate, or delay,
that was hugely helpful and it got me right back on track.
So remember, we'll say it time and time again, practice.
Practice makes permanent.
So it's a continual practice.
All right, so I see that more of you were brave
and you answered here that managing time effectively,
the things that you're taking away,
the value of working from a place of rest,
we said from Nicole Kimberly, making heroes.
Yes, wasn't that really good?
Nancy, investing in her team by being more specific
and intentional with praise.
That was really good, wasn't it?
Yeah.
Whoever thought that if you do it in that specific way,
the impact that it would have, it's really key.
Yeah.
All right, Addy, did you have something
you wanted to say really quickly before we get started?
Oh, you're muted.
If you could go ahead and unmute.
OK, my landmine is going down there,
but I hope you can hear me.
So I have become more productive and creative.
My cue book didn't look the way I wanted it to look first.
It was kind of messy.
But as I go from week to week, I could
see the clarity in my mind.
The cue book looks very precise and cleaner.
And definitely, definitely I'm on my way into just quality work.
And I have my deep work.
I don't know.
I just I couldn't believe what I'm creating here.
So I'm so excited.
I'm just so excited.
Thank you.
Addy, that's a really good point.
Thank you for sharing that.
Because I like that you pointed out that it started out messy.
But as you stuck with it and you kept practicing it over time,
it became clearer and clearer.
And it created a space for you when you intentionally
practice that week after week.
So thank you for sharing that.
Dion, do you want to say anything about that?
No, I love it when we share some of the messy middle.
Because sometimes when we do trainings like this,
you're hearing the end product after a year or two years
or three years.
And then we never wanted to feel like we were doing it wrong.
feel unattainable. And I can tell you, I've done this with a
So I think it's a good thing that we
lot of teams, I've done it for churches, nonprofits, I've done
are able to share some of the messy middle.
it in a school for teachers, I've literally done in so many
contexts and a lot of different companies, sizes, different
skill levels. And it always is the same process. They're the
early adopters will jump in week one, do exactly what you say and
get the benefit. And then there's those who sit around for
six months to see if this is real. That's and everybody in
between. And that's okay. You know, I mean, some people just
take longer. And that's totally fine. So thanks for sharing,
Eddie. I appreciate that. Yeah. Just an interesting little point
is somebody has built a notion template for the QBook. And I
can tell you straight away that I won't use it. Because even
though I gave feedback to it, I thought, look, I'm sure somebody
wanted, here's what you will lose, you'll lose the mind map,
your brain like photographs that page in a wonderful way. And
recently, somebody I was telling Jenny at the beginning of the
call, recently, somebody asked me about a very subtle tax
thing, which was, you know, five months ago, and I'd worked with
our tax EPA. And on the in the middle of the left side, where
the money stuff goes, I'd run out of space. And so I'd kind of
written it down the side, and it had a little look in my brain,
and I couldn't remember what it looked like. But I couldn't
remember the term for that. So if I was searching on notion, I
wouldn't know the search term. I wouldn't know what I've called
it. But I knew what it looked like. I knew it mapped in my
brain. And so I just skimmed back quickly page through. And
there it was. And I go, how do you do that? So it's because
your brain is great at taking photographs of the pages. So you
know, the minute it goes electronic, and it moves, you
have all that mapping power. But if some of you have figured it
out, bless your heart, we've got a, we've got a notion template
for you. That we're happy to give you if you want it, but I
have not found it to work. So I'm curious to know, how long
was it between when you took the note and when you had to go back
and look, what was that span of time that you had to go back and
look at it? Was it like months, a year, five months? Yeah, it
I've gone back years, sometimes five years, six years, I've gone
back, and my brain still remembered more or less where it
was, because you think you won't remember, but then the topic
comes up, and you go, hang on, I first I know, it's money. So
it's left middle. And then you're off to the races, and
then your brain finds it. So, yep.
So true.
Yeah. Thanks for those tips, Jenny. That's those. I'm glad
you're reminding us of that.
Very important to be reminded, right? Because right when we
think that we've got something down, we get to go to another
level and layer of it, of the learning of it. So, all right,
are we ready to dive in for today? Because today, we're
going to be talking about an effective way to brainstorm all
six ways of thinking with the six hat exercise. So where am I
brainstorming people at? Those who love it? Because I think
we'll be equally divided, right? Those who love it and those who
maybe don't. So, you'll identify your top two ways of thinking
is a fun exercise. And this brainstorming strategy sparks
innovation, and it provides boundaries to creative
brainstorming discussions to ensure that they stay positive.
So this is really helpful for those who maybe haven't had a
great experience with brainstorming, it really does
give it a focus and a purpose. And so today's pro tip is to
think about where you started, and where you are now, because
it's been, it's just been 10 weeks. And imagine if you kept
intentionally practicing all that you've learned so far,
where will you be six months from now? Because as I said
earlier, this growth builds, there's levels and layers. And
just when you think that you have something mastered, there
will be a new thing to learn from it. All right, are you guys
all ready to dive in? It's going to be fun. So go ahead and give
Dion a virtual fist bump, and or a thumbs up and say hello.
Thank you, Jenny, I appreciate it. Hey, you know, what's going
to be amazing about this particular discussion is this
might be as critical as the QBook. And the reason for it is
that it creates language in which you can talk to each other
at a higher level of precision. And I will give examples of
that. This really becomes part of your language. But again, to
give credit to the original author, Edward de Bono, the
father of lateral thinking, a British philosopher. And by the
way, this six hat thinking is very popular in the East,
particularly in Japan, in the US not so well known, but I have
been using this for over 30 years. And we've literally done
this with school teachers. I see Cindy's on the call here with
us. And you may remember doing six hat brainstorming back when
we were running the school.
And so if we look over the period of time,
here's why it helps.
It turns out that there are six ways
of thinking about anything.
Now, this is the introductory course.
We'll come back to this in season three
and we'll add two more, which are more advanced hats.
But for now, the two are more unique situations
for decision-making,
but the six ways of thinking about anything.
And here's the fun part about this exercise.
Two of these ways, one is your primary way of doing it
and the other is your secondary.
And here's the point.
We can all do all of them.
It's not like, oh, well, I'm at this or I'm at that.
Don't put yourself in a box.
You can do them all.
So the idea of a six hat session
is can we synchronize all these different thinking modes
and all getting to the same mode?
So practically what we'll be doing
is it'll be imagine or visualize
that you're all putting on the same colored hat,
so which represents a thinking mode.
So I've put a little slide deck together,
which I've also provided to your leaders
so that you guys can use this
every time you run a six hat session.
So let me jump in and share my screen quickly.
And then everybody see that six hats, is that,
everybody can see that?
Are we good?
Okay, so six thinking styles for innovation.
So the very first one,
so you're starting your brainstorming session.
Give me one second, guys, I just need to,
okay, I think I got it.
So think of the, go back one, white hat.
This is the information hat.
So everybody put on their white hat,
pretend we're all thinking in that mode.
Think of a scientist's lab coat, factual, logical.
Think about facts, figures, and other objective information.
So here's the topic.
We're talking about maybe a new product we wanna do.
Several of you have mentioned to me
that you have different initiatives
going on in your company.
This is a great way to gather a team together,
get the topic on the board or on a,
you can do this virtually on a virtual board.
And then what we're going through is say,
let's think about the facts.
What do we know?
What figures do we know?
So here are the three key questions.
What facts do we know?
What don't we know?
What trends can we observe?
Now, this has to be logical, factual information.
This can't be hearsay or you feel or you think.
This is actual information, stats, data.
Hey, we have 6,000 subscribers.
We're losing them at 300 per month.
Our average income is this.
We need to upgrade our subscriber retention rates.
That's why we're having the brainstorming session, et cetera.
So here we're just looking for facts.
And so by the way, Jenny will show you at the end,
we've actually created a Notion template for this.
So if you're brainstorming this virtually,
you can actually just follow this
all on the same Notion template.
If you don't know what Notion is,
that will be a big fun discovery
when you find out how useful that particular tool is
like Slack and Notion, right?
So next hat.
Everybody's put all the data on the table.
Now, black hat.
Think of a judge's robe.
This is the caution hat.
This is the hat of judgment.
It's caution.
It's technically called logical negative.
So it's negative.
Everybody has to be negative.
Everybody has to put the negative black hat on.
And we have to think of negative reasons
why something may not work,
why it might be illegal, immoral, unrealistic.
You have the big questions.
What are the downside risks to doing this?
What is the worst case scenario?
Any of you recognizing your primary hat yet?
Maybe your secondary hat.
What are the implications of getting this wrong?
What if we just mess this up
and we try to do this new thing with our subscription
and we lose half our subscriber base?
That would be awful.
So here's where we just rapid fire
and we go through and we list everybody.
So now we've got two hats up.
If you're physically doing this in a room,
one practical thing you might wanna do
is use those sticky note boards,
you know, those little flip chart sticky notes
where you can write and then keep them up in the board
where everybody can see each of the hats
as they're developing.
The first question that comes up
after we get through black and white hat is,
hey, I remembered another item from a previous hat.
Can I still add it?
Absolutely.
So the idea is that you can see them all
as they're developing.
So we've done two of the hats.
So.
Black hat information, I'm sorry, white hat information,
black hat, caution, logical negative, what could go wrong?
Okay, now we get to a really fun hat.
This is the red hat, think of a beating heart.
This covers intuition, feelings, emotions, experience.
The red hat allows you to like, just put forward
your intuition and there's no logic.
You don't have to justify it, you don't have to explain it,
you don't have to say where you got it from.
You can just say, for subscriptions,
nobody's gonna pay $30 a month, it's too expensive,
or it's too cheap.
There's no data, there's no factual white hat data
to support your idea, it's just your experience,
just what you feel.
So the key questions here is,
what does experience teach about this?
How do I really feel?
And what's our intuition about this?
And if anybody from Brilliant is on the call,
then we all know that at this point, everybody's laughing
because at Brilliant, we've worked out
for our online business and for what we provide
at Brilliant, over 90% of our red hat is wrong.
If one of us say, man, now this campaign,
this thing, this is gonna happen.
This thing is gonna take us to the next level
and it's a big disaster.
Or we throw something out there,
well, I hope that works, you know, whatever.
And then it's a huge hit.
So we just, one of the ways we describe our ideas
when we're talking to each other,
and this is why this goes beyond just brainstorming,
what happens is we have a way of categorizing
our suggestions and our input.
I can say, hey, you know, guys, this is my idea,
but it's just a red hat idea.
So at Brilliant, that means we basically can ignore it
because we all know how wrong we are on red hat stuff,
but you can still say it, right?
Or, hey, I know this is black hat,
but just hear me out, you know, whatever.
So what it does is it allows us to give space
for each type, otherwise all the black hat thinkers
are like, stop being so negative.
We're trying to do something positive here.
But we do need to hear the negative stuff.
We need to hear what might go wrong.
Okay, let's go through another fun hat, the yellow hat.
This is that think of sunshine, happiness.
This is the logical positive hat.
Why would the new possibility work?
And what benefits would it give us?
Key questions here are things like,
this is the possibility hat.
What if we actually pull this off?
This new subscription thing we're doing,
what if it actually worked?
What would be the advantages?
You know, what would be the best possible outcome,
everything going smoothly?
So you can see how we've given space.
So anybody wanna tell me,
what is the opposite of the yellow hat?
Anybody wanna know?
Tell me.
I can't see the comments
because I'm in share screen share mode.
So you'll just have to,
somebody would have to read it to me.
Anybody?
Black, most books are black.
Exactly, black.
Black is the logical negative.
And so black and white are not the opposites.
It's yellow and black are the opposites.
So just in terms of, you know,
the different types of framing.
Yellow is what if we pulled it off and it all goes well.
Black is what if it all crashes,
crumbles and it all goes wrong.
And so we get a full spectrum of thought
from both of those hats and both are logical.
All right, here is the most fun hat of them all,
the green hat.
Think of green grass that grows sideways, right?
This is lateral thinking hat.
It's not a logical hat.
It's purely the most creative hat possible.
We're thinking of off the wall, provocative, crazy ideas.
Key questions are,
how can we think out of the box about this?
You know, what's completely new, fresh and innovative?
What crazy idea have we not yet tried?
Now, the important thing about this box,
notice that this is combined with red.
They're both not necessarily logical.
Red tells you about what you know emotionally
about the past.
Green thinks about what could be emotionally
about the future.
It's the creative,
what completely creative idea have we not done?
You know, as a simple example, for instance,
the reason we use green grass as the metaphor
is because it goes sideways.
It's just like a sideways,
loosely connected thought structure.
So maybe all these things are up on the wall
and you're looking at them, you know,
and you get a bit bored.
And so you look at your watch and you see,
you know, it's 10 o'clock and you're thinking 10 o'clock
and you're thinking of 10 down.
on Ink Street, hey, that's where the British Prime Minister, I
wonder if we should get the British Prime Minister to speak
at our event. Well, that's not going to happen. But what about
the mayor? Hey, what about the mayor of our town? What do we
invite the mayor? So how do we go from 10? It's 10 o'clock to
let's invite the mayor. That's green ad thinking very loosely
because somebody says something and triggers another idea and
another idea. And that's why we have two hats that have no
direct logical connection. Because what we're trying to do
is we're trying to create space for one thought to trigger
another. And it's interesting, for those of you that lead the
sessions, the big mistake I've always see leaders make when
they run these sessions is they, they spend way too much time on
the white hat, and then they kind of run through these other
hats. Second big mistake I see, is to realize on these more
creative hats, especially this one, and the yellow hat, these
creative hats need at least two waves of ideas, right? The first
wave is pretty much the obvious the extension of the creative
stuff. But to really get the deep creativity, sometimes
there's this sort of long silence, and inexperienced
leader will try and fill the silence with with words. But
just letting letting that silence hang for a bit, and not
letting it feel awkward, just leave it there and tell the team
that we may have moments of silence. That's okay, because
we're all thinking and leaving those moments. And then that
second wave is usually where we get the really great ideas
because we go past just the obvious creativity. I hope that
makes sense, right? Blue hat. So blue hat, think of a blue sky.
This is the management hat. This is the leadership hat. This is
what we call metacognition, thinking about our thinking. So
how can we prioritize all these ideas, right? We've all been to
brainstorming sessions, tons of ideas. Somebody sends out an
email with all the notes six months later, absolutely nothing
happens. This hat stops that from happening. This hat says,
how do we prioritize it? How can we summarize the plans we want
to make next steps, milestones, etc. The way we do it, and the
way I found is very just a simple practical thing is I ask
everybody look through all the ideas of the other hats, and
then you get two votes. And then so what we all do, especially on
notion, we've we've numbered them. So, you know, we've got
white 12345, black 12345, and so on, then people say I'm voting
for green seven, and I'm voting for, you know, white nine, or
whatever it is. And then we just add them up and we see where the
weight of the emphasis is. And then we all agree, we usually
pick one, sometimes we'll allow ourselves to pick two. And it's
not that the other ideas are being discarded, we're
prioritizing and sacrificing the good for the very best, right?
Because we all know that the good is the enemy of the best.
So with that, with that, then we'll put our pants together.
And then we take a minute in this hat to talk about what are
the next steps, what are the plans, what the milestones,
who's doing what, when, and we start sort of a very high level
project management piece. So we've gone from complete
brainstorming to an actual actionable item at the end. And
if you run this carefully, you can do this in 40 minutes to an
hour, which is amazing, because this would normally be a three
hour process. Alright, so there's a summary for those of
you that like to have all the analytic data. There's three
types of thinking, critical thinking, creative thinking,
metacognition, which just means thinking about your thinking.
Right. And so you can see the critical hats, the creative
hats, the metacognition hats. And the column on the right just
says whether they're logical or not. So here's how to lead a
session. If you're leading a six hat session, here are some
basic tips that we've just learned. It's great if a blue
hat thinker leads it. And I say that as somebody who can see the
big picture and get it to nail down and take action. It doesn't
have to be, but just be aware if you're not, that's not your
primary hat as a leader, then you know, just be aware that you
have to have that hat on as you lead the session. Two, frame the
session well. Don't make it too broad and don't make it too
narrow. If it's too broad, like, okay, everybody, we're going to
define the universe. Nobody knows how to participate if the
category is too big. If the category is too tiny and too
small, again, we don't know how to participate. So you want to
figure out a nice space. And the way I do that is I imagine that
the minute I put it up there, will the information immediately
start flowing? Or will I get a bunch of questions asking what
do I mean?
So that to me is an easy way.
And then we capture each of these hats on a separate page
or in a notion document,
get participation from everybody.
I like to see participation from everyone for every hat,
that's not always possible,
but it's really good for your team
to practice these different hats,
even if it isn't their primary or secondary hat.
I talked already about the second wave of ideas
and allow for free thinking,
but do not allow for criticism of ideas
or for people to start to respond to other people's idea.
Well, I don't know if that's gonna work.
We don't want that type of analysis
and people already evaluating ideas yet.
We're not in valuation.
Valuation is blue hat.
We'll get to blue hat.
Thanks for giving that thought
and just stop people evaluating other people's ideas
until we hit blue.
Just let them pour it all out.
Doesn't matter if they're realistic, unrealistic,
doesn't matter.
One crazy unrealistic idea
can trigger one of the most creative things.
And let me tell you this,
I've been doing this a long time in a lot of contexts
and it's often the person you least expect
to come out with the idea that is absolutely breakthrough.
I've seen that more times than I can count.
So it's not like,
oh, by the way, one key idea I wanna say,
we have a rule and the rule is,
and it'd be great rule for everybody,
ideas have no rank.
Ideas have no rank.
The CEO's ideas are not more valuable
than the person at the bottom of the org chart.
Great ideas are great ideas.
Ideas stand on their own.
There is no org chart
while we're going through this process.
My idea is no better than anyone else's.
Okay, here's some fun feedback.
We're gonna break out here in a second.
Here'll be a fun thing.
As I was going through those hats,
I'm sure several of you thought,
yeah, that's me, you pegged me there,
that I immediately resonated with whichever hat.
Be fun for you to go through and just value yourself
and say, hey, I think that I'm a primary yellow,
secondary blue or whatever it is, right?
And it's just a fun way to look at yourself.
This is not a psychometric test.
I have studied psychometric theory.
I'm very well aware of what it takes to make one.
This is just a fun, that's why we had the word fun.
It's a fun way, quick way to look.
Now, if you have time as a team,
what you can do is you can,
we've provided this little worksheet
and it's just a repetition of columns.
The first one is you marking yourself
and then the others are you,
just how you perceive your teammates.
So I would go through and say,
yeah, I'm working with Jenny
and I think she's primary this, secondary that,
and it's just checkbox.
And then what we do is we all share,
what do we all get for Jenny?
And what's fun about that is we can listen to everything
the team thought about Jenny,
summarize it and say, hey, Jenny,
you got more votes for this color than that color.
Everybody thinks, you know, your primary is this,
your secondary is that.
And then Jenny shares hers.
And it's often the way we see ourselves
is different from the way the team sees us
because we know ourselves more fully.
The team just knows us at work.
They know us in work mode.
So don't be, you know, nothing wrong with you.
There's just a fun way to explore different types of hats
and open yourself to developing some of these hats.
Maybe if you're a primary black hat thinker,
maybe you just need a little more red or yellow
in your life.
So, you know, those type of ideas.
Okay, so those were the six thinking hats
and I'm gonna hand it back to you, Jenny.
Wow, thank you.
How many of you guys found that helpful?
That was helpful to you and you've pinned your hat already
or maybe a teammates.
It's really fun.
And we at Brilliant, we've done two six hats
within the last week, two six hat session.
And Dion, just to reiterate for Shandi
who was asking about a timeframe here,
we spent one hour on that.
Sometimes it will go,
if we're really getting the conversation flowing,
it'll go to an hour and 15,
but we always have that timeframe around it.
So it doesn't go on forever.
And we walk away with an actionable item
that we're gonna follow up with.
So as we break out into our breakout rooms,
remember there's three things to focus on.
The first one is you're gonna set up one hour of time
and you're gonna decide on one topic
to discuss during that time.
Two, pick out your primary and secondary hat.
And if there's time,
then you can pick out your leader's hat.
For exercise three, set aside some time,
maybe about an hour to do this fun exercise as a team.
It's gonna be fun self evaluation.
And as Dion said,
It is not a scientific test.
If you guys are not laughing and saying,
uh-huh, I see that, I see that,
then you need to reevaluate
how you're doing that six hat session
because it is absolutely a fun time for all.