Skip to content

Need a (keynote) speaker for your next event?

Book Marko for your keynote (Demo Reel)

Bitesize Snapshot Marko van Gaans

Book Marko van Gaans for a workshop or keynote speech
| Upcoming workshop/event: 2-Day Business Toolkit Workshop, 21-22 July 2023 in Vientiane, Laos | ⤿ Learn more ⤾ |

The 3-Cs of Thinking (Juggling Hats)

Complexity, Critical & Creative Thinking
in a VUCA World

With this article, I’d like to introduce you to the 3-Cs of thinking and discuss with you some Mad Hatter stuff. In a previous article I introduced you to the Saeculum of Chaos and how it relates to entrepreneurship and mentioned that to successfully deal with the nitty gritty business stuff, you really need to align your thinking. But what did I mean by that?

Well let’s look at it this way: an entrepreneur is someone who has the desire and ability to establish, administer and grow a business in order to make profits. To become a successful entrepreneur you need to juggle with innovative ideas and bring them into the marketplace, replacing the old with the new. But to do this, I guess you’d first need to learn how to juggle.

The 3-Cs of Thinking

I think the secret to juggling is to find the right balance of thoughts to apply creative solutions to complex issues while keeping a critical eye on the end result. In other words, to be a successful entrepreneur you would need to master complexity, critical and creative thinking skills, those are the 3-Cs of thinking. So let me talk you through what these three Cs are about and how you master them. 

The first C represents Complexity Thinking. In the context of this article, complexity thinking is not so much about skill but about recognizing, understanding and being able to deal with complex issues. We’re living in a VUCA world where the market is fast and volatile, often too fast and too volatile. Everyday, it demands quicker answers to its problems and needs. However, as an entrepreneur this is your bread and butter, finding out the problems or pain points of your potential customers and providing them with a solution. So being able to deal with our Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous surroundings is essential. One way to successfully deal with this is to apply the theories of complexity thinking. In the next lesson of this course you’ll learn precisely that.

Then, the second C which stands for Critical Thinking. This is your ability to detect, analyze and evaluate ideas in order to devise suitable responses to any issues that might arise. We live in a WYSIWYG environment where we tend to think that what we see is what we get. But, unfortunately more often than not our perception of reality doesn’t match actual reality. And in the lesson on Critical Thinking you’ll learn how to cope with that.

Finally the third C, Creative Thinking. Creativity is essential as it is the one skill that separates us from machines. For the moment anyway. Mastering creative thinking skills will help you tackle situations from all possible angles. This means that you’ll be able to generate ideas and solutions that are new as well as stimulating and that often lead to important innovations. In the last lesson of this module, I’ll show you ways how you can train yourself to become more creative.

Example: Sum to 15

Right, after this brief introduction, I would like to walk you through an activity which requires all three Cs. It is called Sum To 15, a simple card game (it’s being played in the header video of this article). For this game we need two players and one hand of ten cards, the ace and the number cards, it doesn’t matter which suit. The ace will count as one whereas the other cards just represent their numbers. The aim of the game is to get to the sum of fifteen.

The players will take turns picking a card and the first player who is able to get exactly the sum number fifteen, so for example ace plus six plus eight, will be the winner. Naturally the strategy here is for one player to stop the other succeeding. And to keep the game a challenge, players will have only seconds to decide which card to pick.

As this is a just a static article, we can’t actually play together, but I’ll pick for you and you can think along with me as we go on. I will go first. My first choice will be the eight. I can almost hear you think, “what an odd choice.” And yes you’re right, but then again you haven’t gone through the lessons on thinking skills yet. But five would probably have been a more logical choice right, nice in the middle.  

Okay, I’ll let you take the five and counter by taking the two. Assuming that you’d like to keep things simple, I’ll let you pick the six next, but you might as well have picked the seven or the nine. 

Looking at your cards, my next choice is the four, because I’m not stupid. And now panic strikes, right? You needed that four, but now, if my next card is the ace, I’ve won whereas you need at least two turns. Assuming you are also not an idiot, of course, you’ll pick the ace. 

But now I’ve got you exactly where I want. My next choice is the three because 8 plus 4 plus 3 equals 15 and I’ve won. But I also could have taken the nine because 2 plus 4 plus 9 also equals 15. I tricked you, it just wasn’t as simple as it seemed, now was it?

Of course, if you’re good with numbers and know which combinations add up to fifteen in a split second or you would have had more time to think through your choices, the game would be a piece of cake. But well, most of us aren’t great with numbers and we had to think under time pressure. So let’s have a look at how we might simplify this game using the 3-Cs.

Okay, the first thing we need to do is a bit of out-of-the-box thinking which requires all 3-Cs. Because this is a card game, our mindset is that we hold the cards in our hand. This mindset relates to critical thinking. But as both players pick from the same hand, nobody is actually holding any cards, so we can spread them out on the table, like this.

Now, the most typical way to arrange the cards would have been to lay them out in order of number. But, as you can see, I didn’t do that. Instead, using a bit of complexity thinking, I laid them out as a magic square, a little maths trick discovered well over two thousand years ago. As you can see, all the rows and columns and diagonals add up to fifteen, thus eliminating the need for me to calculate.

To take a slightly more creative approach to the game, let’s not pick the cards but mark them with an X or an O. You’ll be the X and I’ll take the O. If we replay the previous game, it would go something like this: I’ll mark the eight and you the five, then the two for me and the six for you. And then I’ll, well, as I’m sure you figured out by now, the card game of Sum To 15 is actually  just a more complicated version of tic-tac-toe.

Some Mad Hatter Stuff

Well, I hope this quick and simple example has got you excited and looking forward to the next three lessons in this module. But before you go there, I’d like to discuss with you some stuff about a Mad Hatter

5 Hats Technique

With the Mad Hatter I’m not referring to the character in Alice in Wonderland, even though the picture might imply that. Instead, what I would like to do here is introduce you to my version of Dr Edward de Bono’s well-known Six Thinking Hats method, a book published back in the 1980s. The reason for telling you my own version rather than explain Dr de Bono’s one is that his method was created for team meetings whereas I’d like to present you with a tool you can use by yourself to reflect on your own thinking.

For starters, I’ve taken away the manager’s hat because nobody but you yourself needs to control your thinking and I’ve changed around the colours of the hats to make them match activities I will be using later in this course. 

So we’ve got five hats, a white one, a pink one, an orange one and the blue and black ones. Each colour represents a mode of thinking and together they can be used to create new ideas, choose between certain alternatives or identity solutions. You could also use this technique for strategic planning, process improvements or problem solving. And, once you’ve built your first team, you can use my Five Thinking Hats method to run your performance reviews.

By separating your thinking into distinct modes, you’ll be able to make better decisions and, at the same time, improve all your 3-C thinking skills. The order in which you apply each of the hats will be dependent on the goal you’re aiming to achieve.

If we go clockwise, the white hat stands for facts and information. This mode of thinking is neutral, objective and non-emotional. It’s just cold hard facts and figures, no interpretations.

The pink hat, by contrast, is all about emotions. In this mode of thinking you can dig into your hunches and gut feelings. There’s no need to explain or justify your emotions, just to be aware of them.

 The orange hat stands for creativity. It is a freewheeling approach to thinking during which you should suspend judgement and just go wherever your imagination takes you.

While wearing the blue hat, your thinking should be focussed on the strengths of your ideas. What are the main benefits, why are they useful and how can you logically defend them?

Finally, the black hat, the most critical thinking mode. Black hat thinking will make your ideas and plans more resilient. It might also help you spot fatal flaws and logical fallacies before it’s too late. 

If used together, this five hat thinking methodology will help you tackle complex issues by analyzing them in a cohesive and logical sound manner and, moreover, help you become a better critical and creative thinker

Let’s have a look at some quick examples of how to use these thinking modes and what order to use them in.

Five Hats Idea GenerationTo create innovative ideas you’d want to start with the white hat and collect all the available data to get you started. Next you’d put on your orange hat to let your imagination go wild. Once you’ve got a range of ideas you’ll wear the pink hat and, by gut feeling, select your top choices. Then evaluate these choices under the guidance of your blue hat. To finish off the process, critically search for weaknesses in your ideas using the black hat.

5 Hats Solution GenerationIf you’re looking for a solution to a problem, though, you might want to change the order of your hats to white, black, orange, blue and pink. Again first neutrally collect all the data, then evaluate this data to find the issues. Wear your orange hat to brainstorm solutions, then the blue one to pick out the most viable ideas and finally the pink hat to work out how you feel about the solution you’ve come up with.

I assume you’ll agree that awareness of the 3-Cs of thinking combined with this five hats technique can be a very powerful tools to really improve your own thinking. I hope that you find them useful and that you will use them as reflection tools in your own business.

[T]here you are

Philosopher-in-Residence | Executive Coach | Workshop Facilitator
Reading great thinkers, thinking deep thoughts, and whiling away the days surrounded by books, a hot mug of coffee, and some inspiring jazz in the background.

Basket
Back To Top