So how do you sell consulting to a television audience? Just add some nudity of course. There is a British show on television at the moment called the Naked Office where a consultant works with a team for a week and their final daring challenge is to turn up to work naked on the Friday. Apparently it helps to break down boundaries and increase individual confidence so the team is more set up to work in unison. Not an approach we would adopt, but it definitely brings a new meaning to casual Fridays.


One theoretical model which I have found to be very effective when working with teams, although probably unlikely to have as much television appeal is De Bono's Six Hats. It has a range of uses, but I think the model is most valuable when applied to group discussion activities. If you want to do away with long unfocused meetings but still make well informed group decisions then De Bono's Six Hats Thinking might be for you. Admittedly the framework does sound a little touchy feely, however I assure you there is no group hugging or gemstones involved.

To give you a brief overview: There are six different coloured hats which all represent a distinct area of thinking. Teams who learn about the framework are able to don each coloured hat in an organised and time bound fashion e.g., "lets do some red hat thinking for five minutes". In doing so the group concentrates it efforts on one aspect of thinking at a time before moving on to the next. This helps to get away from the traditional unstructured chains of conversation which plague our meeting rooms, where members rely on an argumentative style by attacking another persons position and defending their own. The benefits for those groups who have adopted the Six Hats method are a reduction in meeting times, an increase in the quality of decisions due to all bases being considered and a more democratic feel to the process as the usual power differential of meetings is broken down and each members wisdom is drawn out.

Go here to find out more about the six colours. De Bono's Six Hats Thinking is a simple and effective tool for facilitating group discussions and the best thing is that everyone can keep their clothes on.