Bookworm Transcripts

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I have a little surprise for you, Corey.

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There's a link in the show notes.

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If you want to go ahead and open that.

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- Oh, kiddokey, let's see what this surprise is.

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- And then you let me know what you see there.

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- I see an iPhone screen with the date on it

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on the top of it, a beautiful background.

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And then it says capture, mind maps, notes,

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community podcast, writing, message, mindfulness,

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and prayer.

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- Yeah, so that is my new iPhone home screen.

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And what's different about this

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for people who are listening to this audio podcast?

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- I have no idea.

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I mean, what's different about this?

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Can you interact with that?

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Like that's my first thing I'm gonna,

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I'm gonna just like, can I click on capture,

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or can I click on mine?

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- Yes, so this is my new iPhone home screen.

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And there are no icons and there is no doc.

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And I love it.

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- Okay, so how are you doing it?

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- Yeah, so I'm using an app called blank,

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I believe is the name.

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And it essentially lets you create these widgets,

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which then you can put on your home screen.

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So in the app, you can choose,

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these are the things that I want to set up.

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And that's kind of like the launcher.

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That's the middle part.

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So you can rename these.

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So capture is actually drafts.

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Mind maps is my note.

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Notes is obsidian.

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Community is circle, podcast is overcast.

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Writing is actually a web app that I had saved in my phone.

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I use typefully to post, to Twitter,

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Mastodon and LinkedIn, although not very consistently.

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So that's like the next thing on my creative checklist

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is to start writing more consistently.

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That allows me to post without having to go in

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and look at what is there.

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Then messages is just messages.

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Mindfulness is this mindfulness meditation app

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that I found called Do Nothing,

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where you literally just start a timer and then do nothing.

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- Wow, that sounds cool.

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- And then it builds the metric,

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they call it the chilometer at the end.

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And this is something that I really am trying to get

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into a habit of doing consistently again.

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Prayer is the echo app.

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And what's cool about this is that you can actually use it

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to just open the app.

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So they have, you can choose from the list.

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These are the apps that we know about

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and you can create a shortcut to that app

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just by selecting from the list.

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Some apps aren't on their list yet,

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so you can use either the URL scheme if you know it,

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or you can use a shortcut.

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So some of these are shortcuts that just open an app.

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I don't think I have any custom URL schemes,

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but you could do something like that as well.

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So that's like the middle widget.

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And then the top widget,

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you can just do a couple of things there.

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You can put the date,

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you can put the actual day of the week,

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you can put the weather,

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you can put like a five day forecast,

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or you can leave it blank.

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And then what you do is you download these wallpapers

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that they have several of them on their website,

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both light and dark mode.

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You can download those,

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put them as the background on your phone,

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and then you have to take a screenshot of that background.

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So you use that wallpaper,

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but then in the app itself,

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there's a button and it says import from this image.

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And it basically just like puts the appropriate slice of that

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in the background of the widgets.

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So it looks like they're just floating there

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and there's no colored background.

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And then essentially the doc is there,

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it just doesn't have any icons in it,

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and the bottom of the wallpaper is the exact same color

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as the doc, so you can't actually see it.

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(laughs)

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- That is crazy.

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And I realized where I made the mistake in my thinking,

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I thought this was your lock screen.

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This is your lock screen, this is your home screen.

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So this is like-- - This is my home screen, yes.

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- 'Cause I'm sitting here thinking through this

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and I'm like, okay, lock screen,

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I don't know, is this that interesting?

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And I was like, oh, but it's his home screen.

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It's his home screen.

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I was like, this is amazing.

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So I might actually be stealing almost all of this,

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except for what you actually have on the screen,

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the content of the screen,

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I might actually be making my own,

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'cause that sounds perfect.

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- Yeah, so the whole idea behind this

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is really just to force yourself

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down some specific intentionality paths

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whenever you reach for your phone.

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And without having any sort of icons on here,

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that really just kinda creases the effect.

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It sounds stupid, but you open up your iPhone

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and even if you don't do anything

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with those icons that are on the front,

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it's like, ooh, shiny.

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'Cause it's all colorful, yeah, so.

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- And the logos and the icons are made to do that, aren't they?

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- They are, yeah.

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- They're made to draw you and attract you to that thing.

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This is funny because I posted in your community,

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in the faith-based productivity community,

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the other day about brick,

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which basically bricks your phone in certain times.

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And then I've looked at light phone,

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I've looked at some of these other ways

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to reduce the functionality of your smartphone.

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This seems like a really cool way to do that,

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but in a customized way.

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I like that a lot.

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- This is inspired by the light phone.

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We actually have one of those for my oldest son.

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And I like it a lot.

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I have toied with the idea of getting one myself.

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I think I probably will at some point in the near future.

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The thing that is keeping me on the iPhone

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honestly is just the mind maps.

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Like I could move the podcast over,

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I could move the directions over,

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I really don't care about text messaging anyways.

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But the way that I take book notes,

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there's no alternative for that

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on the light phone.

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But this is like as close as you can get

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without actually having the light phone.

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I actually, there's one other thing you could do.

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I have an accessibility shortcut set up.

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So if you hit the home button on the side three times,

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it turns your phone into grayscale mode.

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So that makes it even less appealing.

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- But you really doubled down on that.

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(laughs)

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- Yeah.

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So yeah, I like this a lot and it's working for me.

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Now obviously you can do other things besides this.

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You can do focus modes and you can set up

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intentional home screens.

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And I've done all that kind of stuff in the past,

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but this is like that to the next level.

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And I gotta admit, I really like it.

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So I will actually be writing about this

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in the upcoming newsletter.

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It'll already be out by the time people hear this.

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So there will be a link to the actual newsletter

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where you can go read about this in the show notes

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because I use ConvertKit for those.

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And so you get like the public feed or whatever.

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So you can link to specific newsletters

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if people want to see this for themselves.

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But I thought you might appreciate this

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and wanted to share it with you.

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- I'm very much gonna appreciate this.

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And that will be another rabbit hole

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that I'll have to figure out

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when I'm gonna dive down into that one.

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So that's funny.

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(laughs)

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- Nice.

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- Thanks for sharing that.

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- Yep, yep.

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All right.

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And then we've got a couple of follow up items.

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Now you had mentioned the post

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in the faith-based productivity community.

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That was actually one of my action items

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was setting up the new community

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or at least having a landing page

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that people could go to sign up for

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when it's gonna be available.

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So I got that done by the skin of my teeth.

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(laughs)

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- Yeah, good job.

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- Yeah, so there'll be a link in the show notes for that as well.

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But the plan is we're going on vacation.

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We're recording this a little bit early.

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And then when we come back at the end of February,

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I am wanting to have that active.

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And everything basically from the faith-based productivity

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community and the Obsidian University community

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is gonna be brought there.

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It's gonna take me a little while

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to bring over all of the courses and things.

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But yeah, I wanna have one place for all that.

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And then also all of my book notes and things will

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will be there as well.

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So I don't have any specific details to share yet

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about signing up, but there is a page

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where you can go get a notification when it's ready.

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- Nice.

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Nice, I think that'll be very, very valuable for folks

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as you make this transition.

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So that's good.

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- Awesome.

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The other action item I had was try Cornell notes

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in Obsidian.

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And I followed your advice and I watched some videos

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on Cornell notes.

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Good notes actually had a pretty good resource

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for what are Cornell notes.

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And I have the plug-in, CSS snippet, whatever installed.

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And I'm not using it a ton, but I do think

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there are some specific places where this could be useful.

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I guess what I discovered was that when I am working

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with notes in Obsidian, a lot of times I don't have

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the need for these Cornell notes,

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because a lot of the ideas and things will come

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from the mind maps, from the books that we read,

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and then I bring those in and I break those apart

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into atomic notes, but there's no need

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for additional Cornell notes there.

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Where the Cornell notes could be useful, I think,

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in the future is as I'm going through it,

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I'm developing the maps of content or the MOCs,

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where it's kind of like my workbench

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where I'm working through some ideas.

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I will occasionally just like bring in links

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to other notes and add opinion notes.

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And this is what I think, and I have been using callouts

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for a lot of those opinion notes,

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but I think there could be some opportunity

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to add some additional context via these,

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like calling them Cornell notes,

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but they're basically just footnotes

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that appear on the side in Obsidian.

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- Yeah, I think where I would see this

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being the most effective for me and the way I work,

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which I know you don't consume a lot,

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but it's like if I'm watching a YouTube video

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to try to learn something,

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I think a Cornell note in Obsidian

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would make complete sense there.

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Me, seeing that and then translating that into something.

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What I'm curious with you,

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have you done a video or have you written about it anywhere

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about how you make your atomic notes,

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or is that part of one of your courses

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or part of one of your things?

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'Cause this is where my system always falls down.

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It's like, oh, I'm thinking about,

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I just took these notes on this book

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or I just processed through this book.

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And now I need to think about what do I do with this?

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And it's that next step.

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So what's your guidance for me there?

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- I do have a video that I've done on that.

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I'm not sure if it speaks directly to the specific thing

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that you're talking about,

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but it does kind of talk about the value of the atomic notes.

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So I'll put a link to that YouTube video

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in the show notes for people.

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But I think atomic notes are tricky

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because you kind of have to figure out

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your own level of atomicity.

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(laughs)

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It's a word I just made up.

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- I'm pretty sure that's not a word.

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Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not a word.

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Like you got to figure out when to break things apart

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and it's kind of just trial and error.

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You want to go into it thinking,

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what are the smallest component pieces that will be useful?

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And so the example I talk about in the cohorts

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is when I came into Obsidian,

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I wanted to build my own cross-reference library

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from sermon notes that I had taken.

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And I had kind of seen that in action

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in other like Bible software like Logos or Accordance.

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So I'm gonna use the individual verses

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as the smallest atomic piece

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because that's gonna be the link

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between these different things.

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Side note, isn't it crazy that you can basically replicate

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the functionality of those $1,000 software programs

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inside of a free app?

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- Oh man.

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They really are developing wizards, aren't they?

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I mean, the way they've given that thing,

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the ability to do essentially what you want with it.

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It's really cool and then all the community too.

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- Yep, absolutely.

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So I don't know if I have any specific advice for you

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other than maybe go watch that video,

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wrap your head around like how you would use

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those atomic notes and then that will probably spur some,

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some ideas when you are in your green hat thinking mode

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as we'll talk about.

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- That's right.

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- That's right.

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Okay, so my follow up item was to read a physical book

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and annotate it, which I did that this time.

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So I actually have the paper version of the book

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sitting right beside me.

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What I'll tell you is I liked that experience.

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I very much enjoyed that experience except for the fact

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that like I felt like I needed a second notebook

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to write down, I write down a lot, right?

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So I think the difference between you and I

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is I write down a lot more than you do

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when I'm going through this book.

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So I felt like I needed a second book

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and I was annoyed with the second notebook.

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So I have to figure out a better system for that.

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Like is it note cards per chapter?

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Is it something, you know, if I'm gonna read a physical book,

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how do I still collect all the things that I want

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but not have to carry around the second piece of material?

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I didn't like doing that.

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- Yeah, that makes sense.

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I don't know how you're gonna get around that.

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- I know.

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I don't either.

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I haven't figured it out yet.

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So I'm kind of, so dear listener,

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if you haven't figured this out,

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I'm figuring out my note system.

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So I've tried my maps.

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I've tried to put these notes into notion

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and then highlight different things out of there.

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I've now done a physical copy of the book

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with actually handwritten notes in a paper notebook.

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And what I'll tell you is that the thing I've learned

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from all of this, which is probably

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the most valuable reason for doing this,

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is I'm a write more summarize, summarize again,

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summarize again kind of guy.

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That is how my brain needs to process through things

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in order to be able to think about it across boundaries

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and then be able to talk about it

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and be able to actually use it,

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which I probably could have told you this

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from doing my PhD, that that's how I was,

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'cause I mean, I created, do you remember Voodoo Pad?

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Do you remember the software Voodoo Pad?

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- Yeah, back in the day.

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- Yeah, so before all of the stuff that we have now

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that'll link things, Voodoo Pad was a very, very simple,

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very, very good way to basically make your own wiki.

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And I did that with a lot of the work

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that fed into my dissertation as I made my own wiki

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about connecting different ideas and different thoughts.

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So I probably could have told you that I was a summary,

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summary, summary kind of guy before,

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but I'm confirming that right now as we read these books.

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So yeah, so if you think of a good idea

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or if anybody thinks of a good idea

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about how I could take the notes

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and also have the physical copy of the book

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together at the same time, I would even be willing,

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I'm not sold on physical books yet.

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So I would even be willing to have my digital book,

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but then I think the handwritten notes

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is very, very valuable for me.

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I really think that is.

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And it almost makes me wonder,

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I'm not gonna go buy one.

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But what's the big Android tablet that flips open?

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Are they Android phone that flips open?

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Is it the Z Flip?

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No, I don't know.

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- I don't know.

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I do have an Android, actually two Android devices.

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They are Eink, there's an Eink tablet on the Onyx books

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and then I got the Onyx Palma,

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the like phone size e-reader.

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But I don't think that's what you're talking about.

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You're talking about the things where you can have

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two screens essentially side by side.

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- Essentially, if I could have the one screen

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be the book on the left and then the right hand side

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of the screen be my pen that I can take notes on,

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I actually think that's my ideal setup.

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But I'm not willing to go to Android

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because everything else I have works so well

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and is all Apple stuff, so.

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- What if you used like the Kindle app or Apple Books

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and split screen on an iPad and then on the other side

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you had like good notes?

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- I can try that.

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My limitation right now and the reason why

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that doesn't resonate with me right now

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is I have the largest iPad.

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So for that to hold that is it's too bulky

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but that works really well for my teaching.

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So it's like I wonder if I would get an iPad mini,

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is that like the right size or is the text too small

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in the book and then do I have enough space to write?

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Like I bet you if I could do that in the iPad mini

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that'd be very compelling, I think very compelling.

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- I have an iPad mini, I like it a lot

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but I feel like if you put stuff in split screen

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and then try to use one side as a notebook

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it's probably a little too small.

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- Yeah, okay.

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Well, like I told you, so I told Mike before we started

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recording, I'm gonna go try out the Vision Pro today.

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I have a demo and while I'm there I'll look

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at the iPad mini and I'll hold it my hand and say,

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"Do I think I could do this?"

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And you know, it's probably not worth the money

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but at the same time, you know, it'd be fun to try.

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- Yeah, hasn't been updated in a long time.

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So don't buy one yet but maybe when they update it.

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- Yeah, what's the website that tells you

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how long it's been since they've updated something?

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- I think it's Mac rumors, I can't remember

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but they had like the buyer's guide and I know

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what you're talking about is like green is like

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go ahead and buy now, gray is like neutral, eh,

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you know, it's middle product cycle

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then there's the red like don't buy this,

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update is imminent.

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- It hasn't been updated in 287 days,

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like please don't, please are 700 days or whatever it was.

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- Cool.

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- All righty, you wanna talk about a book?

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- Let's do it.

00:17:16

So today's book is Six Thinking Hats by Edward Dibano

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who I had never heard about before

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but after reading this, it sounds like he's a pretty big

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thinker in the business world

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and I probably should have at some point.

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- Well, what got me there was when he says

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in one part of the book, I invented this type of thinking

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in 1967 and I was like, "Oh, okay, I guess you are

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a big deal."

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- Kind of a big deal.

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- Yeah, and then he mentions very casually

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a couple other books that he has written

00:17:48

which sound fascinating to be honest.

00:17:51

So this is sort of like an introduction

00:17:56

to this concept of the Six Thinking Hats

00:17:59

but it sounds like there's even a whole company

00:18:02

and training materials and probably certified coaches

00:18:06

and all that kind of stuff around actually implementing this

00:18:09

and at the very end of the book,

00:18:10

they actually have someone you can write to

00:18:12

to get more information on those training resources.

00:18:16

So that kind of dates, I think how old this material is.

00:18:21

I know I have the International Best Seller

00:18:25

which is revised and updated.

00:18:26

Is that the version that you got?

00:18:28

- That is the version I got.

00:18:29

- Okay, 'cause I know you had sent me a link at one point

00:18:33

and you're like, "Is this the right one?"

00:18:34

'Cause the covers are very, very different.

00:18:36

We're reading the one that has like the hand drawn

00:18:39

six colored top hats on both the front.

00:18:42

- Yeah, and the copyright on the one we're reading

00:18:45

is 1999, that's the latest copyright on the one we're reading.

00:18:49

- Cool.

00:18:50

It's broken down into sections based on the hat colors.

00:18:54

So there's an introduction which has three chapters,

00:18:57

talks about the general approach.

00:18:59

And then there's a section on the white hat,

00:19:01

a section on the red hat, a section on the black hat,

00:19:04

a section on the yellow hat, a section on the green hat,

00:19:07

a section on the black hat.

00:19:09

Last one was a blue hat.

00:19:10

- Oh, you're right, yeah.

00:19:11

Did I say black again?

00:19:13

- Yeah, you said black again.

00:19:14

- Whoops, I haven't written down as blue in my mind map.

00:19:18

Guess I need more coffee, I don't know.

00:19:21

- Well, the funny thing is,

00:19:21

when I was writing my notes on this,

00:19:23

I did BHT for black hat thinking

00:19:26

and then I did BHT for blue hat thinking

00:19:28

and I didn't realize I did that until I went through

00:19:29

my summary, I was like, "Huh, I didn't realize

00:19:32

I gave it the same acronym."

00:19:37

- So I like the structure of this book,

00:19:39

I do have to ask you a question.

00:19:41

Can you, 'cause I see you have the book in your hands,

00:19:44

can you turn to page 169 for me?

00:19:47

And tell me what chapter number you have there.

00:19:50

- Yes, I noticed it too, yep, they're wrong.

00:19:52

- Okay.

00:19:53

- So it should be 42, 169 should be 42,

00:19:56

and then once, what is it, 170 should be 43.

00:20:00

- Yes, but that is also chapter 42 again.

00:20:02

(laughs)

00:20:04

- Yeah, it's typo.

00:20:05

I noticed that too, I was like,

00:20:06

"That actually usually doesn't happen,

00:20:08

especially in chapter titles."

00:20:10

You know, that's especially in like big business books.

00:20:14

- Yeah.

00:20:15

- So that was kind of weird, but.

00:20:17

- I wanna double down with you though,

00:20:19

on the fact that his other books

00:20:21

sound really interesting as well,

00:20:23

and I had this little mini thought of like,

00:20:25

"Do we go down the DiBono rabbit hole?"

00:20:28

Right, like the next three weeks,

00:20:30

I was like, "Man, we probably shouldn't do that."

00:20:31

But at the same time, I think I could, right?

00:20:33

Like, lateral thinking is one of the books.

00:20:35

Teach your child how to think is another one.

00:20:39

Yes, what was the other one?

00:20:40

Yes, something no.

00:20:42

- I don't remember, I didn't-

00:20:44

- But it sounded really interesting too,

00:20:47

so I agreed with you on that aspect.

00:20:49

- Yeah, so this, I think, is probably the thing

00:20:54

that he is most well known for based on how it was positioned

00:20:59

and like, go get more training at the end.

00:21:02

But maybe not, because he did invent that term,

00:21:04

lateral thinking in 1967, and that is the name of another book,

00:21:09

and there's a lot of other, you're right,

00:21:11

rabbit holes that could be gone down

00:21:14

after using this as the springboard here.

00:21:18

But I really like the premise of this book,

00:21:22

which is that there's these six different types of hats

00:21:24

that you can wear, and you have to put them on

00:21:29

at different times, and it kind of changes your focus,

00:21:33

and that is what allows you to have more effective meetings,

00:21:38

think more completely about things, get better ideas,

00:21:40

make better decisions, yada, yada, yada.

00:21:43

So I think for the outline here,

00:21:45

probably makes sense to talk about the intro,

00:21:48

because that's kind of the format,

00:21:50

and then there's 42 plus one chapters in a conclusion,

00:21:57

(laughs)

00:21:58

but we won't tackle it by chapter,

00:22:01

we'll tackle it by the groupings of the colored hats,

00:22:05

probably.

00:22:06

- That's the same way I was thinking about doing it,

00:22:07

so that's great.

00:22:08

- Cool.

00:22:09

All right, well, let's do the introduction here first.

00:22:13

So the introduction has three chapters.

00:22:16

The first one is an introduction,

00:22:18

and he's trying to juxtapose traditional thinking,

00:22:21

which is arguing until one side is proved right,

00:22:23

with this idea of parallel thinking,

00:22:24

where both views are put down in parallel,

00:22:27

and then the way to embrace that parallel thinking

00:22:30

is to wear these different hats.

00:22:32

So there's six different directions of thinking

00:22:34

that are represented by these hats, white,

00:22:37

which is neutral and objective,

00:22:39

it's concerned with facts and figures.

00:22:41

The red hat is the emotional view,

00:22:43

and the color kind of suggests anger.

00:22:45

Black hat is like somber and serious,

00:22:48

cautious and careful,

00:22:49

points out the weaknesses of an idea.

00:22:52

The yellow hat is sunny and positive, optimistic,

00:22:54

covers hope and positive thinking.

00:22:57

The green hat is abundant, fertile growth,

00:22:59

indicates creativity and new ideas,

00:23:01

and then the blue hat is kind of at another level

00:23:04

above this cool color of the sky,

00:23:06

it's above everything else,

00:23:07

it's concerned with control

00:23:08

and the organization of the thinking process.

00:23:11

So this is more about thinking, about thinking,

00:23:14

kind of meta.

00:23:16

And there are different pairs of these

00:23:18

that you can use in conjunction with one another,

00:23:22

which I thought was interesting,

00:23:23

so like white and red, black and yellow, green and blue.

00:23:26

But really, the whole idea is that you're,

00:23:30

let's say you're in a meeting with your team.

00:23:33

And instead of just like naturally responding

00:23:37

in a way that seems appropriate,

00:23:39

the facilitator can say,

00:23:41

okay, that's enough black hat thinking,

00:23:43

now we need to switch into yellow hat thinking,

00:23:46

give me some reasons why this idea might be a good one.

00:23:51

And so you can kind of direct the thinking paths there

00:23:53

and explore things more completely,

00:23:56

which I can tell you,

00:23:57

having been in enough team meetings

00:24:00

that have gone off the rails,

00:24:02

because someone just gets stuck in one of these modes,

00:24:06

this is brilliant,

00:24:07

and I wish I had come across this a lot sooner.

00:24:10

- I could not agree more,

00:24:13

I could not agree more in terms of the fact

00:24:14

that just simplifying it down to these six hats

00:24:18

and then basically giving everybody a common ground

00:24:21

to talk on around that hat

00:24:23

and giving some control or some direction of the meeting.

00:24:26

I mean, it's just a really interesting concept.

00:24:30

And whether you agree with all the hats

00:24:32

and whether you agree with the way he breaks down all the hats

00:24:34

or whatever that is,

00:24:35

the general idea was revolutionary,

00:24:39

sounds like too strong of a word,

00:24:40

but I mean, it really kind of shocked me.

00:24:43

I was like, wow, this is actually a really clever way

00:24:45

to think about running a meeting,

00:24:47

running an organization, trying to make a decision.

00:24:50

One of the things I want to drive home here

00:24:52

in the intro section is this idea of

00:24:56

we're trying to set a direction for decision making, right?

00:24:59

So he calls out the fact that the six hats

00:25:02

in themselves really who cares.

00:25:06

But what we're trying to do is we're trying to use those

00:25:08

as a tool to set a direction.

00:25:09

And then what he's going to do later on in the book

00:25:11

and as he works through the book,

00:25:12

he's going to start talking about it as a map.

00:25:14

And I loved when he started talking about it as a map

00:25:16

'cause that made so much sense to me is like,

00:25:19

all right, the six, essentially the six hats

00:25:21

allow us to develop the different components of the map.

00:25:23

And then once we've developed the map,

00:25:25

he says at one in here, the rest of it, it just unfolds, right?

00:25:29

Like the decision just unfolds once we've developed the map.

00:25:31

And I thought the way he frames the whole thing

00:25:34

is just really, really clever.

00:25:36

- I love the analogy of the map as well.

00:25:39

There were a couple of analogies in here

00:25:40

that I thought were really great.

00:25:43

And it's kind of interesting.

00:25:44

So like the map one resonates with me

00:25:46

because of the great mental models by Shane Parrish

00:25:50

and Rianna Bobbin, where that's where I first encountered

00:25:52

the mental model of the map is not the territory.

00:25:56

And I think that's a really powerful idea.

00:25:59

I talk about that in my practical PKM cohort.

00:26:04

So I literally just harped on that whole thing

00:26:08

about you had to embrace the role of the cartographer

00:26:10

and you get to choose what should be on this map.

00:26:14

And essentially, like what he's talking about here

00:26:16

is the same sort of process with the people in a group.

00:26:21

And then you got to charge your way forward

00:26:23

based on the information that you decided should be on there.

00:26:25

There's another one in here about ideas as like plants

00:26:30

and having like a greenhouse and developing them.

00:26:32

And that's like the basis of the creativity flywheel thing

00:26:36

that again, I taught in the practical PKM cohort.

00:26:40

And it's using a little bit of a different context,

00:26:43

but the lot of the same perspective,

00:26:47

same ideas are there.

00:26:50

So in some ways, selfishly, I liked it as validation

00:26:54

for some of the stuff that makes sense to me

00:26:57

and haven't teach other people.

00:26:58

Like they seem to like it, but then it's like,

00:27:00

oh, well, actually, here's someone else

00:27:01

who thinks about it that way.

00:27:03

That's kind of cool.

00:27:04

- Yeah, I'll call out a couple other things

00:27:06

that I got out of this intro is this came from him

00:27:09

working with actual clients

00:27:12

and trying to support them in a consulting effort.

00:27:15

So on the very back of the book,

00:27:18

he's worked with IBM, Exxon DuPont,

00:27:21

Prudential, Procter & Gamble, General Foods, Shell,

00:27:23

and all these other companies.

00:27:25

And basically he calls out and he says,

00:27:27

hey, this came from me working with these people.

00:27:29

And he throws out some stats or some like,

00:27:33

look how successful this is.

00:27:35

And that's less relevant, but it comes from practice,

00:27:38

which I like that idea.

00:27:40

I like that there's a theory behind it

00:27:42

and you can tell that there's a theory

00:27:43

of lateral thinking behind it, which is a different book.

00:27:46

This is the, look how this has worked in practice.

00:27:49

I really like that.

00:27:50

And then he drives home this idea of argument,

00:27:52

which we're gonna get to when we get to Black Hat.

00:27:54

But like he drives him this idea of,

00:27:55

most of the time when we're trying to do this,

00:27:57

we end up just arguing with each other for the most part.

00:28:00

And this helps get rid of that argument

00:28:02

and allows it to exist in a certain phase of the process,

00:28:06

not across the entire meeting,

00:28:08

which being a faculty member and sitting through meetings,

00:28:11

all I can tell you is the amount of useless arguments

00:28:14

that happen is just absolutely crazy.

00:28:18

And we waste so much time because we're arguing

00:28:20

over silly little things that like don't drive us forward at all.

00:28:23

So yeah, he resonated with me there as well.

00:28:27

- Yeah, well, we're gonna get to that sooner than you think.

00:28:30

I believe because let's go into the first part here,

00:28:33

which is the White Hat.

00:28:35

And right away in chapter four, he talks about

00:28:38

how the White Hat is just the facts without the argument.

00:28:42

And this is where he really leans into this Western thinking,

00:28:46

which is that we give a conclusion

00:28:49

and then we share facts to support it.

00:28:51

So if everybody takes that approach,

00:28:53

it's really easy to see how the arguments arise.

00:28:56

(laughs)

00:28:57

It reminds me of something that I wrote about actually

00:29:01

in last week's newsletter that I picked up

00:29:04

from Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray,

00:29:07

which is that the internet specifically

00:29:10

is a grocery store for facts.

00:29:12

And you can find whatever fact you want to support

00:29:16

whatever belief you want to have.

00:29:20

And then you have people who are going through all this

00:29:23

information to find specific things to reinforce

00:29:25

these beliefs that they already have.

00:29:28

And is it any wonder why like that's not productive

00:29:32

and why there's so many internet philosophers

00:29:34

who are willing to argue about anything and everything?

00:29:39

So the White Hat is essentially don't view

00:29:44

the information that way.

00:29:46

And it actually talks about there's two types of facts here.

00:29:50

There are believed facts and there are checked facts.

00:29:52

And I don't think it's quite that simple.

00:29:54

Like you can manipulate data to say whatever you want.

00:30:00

So I think there has to be a little bit more nuance there

00:30:02

with check facts.

00:30:04

However, the way to have the most productive conversation

00:30:08

with the people in your group is not to put forth

00:30:11

something at a higher level than actually is the case.

00:30:14

And one of the things I liked about this book,

00:30:16

which is a recurring theme throughout all these chapters,

00:30:18

is there's like a short paragraph or two about the concept

00:30:22

and then like five different examples of how it might

00:30:26

manifest through the mouth of somebody in a meeting,

00:30:29

which is always in the book denoted by like three dots

00:30:32

before the example.

00:30:34

And there are so many that by the end of the book

00:30:36

it does feel a little bit laborious to keep reading those.

00:30:41

But I do think that they provide excellent context

00:30:44

and help you generalize like how this stuff

00:30:46

can actually be used.

00:30:48

- Yeah, going back to that fact and truth.

00:30:51

Actually, let me start where you were.

00:30:53

I agree, I got tired of those towards the end,

00:30:55

but I don't think it was because they weren't valuable.

00:30:57

I think it was because you had just seen so many of them

00:30:59

by that time.

00:31:00

It makes me think that this book would be really, really good

00:31:03

if I was a facilitator or a leader or one of the people

00:31:06

working people through the six hats process

00:31:08

or the six hats method before I hit that hat,

00:31:12

I'm gonna review and I'm gonna say,

00:31:14

okay, what would this look like in practice?

00:31:15

What would this look like in practice?

00:31:16

Going back to the facts, he makes a claim here

00:31:20

that truth is not always fact.

00:31:22

And then you talked about the internet being a repository

00:31:24

of facts and it's like, it all kind of gelled in my head.

00:31:27

It's like the way he describes facts are,

00:31:29

they're like the by and large on the whole,

00:31:32

mostly aligns, right?

00:31:34

And you can do that with anything, right?

00:31:36

Like if you look hard enough or if you dig down

00:31:38

the right rabbit holes, you can say,

00:31:39

well, for the most part, this is true.

00:31:42

And then you call that a fact.

00:31:44

And then he can contrast that with truth.

00:31:47

And truth is always something that aligns

00:31:50

with a certain definition.

00:31:52

So therefore, okay, here's the definition

00:31:53

and then here is truth.

00:31:55

And those are the things that support that definition

00:31:57

or those are the pieces of data that go into that definition.

00:32:00

And I thought that was a really interesting way

00:32:02

to kind of separate those two ideas in my head.

00:32:05

I'd never heard anybody present it that way.

00:32:07

- Yeah, he's got a whole spectrum of likelihood,

00:32:09

which is great, you know, where you start at the top,

00:32:11

always true, usually true, generally true, by and large,

00:32:14

more often than not, about half the time, often,

00:32:16

sometimes true, occasionally true,

00:32:17

but no one to happen, never true, cannot be true.

00:32:20

And I feel like just having those definitions,

00:32:23

not that I'm going to memorize those or anything,

00:32:25

having those in your vocabulary for when you're trying

00:32:27

to figure out what are these facts

00:32:30

and these figures that people are sharing,

00:32:32

like which one of those does that apply to?

00:32:35

Could be really helpful.

00:32:36

The other thing I loved in this section

00:32:38

is chapter six, Japanese style input.

00:32:41

You talked about how Japanese meetings

00:32:43

are not consensus meetings,

00:32:44

which is really what most meetings devolve into

00:32:49

that I've been a part of.

00:32:50

- Yes, yes.

00:32:53

So everyone can have their own ideas

00:32:55

and multiple ideas can be true.

00:32:59

With the Western meetings that I've been a part of,

00:33:01

it's like, let's get everybody convinced

00:33:02

that this is the best thing to do.

00:33:05

And there's a Jeff Bezos idea, like disagree,

00:33:08

but commit, which is helpful to kind of combat that.

00:33:10

But this is even more effective, I think,

00:33:12

the way that he's describing this,

00:33:14

where you can have your idea, I can have my idea,

00:33:17

and we're not going to have these preformed ideas.

00:33:19

The goal of this meeting is not for me to win you over.

00:33:22

It's just to listen.

00:33:24

And then the other thing from this,

00:33:25

which is the beginning of the greenhouse idea,

00:33:29

there's a Japanese notion that ideas emerge as seedlings

00:33:31

and then are nurtured and allowed to grow into shape.

00:33:34

And I think this is absolutely spot on.

00:33:36

I said in the cohort, just a couple of weeks ago,

00:33:39

that you don't know what an idea is when you have it.

00:33:42

You have to give it time to mature.

00:33:43

Everything seems like the best idea in the world,

00:33:45

the moment that you have it.

00:33:47

And actually, there's a quote that I share that,

00:33:49

"Ideas are dangerous when they're the..."

00:33:53

An idea is most dangerous when it's the only one you have,

00:33:56

because you're like, "This has to work."

00:33:59

And I can totally see, as he's describing it here,

00:34:01

how that's the Western approach is like,

00:34:03

let's get an idea.

00:34:04

Okay, this seems plausible, let's make this happen,

00:34:06

whether considering any of the other alternatives,

00:34:09

which we'll get into in the other hats.

00:34:11

- Chapter six is where I called out

00:34:13

the first discussion of a map,

00:34:16

where he first calls out the map idea.

00:34:18

And basically, that neutral input, and then just listening.

00:34:21

So you state your neutral input,

00:34:23

and then you step back and you listen.

00:34:25

And what we're doing there is we're building the map.

00:34:27

We're putting all the features on the map,

00:34:28

and all the features on the map are the facts.

00:34:30

And it's funny, 'cause I just had this happen to me

00:34:33

earlier this week, where we've been thinking about a thing

00:34:38

for quite a while now, and then we got some more information,

00:34:41

and we started to do some analysis on it,

00:34:43

and we went, "Oh my, the facts are very different

00:34:46

"than what we thought they were."

00:34:47

Like, if we just look objectively at the spreadsheet,

00:34:49

and the way things are, that's very different

00:34:51

than what we thought they were.

00:34:52

And it changed the way we thought about the map, right?

00:34:55

We had this assumption, or we had this thing before.

00:34:58

So I really liked that idea.

00:35:01

I think the last thing I'll do,

00:35:02

'cause I feel like we're heading towards the next hat,

00:35:05

would say the way he summarizes this at the very end

00:35:08

was good to me.

00:35:10

Basically imitate a computer.

00:35:13

Like the computer doesn't do any argumentation,

00:35:15

the computer doesn't do any, kind of trying to sway you

00:35:18

in any way, you ask it a question,

00:35:20

and it says, "There are 100,000 records."

00:35:24

Boom, like stop.

00:35:25

And I like that idea, 'cause that put a good mental mindset.

00:35:28

When I go into this, it's like, "What's the white hat?"

00:35:30

The white hat is, "You asked me a question,

00:35:32

"I'm spitting back an answer, and I'm giving you information,

00:35:34

"and I'm gonna stop right there."

00:35:35

Now, whether AI is changing that,

00:35:37

that's a whole other story, or large language models,

00:35:40

whether they're changing that's a whole other story,

00:35:41

but I like that analogy.

00:35:43

I like the way to think about that like a computer.

00:35:46

- Yeah, so when you're talking about thinking

00:35:48

like a computer, essentially what you're saying

00:35:49

is decoupling the emotion from the information,

00:35:53

and you're right, that is the place

00:35:55

to go into the next section.

00:35:57

So the next part of this is the red hat,

00:36:02

and the red hat is all about emotion and feeling.

00:36:06

And this is another thing that I have been frustrated with

00:36:12

in meetings is trying to remove this from the process.

00:36:17

I mean, there are times when you want to do that,

00:36:19

like you were just talking about the computer

00:36:21

and the facts and the white hat thinking mode,

00:36:24

but it's kinda stupid and naive to say,

00:36:28

"Don't make emotional decisions,"

00:36:30

'cause they're going to weigh in

00:36:32

at some point in the process.

00:36:34

That's actually one of the big takeaways for me

00:36:36

from this section is that if emotions and feelings

00:36:39

are not permitted as inputs in the thinking process,

00:36:42

they're going to lurk in the background.

00:36:45

And he calls out, he's got a lot of these little lists,

00:36:47

which are kinda spot on,

00:36:49

but he talks about three points

00:36:50

where emotion can affect your thinking.

00:36:53

First, it can be affecting it by being a background emotion.

00:36:57

Second, it can be triggered by an initial perception,

00:37:00

so something that happens in a meeting, for example.

00:37:03

And then the third way, and this is the productive way,

00:37:05

is after the map has been put together.

00:37:08

So kinda the brilliance of these hats is,

00:37:11

someone is responding emotionally

00:37:13

to something in a meeting.

00:37:15

You could say, "Okay, I recognize those emotions,

00:37:17

"but we're gonna put on the white hat for right now."

00:37:21

And we'll come back to that later.

00:37:23

And that frees you to make the switch.

00:37:27

One of the most frustrating things for me in a meeting

00:37:32

is feeling like I am not being heard.

00:37:36

And a lot of this comes down to crappy facilitation.

00:37:39

But one of the ways that you can put someone

00:37:44

who is in that position, make them feel heard,

00:37:47

and instantly make the meeting more productive

00:37:51

is not to say, just put a pin in that,

00:37:55

but to recognize like, okay, yeah, that's red hat thinking,

00:37:58

that's good in its proper place,

00:38:01

but that's not the place that we are right now.

00:38:03

So I need you to switch to this other mode.

00:38:06

And that doesn't mean that it happens automatically

00:38:08

or that you always are in the right mode.

00:38:11

That's the job of a good facilitator

00:38:13

is to make sure everybody's thinking about things

00:38:15

the same way.

00:38:16

But I love the fact that he calls out essentially

00:38:19

that this is really important,

00:38:21

but you also have to use it in the proper place.

00:38:25

- Yep, I like that he also says,

00:38:28

everybody must tell their red hat

00:38:30

or everybody must tell their emotion,

00:38:33

which I think is really, really valuable

00:38:34

because it's there, right?

00:38:36

We've established the baseline

00:38:37

that everybody has emotion on this.

00:38:39

Even if your emotion is neutral

00:38:40

and he calls that out, he goes,

00:38:41

maybe you don't have a very strong feeling on this,

00:38:43

you're not excited or angry or whatever that is,

00:38:46

you're just kind of neutral about it, state that.

00:38:48

Like make sure you state that.

00:38:49

And I think what that does is that force is in a good way.

00:38:53

I don't mean this in a bad way,

00:38:53

it forces people to actually go, oh, this is,

00:38:57

like if I'm willing to say this,

00:38:58

this is actually what I feel about this.

00:39:00

And then if you have established the baseline

00:39:02

to where there is no bad emotion,

00:39:05

you can feel however you need to feel about this

00:39:07

or however you want to feel,

00:39:07

or whatever your gut is telling you you feel about this,

00:39:10

that's okay, what we're doing right now

00:39:12

is acknowledging the emotion

00:39:13

because he calls out here that you don't have to justify it.

00:39:17

And if you start justifying the emotions

00:39:19

in red hat thinking, you're doing it wrong

00:39:22

because all you should be doing right now

00:39:23

is calling out the emotion and saying,

00:39:25

"I'm excited about this fact,

00:39:28

"I'm excited about this decision

00:39:29

"or this thing we're thinking through.

00:39:31

"I'm gonna keep harp on this

00:39:32

"because I just love the connection so much."

00:39:36

He states here that thinking makes the map,

00:39:39

values and emotion determine the root.

00:39:42

And I really, really like thinking about it this way

00:39:45

because sure, thinking makes me lay out the land

00:39:49

and these are all the facts I'm thinking about

00:39:50

and these are maybe the paths through that.

00:39:52

And then how do I make my decision?

00:39:54

I always make my decision based on emotions.

00:39:56

I like that one, I don't like that one.

00:39:58

That one feels the best,

00:39:59

I'm the most confident in this other one.

00:40:00

It's like, I always make it based on values in emotion

00:40:04

even if it's wrong.

00:40:05

Like even if I make the wrong decision

00:40:07

and I know I'm making the wrong decision,

00:40:09

I'm usually gonna make it based on values and emotion

00:40:11

which I really connected with that piece too.

00:40:15

- Yeah, I think this is maybe the most important section

00:40:20

of the book for me because I tend to be pretty passionate

00:40:29

and I have long fought for like productive meetings

00:40:33

being ones where we have healthy conflict.

00:40:37

And healthy conflict is where you're able to separate

00:40:41

the ideas from the people who have them,

00:40:44

the groups that I've been a part of,

00:40:46

it feels like I can enter into that mode a lot easier

00:40:51

than a lot of the other people

00:40:55

that I've been in those situations with.

00:40:57

And it's hard for me to hold back

00:41:01

because I care so much about we gotta work through this.

00:41:06

Let's not meet for two hours

00:41:09

and then not accomplish anything

00:41:12

and have the same meeting again next week.

00:41:14

Like why is that okay with anybody?

00:41:18

- I agree.

00:41:18

- It boggles my mind.

00:41:20

So like there's obviously something here.

00:41:23

Let's put our big boy pants on and let's just talk about it

00:41:27

but there are things that you can do in the meeting structure

00:41:31

like starting in on a positive focus.

00:41:33

That's something we did at the day job prior to this.

00:41:35

That was really helpful.

00:41:37

Definitely move the needle here.

00:41:39

But I've also seen how like whenever people get emotional

00:41:44

about things, the default reaction in a lot of the meetings

00:41:47

I've been in is to just kind of sweep it under the rug.

00:41:51

It's like, well, that's a bad thing

00:41:53

and you just gotta cool down and come back tomorrow

00:41:56

when you don't feel so strongly.

00:41:58

And I'm like, that just makes it worse.

00:42:01

- Yes it does.

00:42:02

- He talks in here about legitimizing the emotions

00:42:05

and you hit on something.

00:42:06

He said that you don't have to have a justification for it.

00:42:10

Now, I think that's the other thing that I feel

00:42:14

because of the responses I've seen from people.

00:42:16

It's like, I have to have a justification for these emotions.

00:42:19

So it's kind of freeing to me to hear like,

00:42:21

no, you can just feel what you feel.

00:42:23

But I think there's another thing

00:42:25

that this ties to something from a previous book

00:42:27

that we read and I'm blanking on the book,

00:42:28

but I know that I talked to you about this

00:42:31

in the last couple of episodes

00:42:32

where one of my action items was not saying,

00:42:36

"You did this and then it made me feel this way

00:42:39

but I feel this way because this happened."

00:42:42

And for me, this is like the perfect combination

00:42:45

of like the white and the red hat.

00:42:47

The red hat is I'm feeling this way

00:42:49

and I don't have to justify why I feel this way

00:42:52

but the thing that has triggered this emotion

00:42:53

if I look at it objectively is this information,

00:42:56

which is not coupled to positive negative judgment,

00:43:00

but this thing that happened,

00:43:02

we're not gonna discuss whose fault it is,

00:43:04

but it's a thing that happened

00:43:06

and that is the thing that caused me to feel this way.

00:43:08

I feel like understanding that connection

00:43:10

can be really valuable.

00:43:12

It's just when you attach it to somebody else

00:43:15

and we judge other people by their actions,

00:43:17

ourselves by our intentions and we say,

00:43:18

"Oh, well, you did this on purpose to get under my skin."

00:43:22

That's where things get unhealthy.

00:43:25

- Yeah, I agree.

00:43:26

I mean, he talks about how one of the reasons

00:43:29

why you don't justify is because they can be fickle

00:43:32

and I can tell you from personal experience,

00:43:34

there are times when I'm just,

00:43:36

I get into a meeting and something happens

00:43:38

and I'm like, "Well, that's dumb."

00:43:40

Like, that's just a dumb idea.

00:43:41

And then 30 minutes later, an hour and a half later,

00:43:44

I'm like, "Actually, that really wasn't a dumb idea.

00:43:46

I don't know why I thought it was a dumb idea in that meeting

00:43:48

but I had that strong emotion, which is fine,

00:43:50

like it was there."

00:43:51

And then later on, I have a completely different emotion

00:43:54

to round that out.

00:43:55

The book you're referencing was

00:43:58

the Difficult Conversations book.

00:43:59

That's where that was. - Oh, right.

00:44:00

- That's where that was. - Obviously.

00:44:01

Yeah. (laughs)

00:44:02

Should've thought of that one.

00:44:03

- Yep.

00:44:05

- All right.

00:44:06

- Black hat?

00:44:07

- Yeah, let's go to the black hat.

00:44:08

So the black hat is maybe the one

00:44:11

that I operate in most naturally. (laughs)

00:44:16

And I don't think I'm naturally a negative

00:44:19

or pessimistic person,

00:44:21

but I guess after reading through this whole book

00:44:24

and realizing the different hats,

00:44:26

I kinda noticed that I go back and forth

00:44:30

in these different modes sort of naturally.

00:44:34

And I feel like not always 'cause I'm the facilitator

00:44:37

of the meetings, but I see the need

00:44:40

for these additional perspectives.

00:44:42

This is the one that traditionally

00:44:45

the groups I've been involved in,

00:44:46

people don't wanna touch this one.

00:44:49

- Really?

00:44:50

- Yeah, yeah.

00:44:51

And it's hard for me because someone

00:44:54

will be sharing an idea, oh, this is amazing.

00:44:56

We should just totally go for it.

00:44:57

And in the back of my mind, I'm like holding backs.

00:44:59

I'm like, I see about a dozen ways

00:45:02

that this could go sideways.

00:45:04

And I'm gonna let somebody else say something.

00:45:06

And then the longer it goes with nobody else saying anything,

00:45:09

I feel like more bricks get put in the backpack

00:45:12

that I'm carrying.

00:45:13

And I feel this stress and anxiety.

00:45:15

I'm like, how does nobody see this?

00:45:18

So then I'll say it because I feel like it needs to be said.

00:45:23

And then if you don't have a healthy atmosphere,

00:45:26

that comes across as well.

00:45:28

You're attacking my idea, therefore you're attacking me.

00:45:32

I don't know, maybe I just haven't been

00:45:34

in enough really high functioning teams.

00:45:37

- What I think's interesting is he calls this out

00:45:40

as the most used.

00:45:41

He says in most meetings, this is the most used.

00:45:44

And you have the opposite scenario

00:45:45

where the meetings you're in for whatever special magic group

00:45:49

of people that you have, they are the opposite of this.

00:45:52

They are the yellow hat people.

00:45:54

And you're the black hat person in the room.

00:45:57

So that's interesting.

00:45:58

I do not have that same experience.

00:46:00

Most of the meetings I'm in, this cautious, careful,

00:46:03

survival, ethical kind of thing,

00:46:06

that's 100% what governs 99% of the meeting.

00:46:09

And then we have to really fight for anything else

00:46:12

in the meeting.

00:46:13

- Yeah, well, I should clarify this a little bit

00:46:15

because I feel like there is a baseline level

00:46:19

for an effective meeting, which is you have to have

00:46:22

an agenda.

00:46:23

And there are some groups that I'm in

00:46:25

that don't even get to that point.

00:46:27

(laughs)

00:46:28

- So that would be, for those of you who want to know

00:46:29

where we're going, that would be the blue hat thinking

00:46:31

of this whole situation.

00:46:33

- So once you have the agenda, then I think the default

00:46:38

can be to go into the black hat thinking.

00:46:40

And there are definitely times in my working life

00:46:44

specifically where we have the agenda

00:46:46

and this is the purpose of the meeting.

00:46:48

And I can totally see how not me, but other people

00:46:52

have gotten stuck in this particular area.

00:46:54

And in that instance, it's frustrating to me

00:46:57

because I feel like, okay, we're gonna talk about this thing

00:47:00

and the black hat just keeps throwing out

00:47:02

more and more scenarios.

00:47:03

Oh, well, we gotta get more and more information.

00:47:06

And so I had to embrace a different role

00:47:08

where it's like, no, we have enough information.

00:47:12

Let's just make a decision.

00:47:14

There's 10 things on our agenda for this 90 minute meeting

00:47:17

and we've spent 75 minutes talking about the first one,

00:47:21

which is not even the most important one.

00:47:23

So let's move along here, people.

00:47:25

It's gonna be okay. (laughs)

00:47:27

Which is not a natural thing for me,

00:47:32

but I guess I see the need to embrace a different role

00:47:37

and so I'll jump in there.

00:47:38

It's always uncomfortable for me to do that.

00:47:41

And I think side note here that these different hats,

00:47:45

he talks about how everyone needs to be able to go back

00:47:47

and forth between these different hats.

00:47:49

So you can't hide behind the justification

00:47:52

of, oh, well, my personality is naturally this way.

00:47:56

That's a data point.

00:47:57

That's fine.

00:47:58

You can use that, but you need to get over that

00:48:02

at some point and learn to think different ways.

00:48:05

And I do think that the way that he's talking about

00:48:08

these different approaches, this is thinking is a skill.

00:48:12

He actually talks later on about how creativity is a skill.

00:48:14

I totally agree, those two are very much linked,

00:48:17

but if you can learn to think better,

00:48:20

then you can have more productive meetings.

00:48:25

And that's really, there's another aspect of this

00:48:27

where you can switch between these different modes

00:48:29

at an individual level, but I really do think

00:48:32

where this gets multiplied exponentially

00:48:34

in terms of its effectiveness is when you have

00:48:38

a team of people, probably at least five or six people,

00:48:41

where you have to have some sort of baseline framework

00:48:45

of this is how we're going to do this.

00:48:48

Like a shared rules of engagement.

00:48:51

- I would agree with you.

00:48:52

I think he calls out a couple of different things

00:48:55

that you were touching on and you may be hitting.

00:48:57

I wanna re-hit those is we're all gonna have

00:48:59

some way that we're wired.

00:49:01

So I can tell you I'm wired green hat yellow hat.

00:49:03

If I look at this, I'm wired green hat yellow hat.

00:49:05

So for me to do the other things,

00:49:07

I have to think about those a little bit harder,

00:49:10

but like you said, you can't hide behind that.

00:49:12

You still have to engage in the full process.

00:49:14

Another one, he calls out the fact that

00:49:17

black is the most used hat to be critical.

00:49:21

Most people find it easy to be critical.

00:49:23

And he says, do that, that's great.

00:49:26

We need you to be critical,

00:49:27

but if we're not in black hat thinking mode,

00:49:30

just write it down and let it go.

00:49:32

Because if not, you're going to be that person

00:49:35

who's always going to throw out that critical idea

00:49:37

when we're not in that part of our thinking.

00:49:39

And it's not that you shouldn't capture that.

00:49:41

It's just a matter of this isn't

00:49:42

when we're supposed to think about this.

00:49:43

And you're gonna end up derailing the meeting,

00:49:45

which is what you're getting at is 75 minutes of,

00:49:48

we're still on agenda item number one.

00:49:49

Why? Because everybody just kept harping on these things.

00:49:53

I think he does a really good job

00:49:58

where he says it comes from past experience.

00:50:01

And essentially our black hat thinking is,

00:50:03

how does this fit with past experience?

00:50:06

How does this fit with our strategy?

00:50:07

How does this fit with the ethics and the values

00:50:09

that we hold?

00:50:10

And what we're doing in black hat thinking is

00:50:12

we're trying to resolve all of that at the same time

00:50:16

and resolve, I don't think it's the right word,

00:50:17

but you know what I mean?

00:50:18

We're trying to figure that out at the same time is,

00:50:20

does this fit with my past experience?

00:50:22

Does this fit with my ethics and my values?

00:50:24

Does this fit with the strategy

00:50:25

that I think we're supposed to be going on?

00:50:26

And that's where the critical nature of it comes in.

00:50:28

And that's good, just don't do it too much.

00:50:31

Don't go overboard, overboard with it.

00:50:34

- The other thing with this is that

00:50:37

overuse of the black hat can be ego driven.

00:50:41

So it's tied to like, I need to make sure I get my way

00:50:46

or a less distasteful version of that maybe is

00:50:52

I need to make sure that I'm being heard.

00:50:54

So a lot of times I feel like the overuse of the black hat

00:50:57

is simply a bad facilitator.

00:50:59

But then the other thing that goes with this,

00:51:03

and you were kind of hitting on this,

00:51:04

that it's easy to be critical.

00:51:06

So you mentioned this chapter 20,

00:51:07

it's easier to be critical than it is to be constructive.

00:51:12

So anytime that you're gonna be in black hat thinking,

00:51:16

you have to have the understanding

00:51:18

that we're talking about the idea,

00:51:19

not about the person who had it.

00:51:21

Okay, so now let's pick this apart,

00:51:23

but then let's not just pick it apart to be like,

00:51:25

oh, well, that's a terrible idea,

00:51:27

but maybe there's a way we can redeem this.

00:51:30

Maybe we can turn this around in some way

00:51:32

'cause black hat is all about like pointing out the problems,

00:51:35

but those problems can be overcome.

00:51:37

And so I think that's the other thing

00:51:38

that frustrates me with this is that's how I tend

00:51:43

to view things is like, okay, so you wanna do this?

00:51:47

Well, I don't think that's a great idea because XYZ,

00:51:50

but I understand where you're coming from,

00:51:52

and maybe we should try a different approach

00:51:56

with that same thing.

00:51:59

And what if we did it this way instead?

00:52:02

I kinda go back and forth between that pretty easily,

00:52:05

but it bothers me when people get stuck and like,

00:52:09

no, no, no, this is why we can't, we can't, we can't,

00:52:11

we can't, we can't.

00:52:12

And then I've seen other people who are like

00:52:13

at the top of the food chain in the meetings

00:52:15

and like, I'm sick of you telling me

00:52:17

that we can't do this stuff all the time.

00:52:19

Like, can we do something, please?

00:52:22

Seems like a lot of visionaries are like that.

00:52:24

They just wanna do something.

00:52:25

So maybe they're more naturally yellow hat

00:52:28

and the integrators like me are more naturally black hat.

00:52:30

I don't know.

00:52:31

Well, and what you're calling out is you're calling out

00:52:33

what he would call, so you said problems, right?

00:52:36

But you're calling out obstacles, risks,

00:52:38

these caution points, and this was the point

00:52:41

I was trying to get to at the very end,

00:52:42

if you heard me trying to trail off on the last thing,

00:52:44

I was trying to get to tying it into the map, right?

00:52:46

So these are when we're drawing our map,

00:52:48

these are where we put the caution points is,

00:52:50

oh, we need to be careful here, we need to be careful here,

00:52:52

we need to be cautious in this area.

00:52:54

And again, if you think about this from a,

00:52:57

what are we trying to do?

00:52:58

We're trying to make a decision, we're trying to take action.

00:53:00

So the point of all of the six hats thinking

00:53:03

is to be able to make a decision and take action.

00:53:06

We need that.

00:53:07

We need to know the caution points.

00:53:09

We need to know where the risks are

00:53:11

in order to see our way through the map

00:53:13

and actually figure out a route and make our way through.

00:53:16

And I think what he's trying to get at here

00:53:19

and really trying to drive home in this chapter is,

00:53:21

just don't do it too much.

00:53:23

If your whole map is caution points,

00:53:25

there's no route through there, right?

00:53:27

Like if everything is sharks and lasers,

00:53:29

you're never gonna make it, never gonna make it through.

00:53:32

I like that, everything is sharks and lasers.

00:53:36

I'm totally stealing that.

00:53:38

Anything else on the black hat?

00:53:39

'Cause that actually is a great segue

00:53:40

into the next section here.

00:53:42

Nope, let's go yellow.

00:53:44

Okay, so the next section is the yellow hat

00:53:46

and this is kind of the yin for the yang with the black hat.

00:53:51

If the black hat is about, I'll say negativity,

00:53:56

but not necessarily, it's more nuanced than that,

00:53:59

but that's how it can come across.

00:54:01

Well, the yellow hat is explicitly being positive.

00:54:04

And one of the things that I appreciate

00:54:06

about the description here of the yellow hat

00:54:09

is that being positive is a choice.

00:54:11

So you can't hide behind that,

00:54:13

well, I'm just naturally a glass

00:54:15

is half empty type of person.

00:54:17

No, you can choose to be positive.

00:54:20

If you don't want to choose to be positive,

00:54:23

then maybe there are some other issues

00:54:24

you gotta work through.

00:54:26

But it's something that you can click into.

00:54:31

And he says in the very first section here,

00:54:34

chapter 22, that self-interest is a strong basis

00:54:38

for positive thinking.

00:54:40

And just like all of the other hats,

00:54:42

it does require discipline.

00:54:44

So it's not just, well, I feel good today.

00:54:46

So I'm naturally a little bit more optimistic.

00:54:50

And I think the yellow hat and the black hat

00:54:54

are kind of two different modes

00:54:56

that probably are next to each other.

00:54:58

They talk about how there's a lot of different ways

00:55:00

that you can implement this.

00:55:01

The role of the facilitator is to say

00:55:03

we're gonna be in this mode now

00:55:04

and then we're going to this mode.

00:55:06

There are several points throughout the book

00:55:07

where they lay out kind of some examples of how,

00:55:10

if you're going through something,

00:55:11

you might go from this to this to this to this.

00:55:13

However, with the black and the yellow hat,

00:55:15

I feel like this is the one

00:55:16

that I can naturally see going back and forth

00:55:18

between these most effectively.

00:55:21

And just as an example, you got your agenda items,

00:55:24

these different decisions that we have to make.

00:55:26

And we're looking at these one by one.

00:55:28

Okay, that's black hat this.

00:55:29

Okay, let's yellow hat this.

00:55:30

What's the decision that we're gonna make?

00:55:32

Next item, okay, black hat, yellow hat.

00:55:34

Like this seems pretty easy

00:55:36

to at least in principle to implement.

00:55:39

Although probably it's a little bit tricky

00:55:42

to get people thinking in this way.

00:55:45

I've experienced this too with the previous job of,

00:55:50

okay, so now we have a whole bunch of reasons

00:55:52

why this thing might not work.

00:55:53

But what if this were successful?

00:55:55

And this is literally part of the life theme cohort too.

00:55:57

It's like, well, what if what you did

00:55:59

was gonna be successful no matter what?

00:56:00

You couldn't fail, what would you possibly do?

00:56:03

And so I've recognized the value

00:56:06

of having those questions or those prompts

00:56:08

kind of funnel you down a specific path

00:56:11

because it's not natural to me whenever I do it,

00:56:14

I get excited.

00:56:14

Like, wow, this is really cool.

00:56:16

Let's do this thing.

00:56:18

Yeah, I think in 23 he calls out the positive spectrum.

00:56:24

And I can't remember how many levels he gave on the spectrum.

00:56:27

What I wrote down in my notes is basically

00:56:28

there's the logical practical,

00:56:31

optimism, benefits, positive spectrum.

00:56:33

And then there's the over-optimistic.

00:56:35

And this really got me

00:56:38

because I can picture the people in the meetings

00:56:40

I've been in where it's like, okay,

00:56:42

you are the logical, practical, optimist or positive thinker.

00:56:47

And then you are the person who's like,

00:56:49

you're just too much, right?

00:56:51

Like, come on, you gotta tone that down a little bit.

00:56:53

And I'm not saying we don't need

00:56:55

both of those people in the meeting,

00:56:56

but it was like really good.

00:56:58

And we're probably gonna say this later

00:57:00

when we do "Style and Rating."

00:57:02

I think one of the reasons why this book

00:57:04

hit so well with me is because it is not difficult.

00:57:10

If you've done any meeting leadership, any facilitation,

00:57:13

if you've done any working with groups

00:57:15

trying to make a decision or trying to steer the group

00:57:19

into decision making,

00:57:21

I mean, you see all of this in practice.

00:57:23

Like you absolutely see almost everything he points out

00:57:27

to a T and you're like, wow,

00:57:28

I've witnessed that quite a few times.

00:57:30

I've done that.

00:57:31

So my buddy's done that or this other thing.

00:57:34

So I really like that.

00:57:36

Key point he makes in chapter 23 is optimism

00:57:39

needs to lead to action.

00:57:41

There needs to be an expectation to succeed.

00:57:43

So we can't just be optimistic

00:57:45

for the sake of being optimistic.

00:57:47

We need to be optimistic because it actually gets us

00:57:49

to making a decision, taking an action,

00:57:53

some level of success or else it's just fruitless, right?

00:57:56

Like what's the point of us being optimistic about a thing?

00:57:59

We gotta make sure we can see that vision going through there.

00:58:03

- Yeah, he mentions that without yellow hat

00:58:08

thinking there's no progress.

00:58:12

And he talks about how yellow hat thinking is positive judgment.

00:58:17

So it's exploring and probing for value and benefit.

00:58:23

And when you see that stuff,

00:58:25

I feel like that's when motivation and clarity comes.

00:58:28

So a lot of this is tied for me

00:58:30

to like the personal retreat process.

00:58:33

But I have to admit like having reading,

00:58:35

having read this book, I'm kind of Jonesin

00:58:38

for another opportunity to be in a meeting

00:58:41

with a bunch of other people

00:58:42

and practice some of this stuff.

00:58:43

Like I don't see a day-to-day application for a lot of this

00:58:46

and I'm kind of disappointed.

00:58:47

- So you're gonna go back and get a real JOB job

00:58:51

and you're not just meeting to you six-hatrick.

00:58:54

But that would be cool.

00:58:55

I mean, the idea of being like a business coach

00:59:00

has always been interesting to me.

00:59:02

We were working with a business coach

00:59:04

and they were following this, it's called Pinnacle.

00:59:08

And it's like a mashup of different stuff

00:59:11

from Patrick Lencioni and scaling up

00:59:14

and a big game of business.

00:59:17

Like there's all these different tools essentially

00:59:20

and you can pick the ones that you wanna use

00:59:22

when you're facilitating a group.

00:59:23

And I always thought like the role that the guy was

00:59:26

that we were working with was doing

00:59:28

was something that would be really awesome.

00:59:30

But you would have to have the right group of people.

00:59:32

It was always the thing that kind of held me back

00:59:34

because I saw how our team kind of got stuck

00:59:37

in some of this stuff and he's trying to pull us back out.

00:59:40

And so I almost wanna like go over to his office

00:59:42

and give him a copy of this book and be like here.

00:59:44

Next time you work with annoying people like us,

00:59:46

you should totally use this.

00:59:48

- And that's great.

00:59:50

So I'm the opposite.

00:59:52

I mean, I have the opportunity to use this

00:59:55

multiple times a week.

00:59:57

And when we get to action items,

00:59:58

I'll talk more in more detail about this.

01:00:00

But I was so excited about what was being presented here

01:00:05

and it was so relevant that I basically started using this

01:00:10

in my Capstone Design course.

01:00:12

Where in a Capstone Design course,

01:00:13

we start out with basically a problem space.

01:00:16

And our goal by the end of the Capstone Design project

01:00:19

would be to deliver value for the client.

01:00:22

Now, I don't wanna say make a thing.

01:00:24

I don't wanna say write a report.

01:00:26

I don't wanna say give a presentation.

01:00:28

It all just depends on what the client needs, right?

01:00:30

So the client is gonna help us determine

01:00:31

what value makes the most sense for them.

01:00:33

And then we're gonna also contribute into that value.

01:00:36

But like, this was so relevant into the world

01:00:39

of working with my Capstone Design students

01:00:41

that we actually implemented it.

01:00:42

And I'll tell you about it when we get to action items

01:00:44

'cause that's gonna be one of my moving forward action items.

01:00:48

But that value idea or that vision,

01:00:50

he calls out in chapter 26,

01:00:52

basically vision proceeds design.

01:00:55

And this is one of the things that I think really resonates

01:00:57

with what you do with like the life theme

01:00:59

and with what you do with a lot of the work

01:01:00

that you're doing is,

01:01:02

if we don't have that vision,

01:01:03

if we don't have that understanding,

01:01:05

we can't really design a system

01:01:07

or we can't really design a work life

01:01:10

where a framework that actually helps us

01:01:13

to get to where we wanna go

01:01:14

and get to the value that we wanna add into the world.

01:01:17

And it's what we do with the academic workshop that I lead.

01:01:22

It's like, we're trying to help people get to that vision

01:01:24

and get to that idea.

01:01:25

And one of the things you have to do in vision

01:01:27

is you have to figure out what are the benefits

01:01:29

and what is the feasibility.

01:01:30

And when you figure out what the benefits

01:01:31

and the feasibility are,

01:01:32

that sets your direction or it helps you set your direction,

01:01:35

which then gets you to that overall design

01:01:38

that's gonna let you actually produce value

01:01:41

and provide value for people.

01:01:42

So again, I mean, I know I keep going on

01:01:45

and the number of things that kind of really stood out

01:01:48

and really resonated with me,

01:01:49

but that was a huge one,

01:01:50

is that vision proceeds design and how you work through that.

01:01:54

Are you good for me to transition us into Green Hat?

01:01:58

- Yeah, let's do it.

01:01:59

- Okay, so the last thing he calls out in chapter 27

01:02:03

is the fact that constructive thinking,

01:02:06

which is what we're doing in yellow hat, right?

01:02:09

It's value, it's benefit, it's how is this effective, right?

01:02:11

That's your yellow hat thinking.

01:02:13

It is not creative thinking.

01:02:15

So the constructive idea doesn't necessarily mean

01:02:18

you're being creative or whatever that is.

01:02:19

It really just means you're adding value.

01:02:21

You're figuring out ways to provide benefit.

01:02:24

Creative comes into change, innovation, newness.

01:02:27

It's how do we make the thing and make it new?

01:02:30

And that leads us into Green Hat thinking.

01:02:32

So I really liked his separation between those two

01:02:35

because a lot of people, and I've heard you say this before,

01:02:38

it's like, oh, I'm not creative, I'm not creative.

01:02:40

Well, hold on, right?

01:02:41

Like what is creative, right?

01:02:43

Creative doesn't mean constructive.

01:02:45

So maybe you are just naturally wired to be more yellow

01:02:49

and you're not as green naturally,

01:02:51

but that doesn't mean you can't be green.

01:02:52

It just means you have to think about it

01:02:53

in a little bit of a different way

01:02:54

and now I'll let you enter into our green forest.

01:02:57

- Well, I actually think I'm a little bit more green

01:02:59

than yellow because the thing that I always struggled with

01:03:03

was that initial brainstorming piece.

01:03:06

So that was a perfect segue.

01:03:08

Thanks for setting that up.

01:03:09

But the yellow hat thinking can identify an opportunity

01:03:12

is how he framed it in chapter 27.

01:03:16

But then they leave it to the green hats

01:03:18

to figure out a way to take advantage of it.

01:03:20

If someone were to tell me,

01:03:21

this is what we're doing, figure out how to make it happen,

01:03:24

that's my wheelhouse.

01:03:25

Now we're talking.

01:03:26

(laughs)

01:03:27

But it was the generating the initial ideas

01:03:31

that I struggled with for a while.

01:03:36

So I really like the fact that he decoupled those

01:03:39

because it's really easy to meld those together in your brain.

01:03:44

It's like, oh, well, the idea and then the execution of it

01:03:48

are all like the same step.

01:03:50

It's not. (laughs)

01:03:52

And when you go into the yellow hat mode,

01:03:55

you get all the options.

01:03:57

What are all the possibilities?

01:03:58

The green hat is kind of, we're like, okay,

01:04:01

so let's consider each one of these.

01:04:03

How do we actually make this happen?

01:04:07

And this requires you to look at things in a different way.

01:04:11

And for whatever reason, this has always been

01:04:13

kind of the easy part for me.

01:04:14

It's like, well, we wanna do this,

01:04:16

but we can't do it this specific way.

01:04:18

So what are the other ways that we could do this?

01:04:21

Okay, so that one makes sense now.

01:04:23

Bing, bing, bing, bing, here's all the things

01:04:24

that need to happen in order for us to get to that point.

01:04:28

And I like the term that he uses in chapter 29

01:04:31

of deliberate creative thinking.

01:04:34

I never really thought about that thought process

01:04:37

as deliberate creative thinking, but I totally can see it now.

01:04:42

And again, you're right, I did say it at one point.

01:04:45

I guess I'm just not creative.

01:04:47

If I had read this book before and I understood

01:04:50

what the green hat really was,

01:04:52

I don't think I ever would have said that.

01:04:54

I might have said it a different way.

01:04:56

I might have said something along the lines of,

01:04:59

I'm not good at coming up with ideas,

01:05:01

but I wouldn't have defined the generation

01:05:05

of those ideas specifically as creativity,

01:05:08

which is what it was in my mind for a really long time.

01:05:11

- Yeah, I like that he calls out that

01:05:14

green hat thinking is what we could do.

01:05:16

So it's all of these different ways of what we could do

01:05:19

to achieve the yellow hat, to achieve the benefit,

01:05:22

to achieve the effectiveness.

01:05:23

It's all the different ways we could do that.

01:05:24

And then he links it directly to red hat.

01:05:27

And he said, if you make too many of those,

01:05:29

which if you've got some good green hats there,

01:05:32

or people were really doing well in the green hat,

01:05:34

you're gonna have too many ideas.

01:05:35

You can't act on them all.

01:05:37

So how do we figure out which one we work on?

01:05:39

We red hat it, right?

01:05:40

Which one do I like?

01:05:41

Which one do I feel good about?

01:05:42

Which one do I have the hunch?

01:05:43

Do the intuition, the thing that says,

01:05:45

oh, we should move forward there.

01:05:47

And I think what I like about this is,

01:05:51

it ties into a thing that he doesn't talk about directly.

01:05:53

And if he did correct me where I'm wrong,

01:05:55

but he doesn't talk about it directly is,

01:05:57

there's this experience level

01:06:01

where we're gonna be able to tap into.

01:06:03

And it's within red hat, I believe, right?

01:06:05

That's where I think I would put it,

01:06:07

and probably he would put it.

01:06:08

There's this experience level

01:06:10

where we're gonna have all these ideas,

01:06:12

and we're gonna see the map,

01:06:13

and we're gonna be able to know the direction,

01:06:14

and we're gonna say, we should pick this idea.

01:06:17

And you're gonna go, why?

01:06:18

And the reason why you're gonna pick that idea

01:06:20

is because it just feels right.

01:06:23

And if you have the right people in that room,

01:06:25

they're all gonna go, yeah, we think you're right.

01:06:27

Like we think you're right, we think like,

01:06:28

that's the one we would pick too.

01:06:30

And honestly, I think that's the right idea, right?

01:06:33

Because you're bringing collective intelligence

01:06:34

into the room, and you're letting people group together

01:06:37

and say like, okay, we all feel confident on that.

01:06:39

But then the other thing you're doing

01:06:40

is you're tying into ownership.

01:06:43

Oh, we made a choice together collectively to do that.

01:06:47

And then you can bring your other thinking in, right?

01:06:50

Like you can, so you can bring your argumentative thinking in

01:06:52

and say, hold on, there's a whole group of people over here

01:06:55

that thinks this other way,

01:06:57

and then you can have another session essentially,

01:06:58

like a mini session through this to say,

01:07:00

all right, we feel really good about these two.

01:07:02

Which one do we pick, and how do we pick that?

01:07:04

And then you run through these other thinking,

01:07:06

hat thinking processes.

01:07:07

So I really liked kind of how all of this

01:07:11

is coming together full circle, if you will, right?

01:07:13

Like you can see this actually happening in practice,

01:07:16

and you can see this actually going into being

01:07:20

a productive thing where in the beginning when he says,

01:07:22

hey, this has worked at like all these different companies,

01:07:25

and we've saved them time, and we've saved them all this money,

01:07:27

and you're like, okay, really?

01:07:28

Like, I mean, yeah, sure, that's easy for you

01:07:30

to say about your own technique that you're developing.

01:07:32

But then you're kind of like, you know, you're in chapter 29,

01:07:34

and you're like, well, okay, maybe I can actually see

01:07:37

how this would be that effective.

01:07:40

- It does require you, though, to have a team

01:07:45

that is built on trust.

01:07:46

You're talking about like green hat generating options.

01:07:49

That's one of the main things that stood out to me from this

01:07:51

is that most people stop thinking

01:07:53

when they get an answer to a problem,

01:07:54

and then they try to force it,

01:07:56

force it like a square peg in a round hole.

01:08:00

Actually, says in chapter 33, life isn't like school.

01:08:03

There's often more than one right answer,

01:08:05

which I thought was pretty brilliant.

01:08:07

So the scenario that you're describing there

01:08:09

is like, okay, this feels like the right answer.

01:08:12

Even if it's not, I trust you,

01:08:13

and I know that we'll give this an honest shot,

01:08:17

and then if it doesn't work, we'll come back

01:08:19

and we'll try one of the other options.

01:08:21

So it's not like I really have to fight to the death

01:08:24

for my idea because it's now or never,

01:08:27

which is a really negative mindset

01:08:29

that people fall into when you're in these meetings

01:08:33

that are way longer than they have to be,

01:08:34

and you're trying to collect all the information.

01:08:37

You want to get to the point

01:08:38

where you're constantly having movement

01:08:41

and you're constantly trying things.

01:08:44

That's where I think the green hat is really positive

01:08:48

and really helpful,

01:08:50

is that you constantly have all of these alternatives

01:08:54

that you can fall back on

01:08:56

if that one thing doesn't work.

01:08:59

And because you have these other options,

01:09:01

you don't have to put all your stock into this one idea.

01:09:04

This really has to change the company.

01:09:05

This one idea, like this is gonna change

01:09:07

our entire working life.

01:09:09

Nah, you can just be curious with it.

01:09:11

You can hold it lightly and be like,

01:09:13

well, that one didn't work.

01:09:14

I'll go try the next one.

01:09:15

And eventually you do find something that works.

01:09:17

If that is the approach.

01:09:20

- And the crux of it is the fact that they're all good ideas

01:09:24

'cause you've evaluated them with yellow hat thinking

01:09:26

or with black hat thinking.

01:09:27

So they're all viable ideas, right?

01:09:30

And it kind of sets that baseline.

01:09:31

So no, I like that a lot.

01:09:34

Okay, Mike, here's where the book kind of

01:09:36

takes a little digression for me.

01:09:38

So chapters 30, 31, 32, 33,

01:09:43

maybe 34, right?

01:09:49

But actually more just, it stops at 33.

01:09:51

I feel like he was just like, okay,

01:09:52

I got a nerd out for a minute.

01:09:53

Like I really have to,

01:09:54

I got to tap into this lateral thinking thing.

01:09:56

And I really just need to like put my Uber nerd hat on

01:10:00

and here we go.

01:10:02

Like here is lateral thinking.

01:10:03

And the thing that sold it for me on the nerd out

01:10:06

was he introduced the idea of Poe.

01:10:09

- Yeah.

01:10:10

- So when this Poe thing came in,

01:10:11

I was like, wait a minute,

01:10:13

like what are we talking about here with Poe?

01:10:15

So let me try to give you a decent summary.

01:10:19

Oh, and that's the other name of the book.

01:10:20

So that's funny, I forgot it.

01:10:22

The book is called Poe Beyond Yes and No, right?

01:10:26

Which, I mean, like all of this stuff here is,

01:10:28

it sounds like a preschool book.

01:10:31

- Exactly, like I'm starting to go,

01:10:33

like okay, what do we get ourselves into?

01:10:35

Okay, lateral thinking, right?

01:10:37

So movement forward, we're thinking about stepping stones.

01:10:40

But what we're trying to think about is,

01:10:42

how do we introduce a provocation

01:10:46

that shifts us into some other pattern

01:10:49

or that allows us to get into some other pattern?

01:10:51

Go ahead.

01:10:52

- So real quick, lateral thinking,

01:10:53

the definition here, which I think will be useful,

01:10:55

is pattern switching on asymmetric,

01:10:58

an asymmetric patterning system.

01:11:00

So you get stuck in a single pattern.

01:11:02

Lateral thinking is like taking the train off of that set of tracks,

01:11:05

putting it on another set of tracks.

01:11:07

- That's a really good analogy.

01:11:08

I had not thought about it as a train moving over

01:11:10

to the other set of tracks, I like that a lot.

01:11:13

So he talks about this lateral thinking,

01:11:15

and then the Poe idea is this Poe is this provocation.

01:11:19

The Poe is this push.

01:11:20

The Poe is this thing that gets us to think about it

01:11:23

in a different way.

01:11:24

And it's got three results, we are unable to do that.

01:11:28

So we can't actually move the train to another set of tracks.

01:11:31

We drift back, so we move it to another set of tracks,

01:11:34

and then it makes its way back.

01:11:36

- Oh, get back here.

01:11:37

- Yeah, exactly.

01:11:38

Which I think more often than not,

01:11:40

that's a very common thing is like,

01:11:42

oh, well we tried this thing, and then a week later,

01:11:45

we're like, yeah, we're just back to where we've always been.

01:11:47

Which, 'cause that makes sense,

01:11:48

you're in a group, right?

01:11:50

You get into that rut and you get into that group.

01:11:52

And then his last one, and I think where he really wants you

01:11:56

to move is you switch to that actually new pattern.

01:11:58

And that new pattern is what allows you

01:12:00

to advance and allows you to move forward in a good way.

01:12:05

And then he gives some ideas on this.

01:12:06

But this is like, so I'll stop my little soapbox here.

01:12:10

This was, it felt different.

01:12:12

It was like, wait a minute, what are we doing?

01:12:14

Like you were six hats and practical and all this stuff,

01:12:18

and now we're gonna go,

01:12:19

a lot of oral thinking and po, and then we come back

01:12:23

in chapter 34, but I'm intrigued

01:12:25

to what you thought about that little section.

01:12:28

I guess having heard you describe it,

01:12:31

I can see how it feels a little bit shoehorned in,

01:12:36

but I didn't really have that impression

01:12:38

when I was reading it.

01:12:39

I mean, he does talk about how lateral thinking

01:12:42

was the term that he invented in 1967.

01:12:45

And then the po idea, I thought, was a little bit weird,

01:12:50

like a cutesy name on a concept

01:12:53

that maybe we don't need an acronym for that.

01:12:55

Although he does give a bunch of examples.

01:12:57

I was gonna say, do you remember him, how he got to him?

01:13:00

- Yeah, I do.

01:13:01

So I see it as like a triggering mechanism.

01:13:04

Like you could use this strategic ways,

01:13:07

just let's blue sky, different hat,

01:13:11

but big picture, like what are all the possibilities here,

01:13:16

even if it doesn't seem like it's something

01:13:17

we can possibly do, just like give me all the ideas.

01:13:21

So I think it's an effective vehicle.

01:13:25

Maybe the description feels a little bit weird,

01:13:28

but you're right, he definitely wants to know

01:13:30

about this and he's got a whole other book

01:13:32

on lateral thinking.

01:13:33

So it kind of makes me want to go deeper onto that concept,

01:13:38

but I didn't actually buy any other books

01:13:43

having read this one.

01:13:45

I'm not sure if I will, and I don't know.

01:13:48

I kind of, when I got done was like,

01:13:50

that's good enough for me.

01:13:53

I feel like a lot of the things that he talks about

01:13:55

in this book, and in this section specifically,

01:13:57

'cause it's kind of tied to this idea of creativity,

01:14:00

are things that I've been thinking about for a long time,

01:14:04

and he brought a different perspective,

01:14:06

which I was appreciative of,

01:14:08

but it wasn't anything that felt like revolutionary

01:14:10

or new to me necessarily.

01:14:13

He's got some specific frameworks for how do you actually

01:14:16

use this with a group,

01:14:17

which are probably a little bit more effective.

01:14:19

I tend to just be like, how am I gonna use this?

01:14:22

So I don't need to codify all this for like,

01:14:23

hey everyone, when we're doing this,

01:14:25

these are the rules, until I do a cohort,

01:14:27

then I have to explain it to people.

01:14:28

That's my forcing mechanism.

01:14:30

- Yep. - Good.

01:14:31

- So just to round it out, let's put a bow on this.

01:14:35

Poe stands for provocation operation.

01:14:39

So that's what PO stands for.

01:14:41

And where you talked about not necessarily needing,

01:14:45

feeling like you needed to go read more on this,

01:14:47

where this trip to me that said,

01:14:49

oh, this is actually interesting,

01:14:51

and I would probably use this in a different way.

01:14:53

If I was still doing a lot of educational research,

01:14:57

this idea would have probably found its way

01:15:00

into my educational research is because

01:15:02

what is the provocation operation

01:15:05

that gets lateral thinking into the educational process

01:15:09

for engineers?

01:15:09

What is the hypothesis, or how do I suppose something,

01:15:14

or how do I make this possible idea

01:15:16

that takes somebody who comes in and says,

01:15:17

I'm not cut out to be an engineer,

01:15:19

or I can't pass math or whatever it is,

01:15:21

and shifts them, moves them to that other set of tracks

01:15:24

that says, oh no, I can do this.

01:15:26

Or like, I belong here, I'm supposed to be here.

01:15:28

This is where this idea comes in,

01:15:30

and I could see myself moving it forward.

01:15:32

I don't have that context anymore.

01:15:33

Like, that's not the kind of work that I do anymore.

01:15:35

But I could really see myself digging into this

01:15:37

if I was still in that space.

01:15:40

- Yeah, it makes sense.

01:15:42

All right, ready to blue hat?

01:15:43

- I am ready to blue hat.

01:15:45

- All right, so this is the last official section.

01:15:47

The blue hat, as mentioned previously,

01:15:50

is at another level.

01:15:51

So this is kind of like above all of the other hats.

01:15:55

I wish there was a visual for like a org chart for the hats.

01:16:00

But I guess that would really be it.

01:16:04

It's like the blue hat on a separate level of everything else.

01:16:06

I just, that seems kind of funny to me.

01:16:10

But with the blue hat, specifically what we're doing

01:16:12

is we're no longer thinking about the subject.

01:16:14

We're thinking about the thinking instead.

01:16:17

So I think it's in this section where he talks about

01:16:20

how blue hat is not concerned about like where the car is going,

01:16:24

but it's watching the driver.

01:16:26

And I like that analogy a lot.

01:16:31

I feel like this one is pretty easy to grock.

01:16:34

Very difficult to administer because essentially

01:16:37

a lot of the blue hat stuff is like the role of the facilitator.

01:16:41

Now you don't have to be the facilitator.

01:16:43

He even calls that out specifically that anybody

01:16:45

can be in the blue hat mode.

01:16:47

But basically says that if you are the facilitator,

01:16:51

you have to be functioning in the blue hat mode.

01:16:54

Because the blue hat thinker is kind of like the conductor

01:16:57

of the orchestra.

01:16:58

And I like that analogy a lot too,

01:17:01

because I grew up playing violin.

01:17:02

I played in orchestras.

01:17:04

And I get this picture of like a conductor who

01:17:07

has no idea what he's doing, no idea how to communicate

01:17:10

to any of the instruments.

01:17:12

And a whole bunch of like middle school kids who just

01:17:15

like banging things together and making a noise.

01:17:18

And then trying to like coordinate all of that

01:17:20

into a pleasant sound.

01:17:24

Like it's really, really hard.

01:17:26

So I was a percussionist, right?

01:17:28

And I can tell you right now.

01:17:30

You were that guy.

01:17:31

As soon as we put mallets in our hands

01:17:33

or you put cymbals in our hands, I mean, what are we going to--

01:17:36

it's like telling us not to push the red button.

01:17:37

And we just want to push the red button.

01:17:39

So if the conductor's not going to give you the cue,

01:17:42

I mean, you're just going to start pushing the red button.

01:17:44

And then you get yelled at and all that.

01:17:45

So I agree here.

01:17:47

The other analogy he makes is the choreographer.

01:17:52

Sorry, the choreographer.

01:17:54

I knew I wasn't saying that right.

01:17:56

But he says, you know, you're choreographing

01:17:58

the sequence of steps that we're going to run through here.

01:18:01

And what I like about this is he said, blue hat,

01:18:03

if you were the facilitator, there

01:18:05

is no one standard way to work through this.

01:18:08

You have to think about what your goal is.

01:18:09

You have to think about what you need out of the meeting.

01:18:11

You have to think about what you need out of the session.

01:18:13

And then choreograph it in a way that makes sense

01:18:16

and set it up in a way.

01:18:18

And then we get into the conductor side,

01:18:19

where now I'm going to actually try

01:18:21

to make that happen in real life.

01:18:23

So I like the fact that he has a lot of different word

01:18:27

pictures here that really bring out

01:18:29

the idea of what it would be like to be a blue hat.

01:18:33

And then, like I've done so many times this episode,

01:18:35

he still links it back to that map.

01:18:37

We're still trying to build that map.

01:18:39

What does the blue hat do?

01:18:42

The blue hat is the person who helps us build that map.

01:18:46

So our input through the different hats

01:18:48

and putting on the different hats

01:18:49

is providing what's going to go on that map.

01:18:52

But how do we build the map?

01:18:53

Well, that's the blue hat's job to help us work through that.

01:18:57

That's the structure.

01:18:58

He or she is structuring our conversations.

01:19:01

They're also responsible for breaking up the arguments,

01:19:06

which is kind of interesting.

01:19:08

And it makes sense.

01:19:09

The blue hat is essentially the one

01:19:11

that is saying, okay, we're going to go into this specific mode.

01:19:15

So I can totally see scenarios where it's like,

01:19:18

okay, that's black hat thinking,

01:19:20

but we're done with that for now.

01:19:22

You need to put on the yellow hat or the green hat,

01:19:24

whatever, instead.

01:19:26

That's red hat thinking that's valid,

01:19:28

but we'll get to that later.

01:19:31

And I feel like this is really where the method works

01:19:36

or doesn't work, is if you have that type of facilitator.

01:19:39

Like, I don't think it's enough to just share this book

01:19:42

or these descriptions with your team and be like,

01:19:45

okay, now we're going to do this.

01:19:49

We're going to self organize and make this happen.

01:19:51

Like there has to be a conductor for this orchestra.

01:19:55

I agree.

01:19:56

The last part in this one before we roll is

01:19:59

the fishing questions and the shooting questions.

01:20:01

Yeah.

01:20:02

If I thought about this harder,

01:20:03

I might not land on fishing and shooting,

01:20:06

but I like the fact that he caught out the fact

01:20:09

that there's different questions.

01:20:10

So there are questions that as the facilitator or the leader,

01:20:13

I'm going to say, basically we want to explore a space

01:20:16

with this question.

01:20:17

So that's the fishing question.

01:20:18

He would call it the fishing question is,

01:20:20

what are we doing?

01:20:21

We're really just fishing for information.

01:20:22

We're fishing for ideas, we're fishing for emotions,

01:20:24

we're fishing for benefits and values,

01:20:26

so all the different hats.

01:20:27

Like we're fishing in that area to figure out

01:20:28

what that might be.

01:20:29

Then other ones are shooting questions

01:20:31

where we're basically trying to shoot a target

01:20:32

and we're trying to get to a yes or no

01:20:34

and we say, hey, let's check out this point.

01:20:37

Let's think about this point.

01:20:38

And what it might mean is let's put the white hat on,

01:20:41

think about this point and somebody comes in with a fact

01:20:43

and we go, oh, okay, boom, that's done.

01:20:45

Like that factor doesn't exist or they come out

01:20:48

with a black hat thinking and the risk is just too high

01:20:50

and we know that the risk is just too high.

01:20:52

So boom, like that type of thinking gets done.

01:20:54

So we're trying to get to essentially like a quicker

01:20:56

decision on that.

01:20:58

And I thought that was a really good way

01:20:59

'cause I've used that in meetings,

01:21:01

not calling it this at all, but it's like,

01:21:03

here we're just exploring a space,

01:21:05

here we're actually trying to, is that true?

01:21:07

Like, are we actually, is it,

01:21:08

was what we're saying actually true here

01:21:09

or is that emotion valid in this situation?

01:21:13

- Yeah, I like those different types of questions a lot too

01:21:16

and that is from the chapter on Focus,

01:21:19

which obviously I like that chapter.

01:21:22

- You would like that chapter.

01:21:24

- So this is interesting though

01:21:25

because you've probably heard Focus described as a muscle

01:21:30

and it's the kind of ability that you can develop.

01:21:35

And in this chapter, they kind of talk about how you can

01:21:38

kind of push people into a Focus mode

01:21:41

by asking them a question.

01:21:44

Asking a question is the simplest way to focus thinking

01:21:46

and that's where they get into the two types of questions

01:21:48

where we're gonna explore all the options

01:21:50

or just give me a simple yes or no.

01:21:52

They also talk about how Focus could be broad or narrow.

01:21:54

We probably typically think of it as narrow.

01:21:56

I'm gonna focus on this one specific thing

01:21:59

and disregard everything else,

01:22:00

but that's not really what Focus is.

01:22:03

If you think about it in terms of a camera

01:22:05

and you can have the thing in the foreground,

01:22:06

you can have the thing in the background.

01:22:08

So there's a lot of different elements to this.

01:22:11

And I think this is a new perspective

01:22:15

on the whole idea of Focus, which is really powerful,

01:22:18

but it also kind of highlights

01:22:20

and helps me understand,

01:22:22

even though I could never really codify it this way

01:22:24

previously, the thinking time questions,

01:22:28

like I've always had a thing for questions.

01:22:29

That's why I love personal Socrates so much

01:22:31

by Mark Champagne.

01:22:32

It's these little character studies.

01:22:34

And then each section, there's like 50 or 60 of them,

01:22:37

has a question that you can use to kind of reflect on

01:22:40

and then it kind of opens up some different ideas,

01:22:45

kind of helps you to think about things different ways.

01:22:48

So I like and have long believed for a long time

01:22:52

that if you ask the right question,

01:22:53

you will find the right answer,

01:22:55

but didn't really make the connection at least

01:22:59

as explicitly as he did here,

01:23:00

that when you ask the question in a certain way,

01:23:04

what that does is it focuses your thinking.

01:23:08

I don't know why, I never really thought about it that way.

01:23:10

I've got like the retrospective parts of my personal retreat

01:23:13

and that's exactly what I've been doing for years,

01:23:16

but I never defined it that way.

01:23:19

And so it helped me understand it a little bit more completely.

01:23:23

- Yeah.

01:23:24

All right, then the last thing he talks about

01:23:25

is the blue hat thinking would be the idea

01:23:27

that a blue hat thinker summarizes.

01:23:30

They are the record keeper.

01:23:32

They are the person who is essentially responsible

01:23:34

for the final report,

01:23:35

not necessarily has to write the whole final report,

01:23:37

but they're the person who makes sure that that gets done

01:23:40

so we don't lose it and we don't lose all the work that we did.

01:23:43

And this just ties back into what you've said

01:23:46

a few different times is they're the facilitator,

01:23:48

they're the leader, they're the person

01:23:50

who is mainly high level accountable, or sorry,

01:23:53

the person who is mainly high level accountable

01:23:55

tends to wear the blue hat in terms of guiding the process,

01:24:00

controlling the show, monitoring progress through that.

01:24:03

And that's actually the title of chapter 41,

01:24:06

is control and monitoring

01:24:07

and how does the blue hat play into control and monitoring?

01:24:10

- Right.

01:24:11

Should we go to the conclusion?

01:24:13

- Let's do it.

01:24:14

Is this chapter, hold on a minute, are we doing chapter 4242?

01:24:16

Or are we doing, now I'm getting it.

01:24:19

- Well, okay, so chapter 42,

01:24:22

the first chapter 42 is in the blue hat section.

01:24:26

So it's a summary of the blue hat thinking,

01:24:28

which I kind of liked how they have those summary,

01:24:30

it's just like a one page thing at the end of every section.

01:24:33

That must have been, those summaries must have been added

01:24:36

in the revised and updated because there is a separate chapter

01:24:39

after that section, which is still labeled chapter 42.

01:24:42

(laughs)

01:24:43

And I honestly don't have a whole lot from that.

01:24:46

I didn't take any notes from that.

01:24:48

I incorporated one specific idea from that

01:24:50

into a separate section in my MyNote file,

01:24:52

which I just called the conclusion.

01:24:55

So I guess if we're gonna call out that piece specifically,

01:24:58

the thing I jotted down from there

01:24:59

is that in the end, all decisions are emotional.

01:25:02

- Yes.

01:25:03

- So there is no, like this is obviously the right decision

01:25:06

because of all these facts.

01:25:08

You do have to just, I believe this is the right decision

01:25:10

and make a choice.

01:25:12

But I think that actually fits nicely

01:25:16

with a lot of the other stuff that's in the conclusion.

01:25:18

So if I were to rework this,

01:25:20

I would actually just combine those,

01:25:22

get rid of that second chapter 42.

01:25:24

And there is just the conclusion.

01:25:26

But a couple of big ideas from the conclusion,

01:25:28

it's pretty short, it's like a page or two,

01:25:30

if I remember right.

01:25:32

The biggest enemy to thinking is complexity.

01:25:34

So we want to simplify things.

01:25:37

And that's what the six hats does,

01:25:38

is it simplifies thinking by allowing the thinker

01:25:40

to deal with one thing at a time.

01:25:42

And then it also gives you an escape hatch

01:25:44

that allows you to switch between different thinking

01:25:46

and not every moment of thinking

01:25:48

is going to require the six hats model.

01:25:51

And also it works best when used

01:25:52

as a common language for a group.

01:25:54

And I totally can see that.

01:25:56

And it's a great way to summarize this.

01:25:59

And I feel like that last part,

01:26:01

part specifically, the works best when used

01:26:03

as a common language for a group sets up for,

01:26:06

okay, I'm reading this,

01:26:06

I'm getting excited, I want to implement this with my team.

01:26:10

That kind of leads naturally into the action item,

01:26:13

which is essentially, I don't have one specifically

01:26:15

because I don't have a group that I'm gonna use this with.

01:26:18

But it would be to present this to the groups and teams

01:26:22

that I'm a part of potentially and be like,

01:26:24

hey, I think this is really helpful.

01:26:26

Can we try this out?

01:26:27

Get everybody on board and then follow up with,

01:26:29

okay, who's gonna be the facilitator?

01:26:30

They're gonna wear the blue hat, yada, yada, yada.

01:26:33

So it's a great way to summarize

01:26:35

and kind of lead into what you would do with this short book.

01:26:40

I mean, I say short, it's like 170 pages,

01:26:42

but it felt a lot shorter than that.

01:26:45

- I agree, I agree completely.

01:26:46

I'm admittedly a slow reader

01:26:49

and this book did not, it was not hard to consume.

01:26:53

Like it was not hard to work through.

01:26:55

I felt like it was written in a way that actually made,

01:26:57

made a lot of sense and then flowed really well.

01:27:00

The only addition I'll have for the conclusion from my notes,

01:27:04

it's funny 'cause three out of the four,

01:27:06

three out of my four, you hit on right on the money.

01:27:09

I mean, they were exactly what I had written down.

01:27:12

The other one I have is that the six hats thinking

01:27:14

makes the final choice obvious.

01:27:16

And here is where I'm a tiny little bit skeptical

01:27:19

because I wanna run this.

01:27:21

I mean, I trust that it made it obvious for him

01:27:23

and the groups he's worked with,

01:27:25

but I would wanna run this and say,

01:27:26

hold on, does it actually make it obvious?

01:27:28

I think it might, I think setting the map,

01:27:31

figuring out the route through the map,

01:27:32

sure that has a potential to make it obvious,

01:27:33

but does it really make it obvious?

01:27:36

So we'll roll into my action items now

01:27:38

'cause you gave yours.

01:27:40

So I'm going to use this

01:27:43

throughout the rest of the semester

01:27:44

with my senior capstone design.

01:27:46

So this is a long-term action item.

01:27:48

It won't necessarily be something

01:27:49

that's easy to follow up on next time.

01:27:51

From the tiny little bit that I used it

01:27:52

with my capstone design course

01:27:53

that I talked about a little bit before,

01:27:55

I already saw the value in it.

01:27:57

Now, we weren't at the point where we needed

01:27:59

to make any specific decisions,

01:28:01

but we needed to think through some complex ideas

01:28:03

and I could sense a little bit of frustration

01:28:05

with some of the students in the capstone design course

01:28:07

about the way the project was going

01:28:09

or where certain aspects of the projects were going.

01:28:12

And what I think it brought is I think it brought clarity to it.

01:28:15

The thing that was really fun for me

01:28:18

was I thought they were going to roll their eyes,

01:28:20

like monster roll, like, oh my gosh,

01:28:23

he wants us to do the six hats thinking blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:28:27

But when I pitched it to them and I said,

01:28:28

this is a way to simplify your thinking,

01:28:30

it's a way to kind of keep us all on the same page

01:28:32

and not let us get distracted in these conversations.

01:28:34

So just for a little context,

01:28:36

there are, what are there, 11 students in the room?

01:28:40

So there's a lot of voices in the room,

01:28:42

plus me, so there's a decent number of voices in the room.

01:28:45

And they actually all engaged really well.

01:28:49

Like they were all like, okay, like we'll give it a shot,

01:28:51

like let's see how this goes.

01:28:52

And I think through the very short session that we did with it,

01:28:54

there was clarity, like we actually gained clarity.

01:28:57

We thought about things in a way that made sense

01:29:00

for people to think about them,

01:29:01

not in a muddled way as we work through.

01:29:04

So one of my action items is I want to keep trying

01:29:06

to apply this to my capstone design course.

01:29:08

The second action item I have is I want to look up the book,

01:29:11

"Poe Beyond the Esterno."

01:29:13

And I really, I'm not gonna tell you I'm gonna read it.

01:29:16

I just want to look it up and see if I think it's worth reading.

01:29:19

- Okay.

01:29:20

- So there's an interest enough there

01:29:24

that I want to see if it's worth reading

01:29:25

or if I think lateral thinking might be a better one to read.

01:29:29

- I have to admit, when I hear the word "Poe,"

01:29:31

I think of "Legend of Zelda," "Tears of the Kingdom."

01:29:34

- I don't know the reference, so help me understand.

01:29:36

- It's really not worth explaining there like,

01:29:38

yeah, it's a form of currency in the game.

01:29:42

(laughs)

01:29:43

- Okay.

01:29:45

- So not at all related to what he talked about.

01:29:47

I don't actually don't have any specific action items

01:29:52

with this, but I think this is awesome.

01:29:55

Like if I had an action item,

01:29:57

it would be to go back to the business coach

01:29:59

that we worked with and tell them about this

01:30:01

because I think it would be helpful.

01:30:03

We even had, when we were doing our meetings,

01:30:06

a different version of this,

01:30:08

which was not nearly as effective.

01:30:09

And I forget the specifics of it

01:30:11

because it was like a year ago,

01:30:13

but he had little animals that he placed on the table.

01:30:17

And basically when we felt that we were

01:30:20

being steamrolled or something,

01:30:22

we could grab the elephant or felt like someone

01:30:25

was just making things a little too personal.

01:30:27

We could grab the donkey, you know?

01:30:29

And I feel like, get rid of those stupid animals

01:30:31

because with those, it's essentially saying,

01:30:33

like, you're doing this and I'm feeling this way.

01:30:35

- Yeah.

01:30:36

- It's not explicit, but it kinda is.

01:30:38

Like the fact that I'm saying something

01:30:40

and somebody grabs something,

01:30:41

I'm like, well, why do you feel that way?

01:30:42

Like I'm just talking about this idea.

01:30:44

Just decouple it from your identity and we're fine.

01:30:48

But I feel like having the visuals in the meeting

01:30:51

is a really cool idea.

01:30:52

So I can see him like totally loving this idea

01:30:55

of like he's got these six different colored hats

01:30:56

on the table and he's like, okay folks, black hat.

01:30:59

(laughs)

01:31:00

You know?

01:31:01

- Well, and it gives the facilitator permission.

01:31:03

You know, it's one of the things he talked about.

01:31:05

It gives the facilitator permission to look at somebody

01:31:07

and go, you're doing red hat thinking right now.

01:31:10

We're in yellow hat thinking.

01:31:11

- Yes.

01:31:12

- And it has not, like you're not a terrible person.

01:31:13

Everything's okay. - Exactly.

01:31:14

- You're just in the wrong mode.

01:31:16

You're just in the wrong mode.

01:31:17

We need you to get into the mode everybody else is in.

01:31:19

And I love that.

01:31:19

Like I love the way that would work.

01:31:21

- Yeah.

01:31:22

So I don't have any specific action items with it.

01:31:25

However, going into style and rating now,

01:31:28

I love this book.

01:31:29

(laughs)

01:31:31

So this may be really weird

01:31:33

to not have a single action item from this

01:31:36

and still give it five stars, but I don't care.

01:31:39

(laughs)

01:31:40

This book is great.

01:31:40

- I don't think that's weird at all.

01:31:42

And I don't know if you and I

01:31:45

are either picking books that make sense for us

01:31:48

or if we're just too easy on the rating,

01:31:49

but I'm rating it a five too.

01:31:50

Right?

01:31:51

I really, really like this book.

01:31:53

And more importantly, I feel like I got a lot out of it

01:31:56

that'll be applicable to my life.

01:31:58

So I really like that.

01:31:59

- Yeah, I don't have a specific avenue where like,

01:32:01

this is how I'm gonna use this in the near future.

01:32:05

But I have no doubt that whatever I am doing

01:32:08

five, 10 years from now, like this is gonna come back.

01:32:12

This idea is going to stick with me.

01:32:15

And even if I don't ever master the whole idea

01:32:19

of the six hats thinking, I think it's something

01:32:20

that I can easily incorporate in other places

01:32:23

into other meetings that can make those meetings

01:32:26

more effective.

01:32:27

I mean, if all this did was make meetings more effective,

01:32:31

it's worth absolutely whatever investment

01:32:34

you have to make in this.

01:32:36

Regardless of your working situation,

01:32:39

I don't care if you've got like one meeting a week

01:32:41

or you have five meetings every day,

01:32:43

you're gonna get value from this

01:32:45

and I would recommend that everybody pick this one up.

01:32:48

I can't really think of anything negative to say about it.

01:32:51

I guess you could say that there are some,

01:32:55

the way that the information is presented,

01:32:57

he obviously could go deeper into some of the stuff

01:32:59

and he doesn't.

01:33:00

I actually like that approach.

01:33:02

I feel like this book could very easily have been twice as long

01:33:06

if somebody else had written it,

01:33:09

but I like the brevity.

01:33:10

I feel like it's very clear.

01:33:11

I feel like it's very concise and it's not prescriptive.

01:33:15

It's kind of like this is what this does.

01:33:17

This is how you might use it.

01:33:18

Here's a whole bunch of examples,

01:33:20

but the actual application,

01:33:22

you have flexibility to use it how you see fit.

01:33:26

And I think that's the genius of it, to be honest.

01:33:30

Yeah, I think if I was going to call out my negatives,

01:33:34

and these are super surface level,

01:33:37

I fully admit that they're very surface level.

01:33:40

At times I got fatigued with the number of dot dot dot examples.

01:33:44

It was just like, okay, I got it, I got the point.

01:33:47

But maybe other people like more of them,

01:33:49

so that's a personal thing more than anything.

01:33:52

And then this one is super surface level, but it's there.

01:33:55

At times I got confused,

01:33:57

I know that dot dot dot were giving me examples,

01:34:00

but I wanted a clear understanding of when we were going back

01:34:04

into his explanation versus his example.

01:34:07

And at times I thought that his paragraphs,

01:34:10

or they're not even paragraphs,

01:34:12

his chunking of the text was so short at times

01:34:15

and everything was indented.

01:34:16

I was like, hold on, like, thought, thought, thought.

01:34:19

It wasn't like a normal, but again,

01:34:22

those are very, very surface level.

01:34:25

You had called out about using this.

01:34:27

If I, let's say I didn't have time to read

01:34:30

all 170-something pages,

01:34:32

if you just grabbed this book,

01:34:34

or if you went on and figured out a summary of it,

01:34:36

and you just got those summary chapters,

01:34:38

I think you could grab a decent amount of this

01:34:42

to where you could try to implement it in a group,

01:34:45

or in a session and just see how it works.

01:34:48

I mean, I think he's made it so accessible

01:34:51

that I really think it's able to be understood

01:34:55

at that level to where you can throw that

01:34:57

into implementation relatively quickly.

01:35:00

I mean, but I agree with you.

01:35:01

I highly recommend it's a really short read.

01:35:03

It's a really good read that if you're interested

01:35:05

in this at all, just pick it up and read it.

01:35:07

- I totally agree with you.

01:35:08

However, I will throw out a caveat there

01:35:10

because this is kind of like the five disc functions

01:35:13

of a team is sort of like this too.

01:35:14

It's like, oh, I understand the five disc functions.

01:35:17

Do you really because you're still stuck on level one?

01:35:20

So you can get a cursory knowledge of what the stuff is

01:35:24

and you could probably start applying it certain ways,

01:35:26

but I've seen like the five disc functions of a team

01:35:29

go off the rails.

01:35:29

Like I've heard stories of people who have brought in

01:35:32

like these books to their teams

01:35:33

and been like, you're dysfunctional, here you go.

01:35:36

That's not the way to do it.

01:35:38

So I think you could probably get maybe

01:35:40

a little bit of benefit from a baseline level,

01:35:44

like a very surface level understanding of this.

01:35:47

However, where you're really gonna get exponential benefit

01:35:49

from it is when you really get into the details.

01:35:52

And that's what I like about,

01:35:53

that's the most powerful idea is like,

01:35:55

okay, I can rock this in one go easily,

01:35:59

but then when I go deeper with it,

01:36:01

I will actually extract even more value from it.

01:36:04

Like that's good business book material right there.

01:36:08

The other thing that you're mentioning the examples

01:36:13

and it kind of got me thinking,

01:36:14

I've just brought up the five disc functions of a team.

01:36:19

The only thing I think that this book would be,

01:36:22

'cause you could say is potentially missing,

01:36:25

would be if someone took the six hats concept

01:36:28

and wrote a Patrick Lencioni style fable about it,

01:36:32

that would be kind of cool.

01:36:33

- That's funny.

01:36:35

So.

01:36:37

- You should do that.

01:36:38

Are you saying you're gonna do that?

01:36:39

Is that an action item?

01:36:41

- Ah, no, I've got other books I wanna write before that one,

01:36:44

but come back to me in a year or two maybe.

01:36:47

(laughs)

01:36:49

- All right, let's put six thinking hats on the shelf.

01:36:53

What's next, Corey?

01:36:55

- So the next book is my book

01:36:57

and we're gonna read The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly.

01:37:00

And I, so we were reading a little bit faster

01:37:04

than we normally do, so I wasn't able to start reading

01:37:06

this one yet, but I actually was able to get the audio book

01:37:09

and I started listening to it

01:37:10

because I could do that while I was driving.

01:37:12

And I was just like, okay, let's prime myself on reading

01:37:15

the book and I started listening to it.

01:37:17

And what I'll tell you is the book was written in 2016,

01:37:20

but so far I'm really surprised at how well it's held up.

01:37:23

I mean, we're seven, we're sorry, eight, eight-ish years past,

01:37:27

you know, when the book, actually it would probably be nine years

01:37:29

or so past when the book was written

01:37:31

through the publication process.

01:37:33

But what I can tell you is it's held up well

01:37:35

and I'm excited to read it.

01:37:36

It's about 12 technologies and how they will impact us

01:37:40

moving forward.

01:37:42

And I think it's gonna be a fun book to think about

01:37:43

from a business perspective, productivity perspective,

01:37:47

just getting better at life or living life perspective.

01:37:50

So I'm excited to read it.

01:37:52

- Awesome, I'm looking forward to this one.

01:37:55

And then after that, I have a brand new book

01:37:58

that you cannot even buy right now as we record this,

01:38:01

but it will be out at least nine to 10 days prior

01:38:06

to when we've recorded it.

01:38:10

- We're talking about cutting it close.

01:38:12

- So hopefully that's enough time for you,

01:38:14

but I really wanna cover this one the moment

01:38:16

that it gets out.

01:38:18

Cal Newport is writing a new book called Slow Productivity.

01:38:22

And I think this is the book that he was always meant to write,

01:38:27

just based on how I hear him talking about it on his podcast.

01:38:31

I really think this one's gonna be amazing.

01:38:33

So I'm really looking forward to going through this one

01:38:36

and definitely wanna cover it for bookworm

01:38:39

as soon as we possibly can.

01:38:40

So that's what we're gonna do.

01:38:42

You can pre-order it by the way.

01:38:43

And there's some bonuses that you can get if you pre-order it.

01:38:46

Apparently that's a thing now with productivity books

01:38:50

is pre-order it and then you get like $9,000 worth of free value.

01:38:55

I don't know how that works.

01:38:56

- It's the new infomercial, that's what it is.

01:38:58

- Yeah.

01:38:59

All right, you got any gap books?

01:39:02

- So I'm still working on the gap book that I've been working on

01:39:05

and I'm going to be working on it.

01:39:06

It's much more of a slow read, much more of a study

01:39:11

than it is a kind of get-through-it type of a book.

01:39:15

So it's called "Tryin' For The Lamb."

01:39:17

It's about book revelation

01:39:18

and that's gonna be the gap book for now.

01:39:22

- All right, well I don't have any gap books currently.

01:39:25

I guarantee you I will have read gap books

01:39:28

by the time I come back from vacation

01:39:30

because I'm gonna bring a stack of them

01:39:32

and I intend to do nothing but sit by the pool and read.

01:39:35

- How many do you think you're gonna take?

01:39:39

Like you're planning a week.

01:39:42

- Yeah, I'm thinking six, but I don't,

01:39:46

I don't know, I haven't packed yet

01:39:48

so we'll see how many fit in the suitcase.

01:39:50

- Okay.

01:39:52

- All right, thanks everyone for listening.

01:39:54

If you are reading along with us,

01:39:57

then pick up The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly

01:39:59

and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.