Today’s Project Manager or Business Analyst must meet the needs of a large, varied group of stakeholders that often represent differing and sometimes conflicting, points of view. In order to navigate these complex waters, they must deal with conflicting opinions, overcome ambiguity and uncertainty and forge agreement amongst the group. Only experience and the application of specific skills and tools like integrative thinking and “Six Hats” theory make this possible. This session will help you convert conflicting opinions into useful insights. Learning Objectives: Increase personal effectiveness through integrative thinking. Forge a four-step process to integrate multiple points of view. Facilitate the "Six Hats" theory to decision analysis.

1. Making Successful Business Decisions
How to Negotiate Conflicting
Opinions to Set Direction
Presenter: Larry T. Barnard
ProjectWorld*BusinessAnalystWorld Toronto 2009
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2. Objectives
• Increase personal effectiveness through integrative thinking
• Forge a four-step process to integrate multiple points of view
• Facilitate the “Six Hats” theory to decision analysis
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3. Divided by Perspective
• When confronted by decisions, individuals are influenced by their views of
reality, including:
— Personal values, mental perspective, religious and political
beliefs, fears, tolerance for risk, etc.
• When facilitating group discussions for decision making, one must be
aware of key mental barriers
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4. Divided by Perspective
(continued)
• Three common barriers:
— Arbitrary coherence, made up of imprinting and anchors based on first
impressions
— Stereotypes that drive expectations
— Expectations that alter our subjective and objective experiences
Boundaries between beliefs and reality blur objectivity
and decision-making ability
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5. Arbitrary Coherence
• People have preset ideas about everything from prices for products to
whether to fight or flee to what is morally acceptable
— These ideas or beliefs are developed individually at specific points in time
• When we develop an initial idea or belief like this, it is called an imprint
• If we uphold this imprint, it becomes an anchor
• Each of us has hundreds of anchors that impact every decision we
make, from purchasing fuel to buying shoes to negotiating the terms of
a contract at work
• Can you identify any of your own anchors?
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6. Stereotypes
• Stereotypes are another major barrier that impact our clarity of vision and
our ability to be objective
• Our brains map learning from real-life experience in many ways
• One of those ways is by developing stereotypes
• Stereotypes enable us to make quick decisions about circumstances that
resemble circumstances from our past
We grow our own maps!
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7. Stereotypes
(continued)
• Although this ability may protect us in life-threatening situations, it tends
to blur our objectivity and rational thinking in almost every other situation
• We have stereotypes of people, products, services, etc.
• A popular example of this is the marketing campaigns by Mac and PC
• Can you think of any stereotypes that blur your perception of reality?
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8. Expectations That Taint Reality
• Expectations, as we have already seen, can influence our impression of
the facts prior to making decisions
• In the heat of the moment, expectations can be set in many ways:
— The comments of a friend when buying a new coat
— The impressive speech from a waiter prior to selecting your entrée
— The publicity campaign of the latest politician
— Good news you heard through the grapevine before attending a meeting on
upcoming corporate changes
• These expectations have a direct impact on the decisions being made
• When you impact expectations, you influence decisions
• Can you think of a time when your expectations were influenced by
someone or something?
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9. Dealing With Opinion in the Face of Uncertainty
Integrative Thinking
Six Thinking Hats
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10. Facilitating Decisions in a Group
• Reality is based on perceived elements or pieces of the truth
• Developing an understanding or agreement of the facts at any given point
in time requires a negotiation of this perceived reality
• Everyone involved in a discussion to make a decision will have a different
perception of the facts being considered and the reality therein
• How can you persuade a group of people to consider and value the each
other’s perspectives when making decisions?
• Two effective tools available for facilitating decisions within groups are
integrative thinking and six thinking hats
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11. Integrative Thinking Defined
• Integrative thinking is a process that enables individuals with different
perspectives, knowledge, backgrounds, and experience to solve
problems, overcome challenges, and make decisions by thinking
holistically as a group
• Through a sequence of steps, individuals integrate their thought
processes with the others in the group
• The process leads to nonlinear thinking and results in benefits for the
whole group
• Main benefit: the ability of the group to face opposing models of thought
and create a new model that integrates the ideas from the individual
models, rather than choosing one over another
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12. Integrative Thinking Model
Resolution
Search for creative
Architecture resolution of tensions
Whole visualized
Causality while working on
individual parts
Multidirectional and
Salience
nonlinearcausality
considered
More features
of the problem
considered salient
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13. Step 1: Salience
• In the first step, salience, we decide the boundaries of our scenario and
what exists within those boundaries
• What features or facts are relevant to the decision being made?
Resolution
Architecture
Causality
Salience
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14. Step 2: Causality
• In the second step, causality, we attempt to make sense of what we see or
what we’re considering
• What are the pieces of the puzzle and how do they fit together?
• In this key step, we must work as a group to share our different
perceptions of reality and how they relate to each other
• Success is dependant upon our ability Resolution
to think on different planes and integrate
the thoughts and ideas of others into
our own plane of reality Architecture
Causality
Salience
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15. Step 3: Architecture
• In the third step, architecture, our ultimate goal is to blend our different
perspectives together in order to develop a more complete version of
reality
• This step requires effective facilitation, open discussion, and a willingness
to challenge preset stereotypes and limited perspectives
• This can be a difficult process if the group
Resolution
consists of one or more members with
overpowering personalities
Architecture
Causality
Salience
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16. Step 4: Resolution
• In the final step, resolution, the group makes a decision based on the
reasoning accomplished in the first three steps
• Since integrative thinking requires a sequenced process, each step within
the sequence is important and provides critical input to the subsequent
steps
Resolution
Architecture
Causality
Salience
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17. Dealing With Opinion in the Face of Uncertainty
Integrative Thinking
Six Thinking Hats
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18. Six Thinking Hats Defined
• Edward de Bono’s book, Six Thinking Hats, suggests that the application
of role-playing can make you and your team better thinkers
• His Six Thinking Hats process provides a way to integrate role-playing with
discussion, creative thinking, problem solving, and decision making
• By applying de Bono’s six colored hats, each of which represents a
different role, groups can reach a higher level of
communication, understanding, and consensus
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19. Six Thinking Hats Roles
de Bono’s role-playing structure uses six different hats, each of which
represents a different perspective or thinking process:
• White hat
— Neutral and objective
— Focuses on facts and figures
— Has no concern for emotions
— Wants the facts and only the facts
— Takes a very scientific approach to the thinking process
• Red hat
— Takes the emotional view
— Feels no need to justify feelings or establish a logical basis for them
• Black hat
— Careful and cautious
— Considers all potential risks, obstacles, or concerns with the intent of
drawing attention to them in order to protect those involved
— Has good intentions for being the “devil’s advocate”
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20. Six Thinking Hats Roles
(continued)
• Yellow hat
— Sunny and positive
— Focuses on the benefits without any consideration for risks
• Green hat
— Associated with creativity and new ideas
— Focuses on ingenuity
— The ultimate lateral thinker, with no concern for cost or risk
— Focuses on “What can we do?” rather than “What are our limitations or what
might go wrong?”
• Blue hat
— The organizing hat
— Focused thinker concerned with organizing everything from the thinking
process itself to the next steps of the initiative, project, or problem analysis
— If we want organized structure, we need a blue-hat thinker
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21. Six Thinking Hats Process
• In a group scenario, the facilitator requests the members of the group to
role play a chosen hat
• By mentally switching gears from one hat to another, the members of the
group are forced to leave their own perspectives behind
• Each member of the group can wear a single hat, different from the other
members
— They can wear multiple hats at the same time as other members
— Or the entire group can choose to wear the same hat at the same time in
order to see things from the same perspective
• This forces the group to constructively, objectively, or even emotionally
look at the situation under review from alternate perspectives
• The goal is to force individuals to reach outside their limited perspective
and better appreciate alternate views
• It is a more holistic way of thinking
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22. Objectives Covered
• Increase personal effectiveness through integrative thinking
• Forge a four-step process to integrate multiple points of view
• Facilitate the “Six Hats” theory to decision analysis
®
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23. For More Information
• To further explore this subject, Learning Tree offers the following 3-day course –
Making Successful Business Decisions: Getting It Right the First Time
More information can be found here – www.learningtree.ca/908
• For full descriptions of over 175 Management, Business and IT Skills
courses, services provided and pricing options
— Go to www.learningtree.ca
— Or call us at 1-800-843-8733.
• For Project Management & Management Consulting Solutions, contact Larry T.
Barnard of Explorus Group Inc. at larry@explorus.ca
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