In 2013 the eight legacy Scottish Police forces as well as the Scottish Police Services Authority were merged, through an act of Scottish parliament, to become a single organisation, Police Scotland. It was a huge new organisation with around 24,000 employees, 17,234 of these were Police Officers and the remainder were police staff. It was a time of great uncertainty and rapid change.
I was approached by the Director of People and Development to discuss using some of my creative thinking skills to work with the newly appointed People and Development leadership team, primarily to use Debono Six Thinking Hats.
The focus was on building the strategy for the whole team and thereafter consider how to effectively deliver this. In total I delivered four Six Thinking Hats sessions with them I followed a standard process and ensured that each session was documented and the written actions recorded and circulated. Using the Six Thinking Hats approach often begins with agreeing the focus statement to ensure the ‘buy in’ from all present, focus statements are positive, forward focussed and brief. The focus was agreed with John as he was the person who “owned” the issue. Thereafter the first section “White Hat – information we have and information we need to have” was developed between the sessions, identifying missing information meant that everyone had the same information and knowledge gaps could be filled, without any egos being damaged. The logical negative session “Black Hat – what is working against us?” had to be contained by me as the facilitator and ensure that we remained focussed towards the future. The logical positive “Yellow Hat – what is working in our favour to deliver this?” session went well to begin to change the culture within the group, with more open and supportive communication taking place. The “Green Hat – creative ideas with no ‘ah buts’” session was then fun and they started to appreciate what they each brought to the team and to the future focus.
