Meta-Cognitive Control (The Blue Hat)

Definition

Blue hat thinking is thinking about the thinking, not about the subject itself — a step outside the discussion to plan, sequence, or redirect which mode should run next. De Bono compares it to a computer program that specifies what happens moment to moment, or a choreographer arranging steps in order, and contrasts it sharply with the default mode of most discussions: unstructured drift, in which suggestions, judgment, criticism, information, and emotion all mix together in what he calls "a sort of thinking stew."

In the Book

De Bono argues traditional discussion substitutes the momentum of argument — attack and counter-attack — for genuine structure, and that this works passably in a group precisely because opposition supplies the energy that keeps things moving; thinking alone, he notes, has much greater need of blue hat structure because there is no opponent to provide that momentum. He likens ordinary unstructured discussion to a Darwinian process where the "harshest pressures of negativity" substitute for the harsh pressures of a survival environment, and the fittest idea supposedly survives — but this happens by attrition, not by design. His example instructions show the blue hat operating in two registers: as a full program laid out in advance ("white hat thinking at this stage... now we need proposals, that means yellow hat thinking... let's have some green hat thinking at this point"), and as a live, moment-to-moment redirect inserted into an otherwise ordinary conversation, the way a coachman guides horses rather than following a written script.

Why It Matters

Most disagreements don't fail for lack of intelligence or information — they fail for lack of sequence, with everyone's contributions arriving in whatever mode they happen to be in emotionally at that moment. Naming and controlling the sequence — decide the facts first, then the risks, then the alternatives, then a decision — turns a conversation from something that happens to a group into something the group deliberately steers, the same distinction between free-associating and running an agenda. This is the layer above any individual skill (facts, caution, optimism, creativity): it is the decision about which skill to call on right now, and it is what keeps a structured process from collapsing back into whichever mode has the most emotional momentum at a given moment.