Bono Coffee

The Bono Coffee workshop is a variation of the Lean Coffee workshop that adds to the original format of the concept of Bono’s six hats, a method of thinking developed by psychologist and doctor Edward de Bono.

Using Bono’s hats forces participants to approach topics from different thinking postures, which helps enrich the discussion and ensure that the case has been debated adversarially and exhaustively.

Each hat has its own color and is associated with a specific mode of thinking:

• The white hat represents facts and figures;
• The yellow hat means advantages and benefits;
• The black hat symbolizes risks and obstacles;
• The red hat illustrates emotions and feelings;
• The blue hat represents the spirit of synthesis;
• The green hat conveys creativity, ideas, and suggestions.

From the moment a participant wears one of the hats, he must strive to adopt the mode of thinking associated with the color of the hat.

The Bono Coffee workshop generally takes place in 4 stages:

1. Step 1: Proposal of topics

   During this first stage, participants are invited to suggest topics for discussion. To do this, participants should think separately, without influencing each other, for 5-10 minutes, for example, using the polling booth mode.

2. Step 2: Selecting the most important topic

   During this first stage, participants are invited to suggest topics for discussion. To do this, participants should think separately, without influencing each other, for 5-10 minutes, for example, using the polling booth mode.
   
   Once this sorting and grouping work has been carried out, the participants are asked, for example, in the form of a voting session, to select the subject that seems to them the most important to deal with.

3. Step 3: Discussion on the selected topic

   Once the subject has been selected, the participants are each assigned a different hat and intervene in turn, following the order of Bono’s hats defined above.

    

   Improvement ideas are listed in the dedicated section of the template.

4. Step 4: Continue the discussion or move on to the next topic

   Once all the participants have intervened, they are again asked to continue reflecting on the same subject or move on to the next one.

    

   If the working group decides to continue dealing with the same subject, the participants must repeat step 3, changing hats.

    

   In the second case, you can return either to step 2 to select the next subject if it has yet to be decided initially or directly to step 3 if the following topic has already been decided.