The reason focusing is interesting to me is because it’s something that can be both taught and learned and can have a very meaningful impact on your life given you invest the right time and effort. The ROI of learning focusing should be quite high.

In this post, you will learn

1. What is focusing and why should I care?
2. What the research says about the effectiveness of focusing
3. A short manual for focusing you can implement right away.

What is focusing and why should I care?

In the 1950’s Eugene Gendlin set out to find out what makes psychotherapy either successful or unsuccessful. He spent 15 years doing his research and amongst other things studied hundreds of tape recordings from therapy sessions and began mining them for insights.

Focusing is like hiring a translator between your body and your mind to create a continuous, friendly and non-judging conversation.

The key insight from his work is that successful patients focus much more on their subtle and vague bodily awareness during therapy than unsuccessful ones. He termed this bodily awareness “felt sense”. This felt sense is more than just an emotion, but rather encompasses the entirety of how a person feels towards a specific person or situation. In other words, patients who actively exploring (“System 2”) their inner world, implicit feelings and meanings (“System 1”) and traducing information from the body into the mind will likely get better much faster.

What do you mean by felt sense?

To get a feel for what is meant by felt sense, close your eyes and picture before you a person you really like spending time with. Engage with this for a minute or two and notice the bodily senses as you’re imagining that person.

Now think about a person that is difficult for you and repeat the exercise. Can you notice the difference in sensations or ‘felt sense’ as you switch back and forth between these two people?

The felt sense contains the entirety of your experience with that person, the past, present and future. In that sense, it is much wiser and more complete than any description of your relationship could ever model.

Therapy example

This example is paraphrased from the Power of Focusing Book by Ann Weiser Cornell.

Jenny is a client who’s been struggling with an intense anxiety whenever she has to make an important phone call or give a presentation. She’s tried many kinds of therapies for years, but this unpleasant feeling is still very much present. She’s seeing a new therapist who is introducing her to the focusing technique.

J: I’m just feeling this choking sensation all the time. I don’t know what to do about it.

T: Can you feel the choking right now?

J: Yes I can. It’s because I’m learning about focusing, and I feel like I have to do well.

T: Can you describe what it feels like?

J: Choking of course!

T: Can you try to sense into more and gather more details?

J: Ok.. hmmmm. (pause). Well now I’m feeling a bit more. Actually it feels more like hand-squeezing than choking.

T: Can you just say hello to it? Say ‘Yes, I know you’re there’.

This was a completely new attitude for her.

J: Wow, I’ve never sort of looked it in the eye before; I’ve just tried to get rid of it.

taking her time to find her new attitude, but when she did, there was a sense of bodily relief.

J: It’s still there, but it’s not painful anymore. It’s almost like, now that it has my attention, it doesn’t need to hurt me.

After some more time of sensing into the feeling

J: Wow. I never dreamed it would say something like that. It says… it says that it cares about me! It just says it’s just trying to keep me from making mistakes.

T: And how does it feel now?

J: The choking or squeezing is completely gone. My throat feels open and relaxed. There’s a good warm feeling spreading all through my body. This is really amazing. I never thought it would change like this!

Why should I care?

Even if you are not in therapy, focusing can be incredibly beneficial. The idea is, that if you focus on this felt sense, it can lead to “information” from your body that will help you resolve the problems you are facing.

It can help you

• better understand what you truly want
• make difficult decisions
• be more attentive and friendly towards yourself and others

Continuously attending to our body

When I first learned about focusing, seemed quite hard to grasp. It’s only through a new book by Ann Weiser Cornell I’ve recently purchased that I’ve gotten more deeply acquainted and interested in it. The instructions seemed more intuitive than the original book by Gendlin.

Focusing is about turning vague physical impressions (signals from System 1) into well-defined and meaningful ones. We sense these vague feelings and through method of friendly and attentive listening, we turn them into meaningful feelings. By continuously verifying and validating our conscious thoughts with our bodily sensations, we achieve inner resonance.

The felt shift as a powerful feedback loop

When we put the right word on the felt sense, when we glean from it what it has in store for us, we will experience a subtle or not-so-subtle ‘felt shift’, a change in the felt sense. This indicates we’re understanding what it is trying to tell us with our System 2. If we pick words that don’t fit, we will experience no such felt shift. This feedback loop is one of the most powerful components of the focusing technique, as it gives you a clear indication whether you’re building a trusting relationship with your inner self.

How does Focusing relate to other Therapies?

Focusing occurs at the Mind-Body Interface.

Here’s a wonderful attempt by my friend and psychiatrist friend Milan Scheidegger to locate Focusing amongst other approaches:

What does science say about the effectiveness of focusing?

Marion Hendricks has put together a summary and an exhaustive list of research done on focusing with impressive results.

Experiencing level as key predictor of positive outcome

The first analyses of Client-Centered/Experiential tradition psychotherapy were content-driven, ie “What are the client and therapist talking about?”. But through Gendlin’s work, researchers realized that what predicted outcome was the process “What does the process of therapy and relating look like?”.

The level of experiencing (EXP) is a scale developed by several researchers in the field to capture the client’s ability be in a productive relationship with her emotions. Here are the 7 stages listed from a 1969 research and training manual.

1.) the client simply talks about events, ideas or others

2.) refers to self but without expressing emotions.

3.) expresses emotions but only as they relate to external circumstances.

4.) the client focuses directly on emotions and thoughts about self

5.) engages in an exploration of his or her inner experience

6.) gains awareness of previously implicit feelings & meanings

7.) on-going process of in-depth self-understanding, which provides new perspectives to solve significant problems

Focusing helps move you to higher stages of experiencing.

Research outcomes

After reviewing 89 studies on focusing, Hendricks concludes the following

• Clients, therapists and objective measures show better patient outcome the higher the level of experiencing is by the client.
• Individual sessions with focusing are rated more successful.
• Focusing can be taught
• Patients who have strong focusing experiences in therapy are more likely to retain high level of training.

How can I train myself in focusing?

The honest answer is that you should buy Ann Weiser Cornell’s book. I will however attempt to give a summary here and hope that it can give you a glimpse into the technique.

Intro

The essence of focusing is to have a good relationship with your inner self.

Have a gentle asking attitude over a concrete question. Let appear what needs to appear. You can’t force an answer with a question.

Preparation: Clear the space. Make sure you’re in a quiet place, with no distractions, sitting comfortably. Take a journal in case you want to write things down from your session. Write down things you need to get done so they don’t take your attention.

The below process looks like a very exhaustive list of steps. In reality, they often happen simultaneously, and it’s ok not to do them exactly step by step like laid out here. It’s more important to follow the felt sense and have a friendly way to build a trusting relationship with it.

Core Process

1. Which way now? What do you want to do focusing on? A decision, a difficult situation? Or do you just want to see where the felt sense takes you?
2. Sensing into my body: Do a body scan, see how your feet, legs, arms and so forth feel. Then start sensing into what appears in your throat, chest and stomach
3. What wants my awareness now or How am I about this issue? Rest your awareness in the middle area of your body. Imagine sending a welcoming invitation to the middle of your body and asking “What wants my awareness now?” or if you have a specific issue you’d like to work on “How am I about this issue?” Then pay attention to what arises. Don’t look for a particular thing, but just be open to anything that feels like something.
4. Say hello: A frequent reason people don’t get responses from their felt senses is that they haven’t yet made it feel welcome. It’s kind of rude to start a conversation with someone without saying hello first. When you say hello, you’re acknowledging it’s presence, and that it is OK to be there. You may repeat this step whenever you notice a new feeling.
5. I’m finding the best way to describe it. Get to know the felt sense more intimately. This is like getting to know it by name. Find a label or handle that best describes the felt sense. Sometimes it can be a word like ‘pressure’ or a phrase like ‘choking and twisting’, and sometimes an image is more appropriate. Keep listening and trying different handles until one of them ‘clicks’ and you experience a subtle, felt shift. “pressure”,… not quite yet. There is more…. “Anxious pressure”. That’s it, anxious pressure. Sometimes this is enough and you might want to stop here. Sometimes new steps will emerge.
6. I’m checking back with my body. This is more than a stage in focusing, it’s something you are doing continuously throughout the process. Every time you sense something and try to get to know it better in your conscious mind, you check with your body whether it feels right. If you hear the word “squeezing”, you take that and offer it back to the feeling in your throat. Does “squeezing” feel right? It may 1) confirm it, 2) say it’s partially correct but there is more, or it 3) could say no, it’s not that, but… “constriction” feels right. In any case, you’re moving closer to getting to know it.
   So far, we are getting friendly with our body and building trust. We are getting in contact with something that wants to communicate with us. Now we sit down with this part and hear what it wants to tell us.
7. Is it OK to just be with this right now? You’re not in a hurry and not pushy. You aren’t there to push your agenda on this inner part. Just breathe deeply into your body and enjoy the company of a good friend.
8. I’m sitting with it, with interested curiosity. Sitting lets your body know you’re not in a hurry. And you are sitting with it, not in it. You are not the feeling, you are just with it. When you add curiosity, you may wonder if there is something more. Gradually you may become aware of something you haven’t put into words yet.
9. I’m sensing how it feels from its point of view. We typically look at things from our point of view. But isn’t there more to learn when we take others’ perspective? We can do that with our felt senses as well. Weiser Cornell asked Jeanne how it feels in her throat. She responded “It feels uncomfortable”. Whose point of view was that? This is Jeanne’s. The therapist then asked, “OK, uncomfortable. Can you sense how it feels, from its point of view?” And Jeanne responded, “Oh. It feels scared.”
   This is an important shift in perspective and big step towards feeling more understanding of your inner part. Even if it doesn’t feel like talking, you can sense a mood or an atmosphere, like you can with a good friend.
   If you can’t sense anything, back down. You’re likely pushing too hard. Just be there and be interested.
10. I’m asking… Questions are not essential, but can be very helpful. If it feels right, you can use a question to give your felt sense a gentle structure. It can help find out what more is there. As the felt sense won’t suddenly start speaking to you in words, it’s more about the attitude than the question. Here are the questions Weiser Cornell finds the most helpful:
    “I’m asking if it has an emotional quality”. If you haven’t sensed an emotion yet, asking your feeling what kind of emotion is present might be helpful. You could even try a couple of different suggestions such as: “Is it a scared tightness? An angry tightness? ..”. Knowing the emotional quality of the felt sense brings you closer to it and you can learn more.
    “I’m asking what gets it so ______?”. Sometimes it will feel right to ask a further question. If you have something that is scared, you can say “What gets you scared?” And sometimes extend by saying, “What gets you the most scared?”
    “I’m asking what it needs.” If it doesn’t feel finished, you may want to ask “What do you need from me or the world? or What needs to happen next?”. Don’t ask this at first, because it feels too much like trying to get rid of the feeling.
    “I’m asking my body to show me how ‘all OK’ would feel like.” If you’ve asked all those questions and it still feels unresolved, this question can sometimes bring about magic. Someday in some way this whole thing will be ‘all OK’, it will be resolved in satisfactory manner. Asking your body how ‘all OK’ feels, can be a good way to have new action steps arise. Just relax and don’t pressure the felt sense into anything.
11. I’m asking if it’s OK to stop soon. In order to end your session, first respectfully ask your felt sense if it feels OK with stopping. The felt sense may often reveal something very important at this point. This is also a good time to review what you have learned and welcome any changes that have appeared. If it has become a very warm fuzzy feeling, you may want to savor that and remember it on a physical level.
12. I’m saying, I’ll be back. This is about strengthening the bond between you and the felt sense. You want to assure it that this is part of a larger process and you’ll be back. Of course you will have to keep your promise.
13. I’m thanking my body and the parts that have been with me. The essence of focusing is to have a good relationship with your inner self. Thanking it for the wisdom you’ve received is a great way to further strengthen that bond. Weiser Cornell says you’ve succeeded in focusing if you’ve stayed with something in your body even if nothing else happened.

The focusing process will yield a series of small shifts throughout the process. This is how you know you are on track. There is no way of ‘fooling’ yourself here, as you will know whether you’re sensing a felt shift or not. You can see this in step 5 and 6. The focuser picks a word that feels somewhat right in step 5A and experiences a small shift, but the next try is off and there is no felt shift in step 5B/C. She then senses further into her body, and at step 5C and 6C, she gets the right word or image and experiences quite a strong shift.

Dinner Party: Making the steps more memorable

The 13 steps outlined above have been hard to remember for me. Now while it doesn’t matter that you do all 13 of them in the particular order, doing the earlier ones will be helpful with doing the latter ones. I’ve also come up with an analogy I find easier to remember than the abstract steps. It goes like this.

Imagine you’re being invited to dinner party with some of your ancestors in order to learn from them. Having lived very long lives inside your body, they may have unfulfilled needs and all know what you need in order to progress and feel better. Your hosts are quite shy and need a very soft and friendly approach to open up to you.

So first, you need to decide whether you approach them with a concrete issue or whether you go there with just an open mind about what will arise (1). Then you will get a sense of the attendants, just feel how it feels to be at the dinner party (2). Then you can sense which host seems most eager to tell you something (3). You then proceed by simply greeting the host in a very respectful manner, no matter what his demeanor is. You appreciate his presence (4). Then you want to know his name, and you start getting to know him (5). As you’re getting a name, you double check with the host whether that is indeed the right name (6). Next step is simply to sit down next to the host and be with him for a while. You’re appreciating each others company (7). You’re sitting with the host, and realize you are not the host and it isn’t you. You are simply sitting next to him with an interested curiosity to learn more (8). If you’ve built a good bond until know, you may try to get a sense of what the host is feeling right now (9). If it feels right, you may ask the host questions about what he is feeling and what he needs to feel at ease (10). After you’ve been in each others presence for a while, you ask the host if it’s ok to slowly end the visit for today (11). You let the host know that you’ll be back (12) and thank him for spending time with you (13).

Summary

Focusing is a powerful, science backed, learnable technique that can help you live a more centered and peaceful live. It can help you resolve issues and make decisions. All you need is a patience and a curious and friendly attitude towards your inner parts.

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Flavio Rump is an entrepreneur and investor. He shares decision-making models from the world’s best decision makers. You can read his articles, watch his YouTube Videos or join his free newsletter to learn how to make better decisions.

I am an entrepreneur and angel investor looking to replace animals from all supply chains. This post aims to show why Switzerland can play a strategic role in developing more sustainable, humane and healthy foods on a global scale.

Factory farming is problematic

Livestock production provides only 20% of global calories but consumes 80% of arable land. To produce a single kilogram of beef protein, we need 100 times more land, 5 times more water and emit 60 times more greenhouse gases than would be needed to produce a kilogram of soy protein. Even switching to organic meat is not enough, because even the most environmentally friendly production pollutes our planet with climate-damaging gases, eutrophication and soil acidification.

Scientists are saying that avoiding meat and dairy products is one of the best ways to reduce its harmful effects on the planet.

In addition, the frequent consumption of processed meat products is associated with health problems such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity (42% of the Swiss population is considered to be overweight). In addition, the UN recognizes the widespread improper feeding of animals with antibiotics as one of the main causes of antibiotic resistance. These can also be dangerous for us humans, with an estimated 33,000 people already dying every year in the EU from the consequences of antibiotic resistance.

Nevertheless, meat consumption continues to rise

Despite grim prospects, global demand for meat is growing. While the world’s population is expected to grow to 10 billion by 2050, millions of people worldwide are moving from poverty to the middle class every year and beginning to consume more meat. In China, the average person has gone from only 4 kg of meat per year in 1962 to 62 kg in 2013. As other developing countries become richer, they are also increasing their meat consumption.

Changing to a plant-based diet a major challenge

Many people in the West are aware of the disadvantages of meat consumption and have tried to reduce their intake. However, many consumers in surveys say that they find it very difficult to do without meat completely.

The challenges of a sustainable and plant-based diet should be carefully examined. In particular, one in two consumers says that they are afraid of protein deficiency in a purely plant-based diet. And of those who have tried to minimize meat consumption, 44% say they have failed because of taste.

The time is ripe for alternative proteins

The few companies that understand these concerns and produce tastier, protein-rich products are developing incredibly well. In the US, the market for plant-based meat products is growing at an annual rate of 23%. Wall Street and Silicon Valley see a rosy future: Beyond Meat shares rose 163% at their IPO and Impossible Foods recently raised another $300 million to develop realistic meat substitutes.

Barclays analysts estimate that the meat alternatives market will grow to $140 billion by 2030.

Science and technology as value creators

In successful start-ups, technology is the decisive advantage over existing meat replacement products. In Impossible Foods, scientists discovered that a molecule called heme plays a key role in the properties of meat. Heme gives meat its red color and adds the fleshy taste that many of us regularly yearn for. Through genetic engineering, the scientists at Impossible Foods were able to make yeast produce a molecule very similar to heme in animal tissue. As it turns out, many meat eaters love the heme-spiked Impossible Burger.

In addition to the positive development of plant-based meat, so-called “Clean Meat” has also attracted the interest of entrepreneurs and investors. Currently, there are roughly 30 companies around the world that use stem cells to grow meat in the laboratory.

Life science technology as an enabler

Those companies are leveraging tissue engineering technology that has been invented in regenerative medicine. However, because the cost structures are completely different, the processes and the necessary growth factors are at far too high a cost level for meat production. The biologists and engineers of the different start-ups are working in intense competition to get these processes under control and to be the first to bring their cultured meat to market.

Switzerland could become a global player

In other small countries, the majority of which have service and technology-based economies, investments are already being made in the future of protein production.

In Singapore, the government recently decided to invest $144 million in the research of the future of food technologies, including a focus on Clean Meat. In the Netherlands, the first funds were invested in this direction decades ago and a large Green Protein Consortium has now been formed with organizations from several European companies and academic institutions. Meanwhile, Israel already hosts three of the world’s leading cellular agriculture companies.

Strong Life Science and Food Expertise

In the competition for new protein sources and alternative meat products, Switzerland actually has an excellent starting position. Thanks to a strong life science sector, there is already a lot of know-how in the field of stem cell research both in industry and in the academy. And with Nestlé, Givaudan and Buehler, Switzerland has several leading global food companies.

However, this potential is not realized at all. As a recently fully booked event on this topic at ETH Zurich shows, there are many young people who would like to make a meaningful contribution in this area. While there are cool research groups working on sustainable food processing, there is still no research programs dedicated to alternative proteins, nor are there really any course offerings that train the specialists needed in the future.

Because the development is highly complex and interdisciplinary, a national strategy could drive a massive acceleration for the sector.

Government and Universities

Our universities should create professorships on “Plant-based proteins” or “Cellular agriculture”. At the level of the Swiss National Science Foundation, for example, a National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) on “Alternative Proteins” is conceivable. The Federal Council can ensure that there is a clearly defined path for the regulatory approval of Clean Meat. A meat tax must also be discussed. If the social and ecological costs of meat production are properly internalized, this would increase the pressure on more sustainable products.

Industry

In order to share as much technical know-how as possible and avoid duplication, national and international consortia for the research and development of new production processes between food manufacturers, life science companies and the academy are desirable. A public-private research laboratory, a kind of Wyss center for alternative proteins, would be particularly forward-looking.

Made in Switzerland

Small nations have often driven technological innovation out of economic necessity and then become globally important players in certain niche markets. Switzerland has a unique opportunity to play a globally significant role in the future of healthy and sustainable food production. The cultured beef steak “Made in Switzerland” should become a bestseller. But it can only achieve this if the key players work together to develop and implement a strategy.

Next Steps

If you want to help make this happen, I’d love to hear from you! Please reach out to flavio.rump@gmail.com.

If you want to hear about my next post, subscribe here

Thank you for helping me review this article Viola Iselin

Flavio Rump is an entrepreneur and self-proclaimed hippie capitalist and co-founded the DeinDeal.ch platform. Among other things, he is looking for investment opportunities in start-ups that develop alternative proteins.

What does it take to make an alternative protein food item successful?

”The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.” — Jeff Bezos.

The answer is to fulfill a consumer need better than anyone else. However, food purchase needs and behavior are challenging to model, as there are so many variables at play. Consumers are influenced by their taste preferences, health goals, ethics, budget, allergies, signaling needs and perceptions and biases about how available food corresponds to their constraints.

Hence it is imperative for entrepreneurs and investors alike to deeply understand customers and market dynamics if they want to launch commercially successful products.

In this article, we’ll cover the following steps to predicting the success of an alternative protein product.

1. What’s your secret?
2. Who is driving plant-based food sales and why?
3. Utility functions to model purchase decisions
4. Thoughts on Taste
5. Model to predict the general appeal
6. What does this mean for plant-based vs. cell-based products?

Secret

In Zero to one [1], Peter Thiel describes how important it is to have a good answer what he calls the “Secret” question.

It reads “Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?”

This can be a combination of market insight and technological innovation. If you are building a product on premises that everyone else already agrees on, you’re unlikely to land a smashing success.

As an example, Tesla knew that fashion drove interest in clean-tech. Most clean-tech companies in the early 2000s focused on building more efficient solar cells and didn’t differentiate themselves from each other. Hence they didn’t build technological superiority and monopolies in niches that could grow.

However, Tesla knew a ‘secret’, it was that rich and famous people wanted to appear “green”. So it really focused on a high-end market with super cool cars for movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and built the best product for that niche market. With that, they not only launched the world’s coolest ‘eco-brand’ but also gained ardent followers they are still benefiting from today.

Thiel further explains to us that ‘competition is for losers’, and that we should aim at building monopolies in order to capture monopoly profits. We can debate the ethics of squeezing customers from owning a monopoly, but what I like about this approach is that it really forces you to think “Which (niche) market can we be so good at, that there are really no substitutes for our product and people keep buying us, providing us with a healthy and sustainable profit margin?”

What can be a secret in the food market? Do you have a niche/customer segment whose nutritional and social needs in a specific “job” you can meet better than anybody else? For example, half a secret is likely unmet demand for better vegan cheese. 13% of all milk sales in the US are plant-based [2]. But only about 0.24% of all cheese currently sold is vegan [3] [4]. One possible hypothesis here is that while vegan cheese is available and very good & cheesy animal cheese is available, the desire of “I want to keep eating cheese but also look cool in front of my vegan friends” is not being fulfilled very well by any of the current products.

On the technology side, do you have a technology that can produce a product to satisfy that consumer need? For this post, we are going to focus on the market side. This can drive insight into what technology may be needed to fulfill unmet consumer desires.

The better you answer to those questions, the more likely you are to be successful.

Consumers driving plant-based food sales

Plant-based alternatives to animal products are rapidly expanding, growing 17% in the last measured 12 month period, compared to an 8% growth a year before [5].

While vegans are a rapidly growing part of the population, they still only account for about 1.16% — 3% of the population in the UK[6], [7]. Similar numbers are seen in the US [8].

In contrast, 92% of plant-based food sales are coming from non-vegans [7]. In fact, 9%-14% of Brits adhere to what they call a ‘flexitarian’ diet [7], [9]. Based on a study of 1,500 US consumers from all generations, Datassential says that 22% of people are actively reducing their meat and/or poultry intake [10]. It is, therefore, crucial to understand what drives Flexitarians.

What drives Flexitarians?

A study done in the UK [9] asked Flexitarians what would make them go fully vegan or vegetarian. Here are the results:

Asking consumers what makes them eat plant-based alternatives, Datassential [10] found the following data:

Another study by Lightspeed/Mintel shows the following data.

A 2017 Mattson Study shows this

Finally, data from Nielsen obtained in 2017 [11] show the following motivations to eat more plant-based foods

Conclusions

• Huge variety in responses. Likely a result of different audiences and ways the questions were asked.
• Health is likely the single most important driver towards more plant-based diets.
• Animal welfare important for 15% to 44% of consumers, not even mentioned in two studies.
• Environmental concerns are important for 14%-35% of eaters.
• The novelty driver means flexitarians are generally quite open to experimenting with new products

What do Flexitarians look for in alternatives?

In order to successfully develop and position an alternative protein solution, we need to know what attributes are important to flexitarians.

Mintel’s associate director Patty Johnson says that 70% of consumers who buy a meat-alternative product they’ve never purchased look at the ingredient list and scrutinize it before buying it. So ingredients for sure are a key component.

Mintel asked consumers who regularly eat plant-based meat alternatives what they are looking for when they are making purchasing decisions.

Mint also found out that taste is the number one motivator for 52% of people when it comes to purchasing plant-based meats [12].

In a DSM study [13] of 2,500 adults who go meatless or dairy-free at least one day a week in the US, UK, Netherlands, France and Germany reveals that only 52% say the taste is ‘ok’, while 28% think meat alternatives are ‘very good’. One in three would be willing to pay more for more meat-like flavors.

Datassential collected responses to the question “What is preventing people from buying more plant-based alternatives?”

Main Conclusions

• Taste rules with 35–47% who want their meat-alternatives to taste as close to meat as possible and taste is also a large reason 34% of people don’t repurchase plant foods.
• Protein matters: 28%-45% want high protein alternatives
• “Natural” is better 30–43% prefer their products do not have artificial ingredients.
• A lower price than a meat product can play a role for up to 37% of consumers. However, many are also willing to pay more for the right product.

Consumer Perceptions and Reality

There are definitely gaps between what consumers know and believe and what the facts are.

For example, many consumers believe they need to eat more proteins.

In reality, things are more complicated, as what you really should be looking for is to get right the amount of digestible and bioavailable indispensable individual amino acids [14]. Most consumers right now are likely not aware of this and there is no easy way to assess this anyway, so going with a high protein content in your product is probably a good start. With raising awareness, having a product that has high Digestible, Indispensable Amino Acid Score, DIAAS, however, could become a competitive advantage when selling to the health conscious consumer in the future.

Building a model of customer appeal

In reality, the different motivations and constraints are in tension with each other.

Consumer behavior can be modeled as a constrained optimization problem.

For each individual who’s making a purchase decision, He will likely be constrained through some rules in the following categories. In other words, the consumer is running an implicit utility function on the available options.

Here are some of the inputs that can pass the consumers mind

Traditional Questions

• Convenience — How easy is it to purchase, prepare and eat this product?
• Experience — How good will this taste?
• Financial — How much do I have to pay for this?

Emerging Questions

• Health — Perception: How healthy is this product for me?
• Animal harm — Perception: How much animal harm am I causing?
• Climate — Perception: How much harm to the climate am I causing?

Utility function for food purchase behavior

We can write out the inputs above in a more formal way. For example, a vegan customer may have the following utility function running as she compares the various options in a supermarket

#returns a score between 0 and 1. Higher score means higher likelihood of purchase.

def food_score(Item):

    if (Item[‘NoAnimals’] == False)

        return

    #How important are the different attributes to me?

    preferences = [

        “Climate”: 0.1,

        “Health”: 0.5, //may include protein, fat, artificial ingredients etc

        “Experience”: 0.3, //may include quality, taste, texture etc.

        “ValuePerPrice”: 0.1;

]

    #How does this item score with regards to my preferences?

    score = 0

    for(key, value) in preferences.items():

        score = score += value * Item[key]

    return score

When she is facing a purchase decision, she’ll run through the checklist implicitly (am I feeling this product will taste great?) or explicitly (what are the ingredients?). A high score predicts a high likelihood of purchase.

The food_score function above shows that if a product for example scores very high on health and taste, a consumer may be willing to pay more for a particular product than another, less tasty or healthy one.

The utility function will also look very different if the consumer has purchased the product before or not. As we’ve seen above, the novelty driver means that flexitarian consumers are likely very open to get consumers to try a new product. There the packaging, ingredients, etc. play pivotal roles in getting the consumer to try the food.

After the consumer has tried the product, she’ll store the taste experience in her memory and can decide to keep buying the product or to never touch that piece of fake meat again. In other words, taste evaluation will likely be a much stronger component in the evaluation going forward.

Utility functions for food attribute scores

But hoes do the various item attributes get evaluated?

For example, Item[‘Health’] will be evaluated differently for different consumers.

For a bodybuilder exclusively looking at protein content, we could imagine a utility function on the health attribute as follows

#linear elasticity of protein content on health_score

def item_health[Item]:

    score = Item.protein_percentage

    return score

In this function scoring function, there is a linear, one-to-one correlation between the score and the item’s protein percentage.

Someone who is afraid of GMOs and is trying to lose weight may have such a function

def item_health[Item]:

    lean_score = MAX(0, MIN((500-Item.calories)/250), 1)

    score = Item.gmo_free * lean_score

    return score

For this consumer, the fewer calories the better. Anything that either has a GMO in it or is above 500 calories will get a score of zero. Anything without GMOs below 250 calories will get a perfect score of 1 .

Visualizing utility functions

For simplicity sake, let’s assume for a minute that experience (=E) and ethical productions (=EP) are the only two variables that consumers consider when making a purchase decision.

A vegan (such as the author) has two conditions when considering a food item to purchase:

def food_score(E, EP):

    if EP < 1:

        return 0

    else:

        return E;

EP = 0 if animals are involved. EP > 1 if no animals. The score then can depend on the taste/sensory/convenience experience E, with items scoring higher in that area being more likely to be purchased.

These are the minimal requirements for a purchase:

EP > 1 (Needs to not have animal ingredients)

E > 1 (Needs to taste & feel ‘good enough’)

We can draw a chart with a Y-axis of Ethical Production (EP) and an X-axis of Experience (E).

In order to sell me some food, you want your product to be in my upper right quadrant.

Flexitarians Purchase Conditions

Flexitarians are more complex. They are willing to trade some ethics for the experience and vice-versa.

def food_score(E, EP):

return E+EP

In order to see whether we’d buy a product, we might model this as follows

E+EP > 1

The sum of experience and ethical production need to be above the flexitarian’s threshold. For example, she may believe that grass-fed cattle have been treated more nicely. Given that it tastes so nice, she concludes it’s ok for her to eat. However, she will abstain as much as she can from factory farmed beef, and the experience she gains from it isn’t high enough to make her purchase it.

Thoughts on Taste

As we’ve noted above, taste is a key driver for alternative protein sales. Let’s look at two important concepts when it comes to taste of the product you are offering.

Are you an ingredient or a stand-alone item?

A meat alternative can either be a stand-alone item such as ribeye steak, or it can be a burger patty inside a burger or the filling inside a breaded fish-stick. In a fish-stick, the breading is a very defining part of the experience. In a hamburger, the vegetables, dressing, and bun all play an important role in the overall flavor experience.

The taste requirements will be lower for the products that are part of a grander experience and higher for those the consumer will taste on its own.

Taste Elasticity

One of the most important questions for predicting the demand for a particular product with lots of substitutes is how much taste preferences influence demand.

In a fascinating study done on various beer brands, researchers found out that a 1% increase in taste preference leads to a 4–6% increase in demand [15]. Certainly, we can’t transfer beer directly into meat alternatives but can use this as a base-rate of consumer preferences impact on demand.

Introducing a model to predict general product appeal

I’ve been tinkering with a very simple model that can help predict the appeal of a new product, given what you think are its most frequent substitute goods.

So, after you’ve scored your product on various consumer preferences, it calculates the general appeal of your product.

I start with a 100% appeal and then subtract appeal each time you miss something that is important to consumers. For example, if we assume that soy-free is important to 15% of consumers and your product does contain soy, you’ll lose 15% of the market and have 85% appeal left.

On metrics that aren’t binary but more variable degrees, such as, meat-like taste’, you also have to predict the elasticity of those numbers. Let’s assume a taste-demand elasticity of 5, so that a 1% decrease in taste has a 5% decrease in demand. Your product scores 90% on this metric. Hence it will lose 50% appeal with the 37% of consumers who say this matters to them. So the appeal left will be 81.5%.

Assumptions made

I assume that some of the consumer preferences are non-correlated, ie that people who watch for protein content aren’t more likely than general consumers to also look for, say a soy-free label. On the other hand, I’ve assumed that consumers who care about GMO, organic and no artificial ingredients can all be grouped into one group, making sure we do not discount your appeal too much. Ie if your product does contain GMs, it’s also not organic and thus we’ll subtract appeal only once.

The model here serves more as a general guidepost on what to check for, as it still has important caveats.

1. It simplifies a lot of things. For example, I couldn’t come to a proper conclusion on how price impacts demand here and have left it out of the analysis for now. Lower price means higher demand generally, but higher price is also associated with higher quality. For health and taste focused consumers, a higher price could signal higher quality.
2. Your assumptions matter more than the model. If you make incorrect assumptions, the model will deliver very faulty predictions. Garbage in, garbage out, as people who build models know.

Here is the model with some sample calculation on the Impossible Burger, the Beyond Burger, and the Boca Burger. Feel free to copy and use it for your own needs.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Vx1fjviuGHBoVE3cm61CS-wxDfesgaBW19kNQWTkAh8/edit#gid=1320344679

Which Venn Diagram intersection can you own?

Once I brought together the various burger patties available, it was clear to me that it is very hard to differentiate on one metric alone. Sure, taste will reign relatively supreme and the better your product tastes, the better. While taste is also somewhat subjective, other attributes like Protein Content and the ingredients aren’t. If someone is really looking for a soy-free option, then there are fewer players in town. The more accurate you can estimate the number of consumers within each intersection, the better you’ll be at predicting the appeal of your product.

What does this mean for cell-based vs plant-based products?

Given the number of funded startups in the space, cell-based meats, will definitely make an entry to the market. After seeing how strong the meat-like flavor & texture ranks in consumer priorities, I’m quite bullish on the case overall. Most people seem to agree that the main hurdles are getting the price down to an acceptable level. However there are a couple of points to watch out for.

Red meat is getting a bad rap and people are reacting

As we’ve seen above, between 40–85% of consumers are reducing meat intake for health reasons. They are worried about cholesterol and saturated fats as well as links to cancer. Those will be less likely to replace their animal red meat intake by cell-based red meat intake which has the same nutritional profile. Mark Post says here that we can coerce animal cells to produce more omega-3 and potentially less of the heme iron, rendering the cultured meat less likely to cause cardiovascular disease and colorectal cancer, respectively. But will we give up taste by making it healthier? We are still figuring out how red meat can create harm and thus it remains to be seen how exactly this will play out.

What do consumers think is less processed?

Another interesting trend is that up to 43% of consumers want their meat alternatives to be free of artificial ingredients, or organic or non-GMO. While ‘unnatural’ food likely isn’t really bad for you, they still guide very real purchase decisions.

Food is always regional

A study done in 2019 by several GFI researchers together with Baath University and the Center for Long Term Studies in Hong Kong show a strong openness to try cell-based meat amongst Asian, mostly well educated urban consumers but much less for US consumers (60% vs 30% for very and extremely likely to purchase cell-based meat.) [16]. Other data points to a lot of skepticism, like the YouGov study on Chinese consumers done in 2018 [17] which showed that there are still lots of concerns about cultured meat, with only 26% saying they would ‘probably eat’ cultured meat. Now in China that represents 360M people, so if even half of the people will actually follow through their statements, it’s a huge market regardless.

The right strategy will be to deeply understand each individual market and build a product tailored to the culture, needs and desires of its consumers.

Transparency a must

The cellular agriculture companies have to be wary not to get the bad rap that the GMO companies have gotten. While GMOs are generally as safe for consumers as other plants we have bred over 10,000s of years, the genetic engineering crowd failed to convince European mainstream consumers of their benefits and their harmlessness, which is why there is virtually no GM food being sold in the EU. We need to make sure to educate consumers very well about the benefits and risks of cultured meat before we can really transition the world towards a cruelty-free food supply chain.

Conclusion

Flexitarians are a heterogeneous and growing group of consumers. They have diverse needs and it’s a good idea to clarify which sections of the various ‘need Venn diagrams’ you can serve really well. Somewhat unsurprisingly, we have seen that ‘perceived healthiness’ and ‘meat-like flavor’ are key attributes to master. But in order to master these components, a deep understanding of what consumers in your target market perceive as healthy is important, and that is where the model template I’ve built can hopefully be of help.

Next Steps

If you’re working on an idea in this space or have feedback on my model, I’d love to hear from you! Please reach out to flavio.rump@gmail.com or find me on Twitter.

If you want to hear about my next post, subscribe here

Thanks to Robert Yaman and Martin Y. Welzl for reading drafts of this.

Sources

[1] P. A. Thiel and B. Masters, Zero to one: notes on startups, or how to build the future, First edition. New York: Crown Business, 2014.

[2] “US retail sales of plant-based milk up 9%, plant-based meat up 24% YoY,” FOODNavigator-USA, 30-Jul-2018 [Online]. Available: https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2018/07/30/US-retail-sales-of-plant-based-milk-up-9-plant-based-meat-up-24-YoY

[3] “Plant-based food sales grow 20 percent.” Plant-based Foods Association, 30-Jul-2018 [Online]. Available: https://plantbasedfoods.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/PBFA-Release-on-Nielsen-Data-7.30.18.pdf

[4] “US Cheese Market,” Statista.com. [Online]. Available: https://www.statista.com/outlook/40010400/109/cheese/united-states. [Accessed: 26-Apr-2019]

[5] “U.S. Plant-Based Market Overview — Research From Nielsen,” The Good Food Institute, 27-Nov-2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.gfi.org/marketresearch. [Accessed: 29-Apr-2019]

[6] “Veganism in the UK,” The Vegan Society. [Online]. Available: https://www.vegansociety.com/news/media/statistics. [Accessed: 26-Apr-2019]

[7] “Only 3% of UK self-define as ‘vegan,’” Kantar, 05-Feb-2019. [Online]. Available: https://uk.kantar.com/consumer/shoppers/2019/only-3-of-uk-self-define-as-vegan/. [Accessed: 26-Apr-2019]

[8] “Is the Percentage of Vegetarians and Vegans in the U.S. Increasing?,” Animal Charity Evaluators. 16-Aug-2018 [Online]. Available: https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-of-vegetarians-and-vegans-in-the-u-s-increasing/. [Accessed: 28-Apr-2019]

[9] “Is flexitarianism the diet of the future? | YouGov,” YouGov, 26-Mar-2019. [Online]. Available: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/food/articles-reports/2019/03/26/flexitarianism-diet-future. [Accessed: 26-Apr-2019]

[10] “Foodbytes Inspiration from the Garden.” Foodbytes, 01-Mar-2018 [Online]. Available: https://datassential.com/Home/DownloadPdf?pdfFile=03-2018

[11] “Plant-based profits: Investment risks and opportunities in sustainable food systems.” FAIRR, 01-Feb-2018 [Online]. Available: http://www.fairr.org/resource/plant-based-profits-investment-risks-opportunities-sustainable-food-systems/

[12] Mintel Press, “Taste is top reason Americans eat plant-based proteins,” Mintel. [Online]. Available: https://www.mintel.com/press-centre/food-and-drink/taste-is-the-top-reason-us-consumers-eat-plant-based-proteins. [Accessed: 27-Apr-2019]

[13] “Consumer Insights Report Plant Power.” DSM, 11-Apr-2019 [Online]. Available: https://www.dsm.com/markets/food-specialties/en/insights/articles/innovation/plant-based-alternatives-becoming-mainstream.html. [Accessed: 28-Apr-2019]

[14] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Ed., Dietary protein quality evaluation in human nutrition: report of an FAO expert consultation, 31 March-2 April, 2011, Auckland, New Zealand. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2013.

[15] T. Malone and J. L. Lusk, “An instrumental variable approach to distinguishing perceptions from preferences for beer brands,” Manag. Decis. Econ., vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 403–417, 2018 [Online]. Available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/mde.2913. [Accessed: 29-Apr-2019]

[16] C. Bryant, K. Szejda, N. Parekh, V. Desphande, and B. Tse, “A Survey of Consumer Perceptions of Plant-Based and Clean Meat in the USA, India, and China,” Front. Sustain. Food Syst., vol. 3, 2019 [Online]. Available: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00011/full. [Accessed: 30-Apr-2019]

[17] “No demand for fake meat,” YouGov: What the world thinks. [Online]. Available: https://china.yougov.com/en-cn/news/2018/02/22/no-demand-for-fake-meat/. [Accessed: 30-Apr-2019]

If you’re anything like me, very little. I read fascinating non-fiction books all the time, but about half a year ago it dawned on me that I was actually retaining very little.

It turns out that people have studied how to increase retention intensely and found out which learning methods have the highest return on investment.

There are many ingredients to successful retention. One of the core concepts I found most important so far is the following:

Testing > Studying

The prevailing wisdom in education had long been that studying is what drives learning. And testing was merely to assess how much someone had learned.

But in a seminal 2008 paper, Jeffrey Karpicke and Henry Roediger showed the power that testing has on recall.

They recruited 40 college students and asked them to learn 40 Swahili-English word pairs. They split them into four groups and made them learn the word pairs in 8 “rounds”.

• Group ST: Each round study all 40 words and be tested on all 40 words.
• Group SnT: Study only words you haven’t correctly recalled before, but test all 40 words
• Group STn: Study all words but only get tested on words you haven’t correctly recalled before
• Group SnTn: Only study and get tested on words you haven’t recalled correctly before.

Studying means seeing both the Swahili and the English words, while testing means only seeing the Swahili word and having to type in the English word.

During each round, students performed quite similarly in each of the four groups and in the fourth round, virtually all of them could correctly identify all 40 Swahili words.

However, when they looked at the recall rate one week later, the numbers were dramatic:

As you can see in the chart above, the two groups that had repeatedly been tested on all 40 words outperformed the groups who dropped correctly recalled words by four standard deviations (d=4.03). Additionally, it seems that studying the words more frequently had no(!) impact on recall performance.

Later studies have replicated those findings, either significantly beating the other methods of learning even 6 months later, or at least reducing the amount of time taken to learn concepts.

Perhaps, even more astonishing, even testing yourself on material you’ve never learned is more effective than studying.

So how do you put this into practice?

Putting Testing into Practice

Likely the simplest way to implement testing is to use

Flashcards

• Physically: You can do this with actual paper cards.
• Digitally: Anki, Quizlet and Brainscape are very popular. They allow you to create digital flashcards that you can then use to practice over and over again. Brainscape has developed an algorithm they claim optimizes when you’re tested on something.

Duolingo actually also uses this approach by going straight into testing of word pairs and then using spaced repetition to help you store this in long-term memory.

What about reading a book?

A couple of ideas on how to implement testing.

1. Test yourself before reading a chapter
2. Test yourself after reading a chapter

Testing before reading a chapter

At the beginning of a chapter, you could test yourself. Say the chapter in a book on gardening says

Putting your Plants in the Right Location for Optimal Growth

Before reading the chapter, you could ask: “What is likely to factor into optimal plant growth?” and you might come up with things like

• plants’ individual needs
• average temperature
• the lowest temperature during the year
• time in the sun
• soil composition
• proximity to other plants
• potential disturbance by rodents or other animals

I just made that up, I have no idea how important these are.

But the point is, that by having tested myself before reading the chapter, I’m more likely to retain whatever I read next.

Testing after reading a chapter

When I’m done with a chapter, instead of jumping straight into the next one, I can stop and ask myself “What have I just learned? What are the most important points of this chapter? How would I explain this to someone else?”

Your Turn

What are you currently learning? Can you use testing and active recall to your advantage?

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Flavio Rump is an entrepreneur and investor. He shares decision-making models from the world’s best decision makers. You can read his articles, watch his YouTube Videos or join his free newsletter to learn how to make better decisions.

It is 2012, and after Polonium has been found in the late Yasser Arafat’s clothing, an investigation is opened. The goal is to figure out whether Mr. Arafat may have been poisoned.

How would you go about predicting the result to that question?

Superforecasting

In his book Superforecasting, Philip Tetlock describes how some of the world’s most accurate predictors go about doing just that. He and his co-investigators ran the original version of Good Judgement Project (GJP) from 2011 to 2015. In this prediction tournament, they recruited thousands of people who made 100,000s of thousands of predictions on questions just like the one above.

They used a numerical approach using a Brier score to measure the accuracy of predictions.

The very best 2%, they started calling “Superforecasters”. These people were able to beat US Intelligence officials.

Now were these all supergeniuses?

Turns out that general intelligence does matter, but you don’t need to be in the top 2% of IQ in order to be in the top 2% of forecasting. This suggests that a lot of what led to top forecasting performance can be learned.

Did they have access to superior information?

No. They were well informed, but mostly because they knew how to use Google. The extra information US Intelligence officials had wasn’t enough to beat the superforecasters.

How to forecast like a superforecaster

Let’s look at how Bill Flack, one of the people who consistently outperformed his peers in the GJP, approached this question. It’s important to note that Bill lives in Nebraska and had no special knowledge of the Isreali-Palestinian conflict.

Now, did Israel poison Arafat?

Step 1: Fermi-ize the Question

First, Bill realized the first step in his analysis had nothing to do with politics.

In fact, if you carefully reread the question at the beginning of the article, it asks whether elevated levels of Polonium will be found. Not at all whether Israel poisoned him. This is a “bait-and-switch” our System 1 pulls on us, replacing a question with one we might have a strong feeling about. “Of course Israel did it!” or “No, Israel would never do that!”.

So Bill asked himself: “What needs to be true in order for the answer to be yes? What needs to be true for the answer to be no?”

This is where you break down an intractable problem into more tractable sub-problems, also dubbed Fermi-izing.

One thing that became clear to Bill is that he first needed to understand if elevated levels of polonium could even be found eight years after someone’s death. (Arafat had died in 2004.) So he familiarized himself with how polonium decays over time and how the science of testing works. Only once he was satisfied they still could measure it, did he move on.

He also realized that only either the Swiss or French team had to find elevated levels, raising the probability of the answer being yes.

The next step was to list all the possible ways elevated levels of polonium could end up in Arafat’s remains.

Of course “Israel poisoned Arafat” is one possibility. But the leader also had many Palestinian enemies. They could have poisoned him. Or Palestinian special forces could have planted the polonium there, wanting to make it look like “Israel pulled a Litvinenko”.

This is important because they raise the probability that Polonium could be found.

Breaking down a question into subquestions is something dubbed Fermi-izing, after Enrico Fermi, a physicist who loved to answer difficult questions by breaking them down into more easily answerable subquestions.

Step 2: Outside View / Base Rate

So the next step is to delve into Middle-Eastern politics and answer the subquestions, right?

Not yet.

For example, let’s assume you are asked to solve this question:

Julia lives in Zurich and about 8 km away from her work. She’s 25, single and lives with two other roommates. She’s got a background in mechanical engineering and now works in management consulting.

How likely is it that she bikes to work?

Many people, including very smart ones, have the tendency to immediately focus on the details of the question such as “Ok she’s young and single, so she likely doesn’t have a car”, and so forth.

While this makes for a nice story, it can lead to predictions that are way off.

What superforecasters like Bill do, is that they first establish how many people in Zurich commute by bike in general. A few minutes on Google tell us that it is about 10% of all commutes.

Now we can adjust this 10% with some of the details of the story and tweak the 10% number up or down.

So the next step after fermi-izing is to find the base rate of similar events.

Turns out the best forecasters first find a way to anchor their predictions in a way that minimizes hunches and feelings about any particular details of the story.

In the Arafat question, this is quite hard. It’s not like leaders get killed each day and we have a base rate for this. So how would we go about it in this case?

We can make some further fermi-izing here.

What is the likelihood of authorities hiring a renowned Swiss research institute to conduct a study in the first place?

The current level of evidence has to be inconclusive. There can’t be sufficient evidence that polonium is there, otherwise, the test wouldn’t make sense. So maybe an upper bound would be 80% probability. On the lower end, if there was no suspicion at all, they also wouldn’t start an investigation. So maybe the lower bound is 20% likelihood. The mean of those two bounds ends us at a 50% likelihood. While far from perfect, it does give us an anchor more detached from any individual details of the story.

Step 3: Inside View

Now that we have a base rate probability of 50% established, we can start looking at more details for the individual questions to adjust this crude initial estimate up or down.

Let’s look at the first hypothesis from Step 1 “Israel poisoned Arafat”. What needs to be true in order for this to be true?

Fermi-izing again, we get to something like

1. Israel wanted Arafat dead badly enough to go through with such a plan.
2. Israel had or could obtain polonium.
3. Israel had the means to poison Arafat with polonium.

Then the research can start. This is where you read intensely on the internet. Getting good information requires intense detective work. You use what you learn here to adjust your base rate estimate up or down.

You repeat this for the other hypotheses you’ve laid out.

Step 4: Share your view and have it challenged

After your done with your analysis, the best thing you can do is to share it with others and have it challenged. In the GJP, the forecasters who worked in teams outperformed the ones who didn’t. The more different perspectives you have access to and can synthesize into your final view, the more likely you are to be correct.

Step 5: Update your Views

When the Swiss research team announced it would be late in releasing its test results because it needed to do more — unspecified — testing, Bill Flack perked up.

What did that mean?

It could be just that a researcher had gotten ill for a few days and that some of the results weren’t verified yet.

But Bill also knew that polonium could also occur when naturally present lead in the body decays into polonium. In order to determine the source of polonium, researchers can remove all the polonium and wait to see whether polonium reappears. This would indicate lead was the source.

This could be the reason for the delays. The Swiss team had actually found polonium and needed to run another test to exclude its source was lead.

But this was only one possible explanation.

So Bill cautiously updated his forecast to 65%.

The Swiss ended up finding elevated levels of polonium.

In fact, superforecasters are very frequent to adjust their predictions. The research by Tetlock’s co-investigator Mellers shows in Mellers et al. 2015, that the number of predictions per question had the largest correlation with low Brier Scores of all the variables studied.

Summary

1. Fermi-ize the question
2. Start with outside view
3. Adjust with the inside view
4. Challenge prediction with others
5. Update your views frequently

I should also mention that you can get better over time and that getting feedback on your predictions from others will improve your abilities over the long run. As with everything, this requires grit and discipline to stay on track.

Further Resources

There are a ton more nuances on how to make accurate predictions. Here is what you can do next:

Read the Book by Tetlock

Go through the free training of the Good Judgement Project

Join the Good Judgement Project and start practicing and learning from others.

Also, what is a prediction about your life you can get started with practicing!?

Subscribe below to get the next article straight to your inbox.

Flavio Rump is an entrepreneur and investor. He shares decision-making models from the world’s best decision makers. You can read his articles, watch his YouTube Videos or join his free newsletter to learn how to make better decisions.

The Blue Hat is the overview Hat. With Blue, think of the sky above. Or think of being cool and in control.

The Blue Hat is for the management and organization of thinking. It is concerned with metacognition.

“We’ve heard your criticism of this plan. What I want now is some positive assessment. Let’s put your Yellow Hats firmly and place and tell me what you see there.”

Who is wearing the Blue Hat?

As with the other hats, anyone can wear the Blue Hat in during a discussion. However it is often useful to have a person assume the role of a facilitator who wears the Blue Hat throughout the meeting.

The chairperson or manager of a unit or project has a natural Blue Hat function.

Main Benefit of the Blue Hat

Typical discussions involve all the thinking modes mixed together. The implicit assumption is that through an adversarial exploration of ideas and facts, the best solution will survive.

While obviously those discussions do bring results, we might be severely limiting our problem solving capabilities by mixing together facts, opinions, criticism and creativity. We’re not getting the best out of all the thinking modes and hence the potential clarity and solutions we could get if we applied a more structured approach.

Getting more out of our brains is the promise of the Blue Hat.

The Blue Hat allows us to

• Focus (specify the) the discussion
• Outline and design the program
• Results (summarize) and draw conclusions
• Monitor and control the discussion

I picked those words so that it can be easier to remember with the mnemonic FORM. Maybe it helps to remember a blue form :)

Let’s dig into how we can use the Blue Hat.

Specify the focus of a discussion

A critical use of the Blue Hat is to focus the discussion on a given topic or problem.

“Let’s focus on what each of us wants from this holiday.”

“The broad focus is how to increase the number of vegans around the world. The tight focus is how to convince school cantines to increase the number of vegan meal options.”

The Blue Hat comes into play when we stray away from our initially defined focus.

“We’ve generated lots of ideas here, but they have little to do with the original question. Let’s shift our focus back to original point. Any other Blue Hat comments?”

It is said that asking the right question is the most important part of thinking. It may also be the most difficult. The Blue Hat is concerned with asking the right question.

“Let’s define the objective of this meeting. What would success mean to us?”

“Why are we having difficulties deciding between those alternatives?”

Design the program (with Example!)

The Blue Hat can be used for more than just the order of the Six Thinking Hats.

“In this discussion, let’s map the areas of agreements, disagreements and irrelevance.”

“We should start by analyzing all relevant factors we must take into account when designing this education program.”

Here is how a typical sequence of Hats could look like for solving a problem.

Say we want to find a way to win an election.

1. Blue Hat:

What is the problem we want to solve? What are the relevant points to consider? Who should be in the meeting? Which Hats should we use in what sequence?

Example:

How do we get 30,000 votes? What influences voter turnout? Who knows about this? What Hats should we use in order to solve this?

2. Red Hat

If this is a contentious topic because the participants are for example angry, scared or jealous, we might throw in the Red Hat. This allows the feelings to come to the surface.

“I feel like this new open seat has aroused lots of emotions. Let’s put on our Red Hat to clear the air first.”

Without this, people might express their feelings otherwise, such as with excessive Black Hat thinking.

3. White Hat

What are the facts of the situation? What else do we need to know?

Example:

“We need to win 20% of the votes to win 5 seats. The voter turnout in the last three local elections has been 43, 48 and 41%. The polls indicate that if the election were held today, we’d get 17% of the votes. We have a budget of CHF 200,000. Our website doesn’t have an easy to start new fundraising campaigns. We don’t know exactly which topics are most important to voters this year.”

4. Blue Hat

After some important facts have been established, a Blue Hat may help us further organize our thinking.

“Wearing my Blue Hat, I see that there are several separate areas which require further attention. Fundraising and voter turnout are huge topics by themselves. We can’t possibly deal with all of them today, so I suggest to form teams who tackle the most important areas individually and focus on the area with the highest urgency today.”

5. Yellow Hat

In it’s constructive mode, we can use the Yellow Hat simply generate ideas. They can be very conventional.

“Let’s put on our Yellow Hats and find ways to increase our fundraising impact.”

“We could do online fundraising focusing on issues that are emotional. We could try to identify the wealthy members of our party and approach them individually. We could send out letters to all our members and solicit donations.”

6. Black Hat

The Black Hat can then be used to find limitations in the ideas put out.

“Most of those ideas we have tried before, and the raised funds have been quite limited.”

“We don’t have an easy way of finding out who is wealthy within our party.”

7. Green Hat

We could then use the Green Hat to find solutions to problems pointed out with the Black Hat.

“The current ideas all have limitations, but I do like the idea of approaching individual, well-off donors. How about we Green Hat this idea?”

“I’ll provoke our thinking and say Wealthy Donors Po Bicycles”

“What if we auctioned off Bicycles ridden by our most popular officials?”

8. Yellow and Black Hats to Assess

We could then further use the Yellow Hat and the Black Hat in their assessment mode.

“What are all the benefits of selling of the bicycles?”

“What could go wrong if we go through with this?”

9. Blue Hat

“I’ll summarize what we have learned today.We desperately need more money for the campaign. Our existing methods haven’t worked that well, so let’s try something new. Selling Bicycles from popular officials has a relatively low risk and could both raise money for the party and generate positive buzz in the media.”

10. Final Red Hat

“Let’s hear everyone’s opinions on how satisfied they are with today’s discussion and whether they endorse this idea.”

Additional Sequences

Here are a couple of other suggested sequences I’ve found very useful:

Control and monitor the discussion

Once the discussion has started, we want to make sure that we are as productive as possible. The Blue Hat is a handy tool with which we can be very direct.

“If I put on my Blue Hat, I see that we really aren’t getting any closer to a resolution between the two of you. Why don’t both of you use the Yellow Hat on each others points of view? This should help resolve the matter.”

Doing this reminds me of the Double-Crux method I learned at CFAR.

“I’m sorry, but this is clearly Black Hat thinking. Let’s get back to the White Hat to establish the facts first.”

We can also use the Blue Hat to pause an argument and help resolve it.

“Joe thinks most consumers who are turning vegan are doing so because of animal welfare concerns. Mary believes those who turn vegan do so simply because their doctors recommend them to reduce meat and dairy intake. Both points may be valid. What does White Hat thinking have to offer here?”

Summarize results and draw conclusions

The Blue Hat controls the discussion and can summarize discussions and make us redirect our attention to the relevant points.

“Let’s pause and summarize what we’ve got so far.”

“We seem to be very concerned with the cost of this campaign. We don’t even know if it could be effective. Shouldn’t we establish this first?”

At the end of thinking mode, it can help us draw conclusions.

“With the Yellow Hat we’ve noted several well-established ways we could get this more money into our party coffers. How about we use our Green Hats to come up with a few new ideas for ten minutes and then put them under scrutiny of the Black Hat to see which one we like best?”

“It seems like we’ve exhausted all of our options for now. The idea with the new satirical video is the one that got the most support. Let’s move on with this.”

Summary of the Blue Hat

The Blue Hat is the director’s hat. It’s absolutely key in getting most out of the other hats. It directs the thinking. It defines the questions we are asking and the methods we chose to answer them. It summarizes the thinking. It also monitors the thinkers and makes sure it stays productive.

Remembering the Blue Hat

I would assume that regular attention and awareness training, such as mindfulness training would help with remembering to put on the Blue Hat. Half of the value of the Blue Hat probably just lies in putting it on. The meta-lense will offer a new perspective on the problem and the thinking that is happening.

Your Turn

Training

• When can you apply the Blue Hat next?
• What sequence of Hats could be appropriate there?

This concludes our Six Thinking Hat Series.

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Overview of the Six Thinking Hats

Flavio Rump is an entrepreneur and investor. He shares decision-making models from the world’s best decision makers. You can read his articles, watch his YouTube Videos or join his free newsletter to learn how to make better decisions.

The Green Hat is the creative Hat. Moreover, it’s the provocative Hat. The green color stands for plants 🌱growing, new opportunities.

Wearing the Green Hat we make a conscious effort to come up with new ideas. These are ideas that are non-obvious. The more obvious solutions (that may be just as good) can already be brought forward with the Yellow Hat.

“We are bogged down. We keep going over the same old ideas. We need something new. Let’s put on our Green Hats and see what we can come up with.”

It’s probably the hardest Hat to really wrap your head around. De Bono has invented quite a few tactics to provoke new ideas that may seem new. This blog post can not do justice to his techniques. He wrote an entire book about this called Lateral Thinking.

Main Benefits of the Green Hat

Generate more ideas. By wearing the Green Hat, we make a deliberate effort to actually look for new ways of doing things. We signal to others and our brains that now is the time to be creative. There is a correlation between the amount of time we spend looking for new ideas and the number of new ideas we can come up with.

Provoke new ideas. We have a low output pressure with the Green Hat. It’s totally under the protection of the Green Hat to say things that are impractical, stupid or provocative. They can serve as stepping stones to very practical solutions.

How can you connect all nine dots with just four connected, straight lines?

The task is impossible. Unless of course, you consider that you can also go outside the box.

Much of the time, our brain trains to pattern-match and throw out things that don’t fit the pattern. When picking fruits at the supermarket, we’re quite good at finding out the ones that are not good and dismiss them. Many thinkers like to be secure and behave in the same ways with unusual ideas.

Creativity requires exploration, risk-taking, and provocation. Unless we specifically wear the Green Hat and run the experiment, we will never know where we land.

“Remember, I’m wearing the Green Hat. So I’m allowed to say things like that.”

Humor and Creativity

Great humor-writers understand what makes a good joke. There is always a provocative, unexpected element in a good joke.

Here we break out of the pattern of thinking “Holes are unwanted; they are signs of worn out shoes.” and find a new pattern that considers the whole of the shoe.

How to Use the Green Hat: Lateral Thinking

The core concept of the Green Hat in de Bono’s book is something he calls Lateral Thinking.

The idea is to provoke new answers using intermediate steps that are not realizable.

We want to show a new thought pattern that is outside of the existing thought patterns.

Provocation

My favorite example of how provocation was used to generate a useful solution is the following.

“We need new ideas on how to fight crime in our neighborhoods. Let’s put on our Green Hats and see what we can find.”

“Under the protection of the Green Hat, I will provoke a new way of thinking. What if everyone was a police officer?”

We can see how this solution is unrealistic. But it can prompt a new way of looking at things.

With this provocation, de Bono says the responsible parties came up with the concept of Neighborhood Watch (couldn’t verify this story personally, but it makes for a good story), which is in place in many neighborhoods around the US today.

“What if paid prisoners a pension at the end of their sentence? Maybe they could integrate into society better and would be less likely to fall back into criminality. Tell me what you see with that provocation.”

Generate Alternatives

In decision making, the quality of the decision will depend on both the quality of the alternatives available and as well as the selection process. So one simple way to increase the likelihood of good decision-making is to increase the number of alternatives.

“We can either increase the price, leave it the same or decrease it.”

Now while generally anything we decide will fall into one of the three buckets, there are many variations we can do here.

“We could increase prices later. We could create a new, more expensive version and lower the prices of the existing option. We could offer coupons valid for one month to boost sales now.”

There are many more options still. The point is to get our minds out of the ingrained thought patterns and find new ways of looking at things.

Po

“Po” is a word invented by de Bono. The goal is to have a playful way to say unusual and provocative things.

“Po Drugs Po Gardening. Give me your thinking on what you see there.”

“Po executives should determine their own salaries.”

“Po kids should their own classes.”

Levels

Sometimes it’s appropriate to break out of the current level of thinking.

“You’ve asked me to come up with new solutions to have people commute to their offices. With the Green Hat, I think we should look at solutions that involve commuting at all. What if everyone could be done from their homes?”

“Wearing the Green Hat, I think we should reconsider spending our advertising budget on PR instead.”

Shaping Ideas into Something Usable

After we’ve created new ideas with the use of the Green Hat, we still need to shape them into something useful. This is where we subject the idea to the real-world constraints prevalent.

This is where could use a sequence of other hats. For example, a Yellow Hat can find all the benefits of the idea. Then the Black Hat can point out the risks. The Yellow Hat can be used again to show solutions to solve problems surfaced under the Black Hat. In a tandem move, the Black and Yellow Hats help refine the idea into something we can implement.

“How would we make sure that Neighbors don’t start spying into each other's homes?”

“We could have simple training done for all of the volunteers when they first sign up. There they could learn about how to behave so to minimize crime and make their neighbors feel safe and not spied upon.”

Summary of the Green Hat

The Green Hat

• allows us to have deliberate time and effort to be creative
• motivates us to come up with ideas that break the current pattern of thought
• has low pressure on output but simply asks us to make an effort.
• can use Lateral Thinking techniques such as provocation, where we say something silly to find something useful that is new.
• may make use of ‘po’ to signal thought-provoking statements.
• wants us to further shape our ideas with the other hats to make them usable.

Your Turn

Training

• When can you apply the Green Hat next?
• Whom can you ask to wear the Green Hat to switch them out of their Black Hat thinking?
• Get the Lateral Thinking Book

Next time we’ll dig into the Blue Hat.

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Overview of the Six Thinking Hats

Flavio Rump is an entrepreneur and investor. He shares decision-making models from the world’s best decision makers. You can read his articles, watch his YouTube Videos or join his free newsletter to learn how to make better decisions.

The yellow color stands for sunshine and optimism. With the Yellow Hat, we are looking for opportunities and benefits.

Wearing the Yellow Hat, we ask:

• What value can we see?
• How can we create this value?

“People care more about the health benefits of food they eat now. I’d like your Yellow Hat Thinking on our business strategy for this trend. What opportunities does that bring?”

“My Yellow Hat tells me we can use this market downturn to buy some great locations at decent prices.”

Main Benefits of the Yellow Hat

• Assessment: See more benefits. We have a natural tendency to be positive about our own ideas or ones we can benefit from ourselves. With the Yellow Hat, we don’t have to wait for this and can find benefit in ideas coming from anywhere.
• Find opportunities. Consciously look for opportunities in different situations. Instead of seeing mainly negative consequences of new situations or ideas, we can make an effort to look for new opportunities.
• Constructive: Find solutions. We can use the Yellow Hat to put forward and improve proposals that help us solve our problems.

The Yellow Hat is the opposite of the Black Hat. We are looking for positivity but with logical reasons.

The Yellow Hat is not as natural as the Black Hat. We don’t have as much of a natural mechanism to recognize opportunity as we have to identify threats. One wrong move in the Savannah, and you are dead. Miss one bush full of berries? Not so bad, there will be another one somewhere else.

For positive feelings that aren’t based on logical reasons, we should use the Red Hat.

Since many of us carry this risk-averse attitude into our personal and business life, it is essential to train ‘value-sensitivity’. This means being as sensitive to value as we are already to danger. We make a conscious effort to see opportunities in situations.

Entrepreneurs are naturally good at using the Yellow Hat. They see opportunities where others don’t.

De Bono describes it as a Positive-Speculative Hat. It is the opposite of skepticism.

We can use it to:

• Asking ‘what-if’ questions?
• Suggesting solutions to problems
• Laying out visions

In a SWOT Analysis, the Yellow Hat is being used when handling the Opportunities Section.

How far into dreamland should the Yellow Hat be allowed to go?

When are ideas just foolish and when are they grand visions that can inspire us to action?

Let’s look at two very different scenarios to see the difference.

1. Playing the lottery and hoping to win is just foolish.

2. Having a dream to put a man on the moon is improbable, but not impossible.

History is filled with unrealistic ideas and plans that inspired people to take action and manifest beautiful outcomes.

Yellow Hat in Full Action.

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard;

JFK’s Rice speech is a beautiful example of a solid Yellow Hat in the speculative but action-inspiring domain. Even though it seemed very challenging at the time, he saw an opportunity for the U.S. to be the first nation to put a man on the moon.

So what matters is whether there is something we can do about the idea that will increase the likelihood of the dream being achieved.

“With my Yellow Hat, I see an opportunity to create a new voting system that represents people more accurately than our current system does.”

Likelihood

As discussed in the White Hat, we should be aware of the probabilities of specific scenarios. We should put all the possible outcomes on the map.

We don’t need to follow the long-shot scenarios, but it’s good to be aware of it.

Thus, de Bono suggests using a simple qualifier when we assess positive outcomes

• proven
• very likely, based on experience and what we know
• good chance, through a combination of different things
• even chance
• No better than possible
• Remote or long shot

Since we all interpret words differently, it may be better to use actual numbers, such as 80% likely.

“I estimate a 10% chance that some people survived the crash-landing on the glacier. We must go and look.”

“There is a 15% chance our vegan burger patty gets chosen as the burger patty of the year. We should be prepared with follow-up PR activities. It may not happen, but we should be prepared.”

Reasons & Logical Support

What is the positive view based upon?

A positive assessment can be based on experience, available information, logical deductions, trends, guesses and hopes.

The Yellow Hat Thinker should always lay out those reasons. She should find as much support and evidence for the view she gives. Otherwise, she may just utter her positive feeling with the Red Hat.

Speculation

But Yellow Hat thinking should not be restricted to only those points that can be fully satisfied. So even if we fail to find substantial evidence, we can still put the point forward in a speculative manner.

Constructive Thinking

Making things happen

In the assessment part of a discussion, the Yellow Hat Thinker tries to find benefits in an idea just as the Black Hat Thinker tries to find risks and dangers.

However, we can also use the Yellow Hat to put forward concrete proposals to make something better.

“Michael, what suggestion do you have? Put on your Yellow Hat and tell me what you see.”

“We can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by converting everyone into veganism.”

“We could also look for new plant-based protein sources that people can’t distinguish from meat. Then we don’t need to convince people of changing their diets as much.”

“What about a meat tax? If we properly priced the greenhouse emissions of animal agriculture, the alternative protein sources would become popular overnight.”

Each of these is a concrete suggestion. We can now develop these further and then subject them to Yellow Hat and Black Hat assessment.

Between generating proposal and assessing proposals there is a third mode de Bono dubs “construction.” In this mode, we take an initial idea and build it up for its final assessment.

The Black Hat can find flaws in the initial idea, then the Yellow Hat can be used to find solutions.

“Introducing a meat tax is an extremely challenging proposition in the current cultural environment. People are so used to eating meat, they can’t imagine a life without it and would vote against any such proposal.”

“What if we started with just a beef tax? It’s by far the worst type of meat for the climate. People don’t eat beef every day and may be less opposed to this.”

Your Turn

Training

• When can you apply the Yellow Hat next?
• Whom can you ask to wear the Yellow Hat to switch them out of their Black Hat thinking?

Next Steps

Next time we’ll dig into the Green Hat!

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Overview of the Six Thinking Hats

Flavio Rump is an entrepreneur and investor. He shares decision-making models from the world’s best decision makers. You can read his articles, watch his YouTube Videos or join his free newsletter to learn how to make better decisions.

The Black Hat is the caution hat. It keeps us from doing things that are illegal, immoral, unprofitable, polluting and so on.

The Black Hat is quite natural for us, as we’ve been using it for millennia to prevent us from eating the wrong berries or trusting the wrong strangers. One wrong decision leads your genetic lineage to die right there.

The Black Hat is also the opposite of the Yellow Hat, where we find benefits of ideas and plans.

“I can see how this idea is very attractive and we have considered all the benefits. Now let’s have some black hat thinking on potential dangers and downsides.”

“We both like this house very much. That is strong red hat thinking. Let’s have some black thinking for a moment.”

Main Benefits of the Black Hat

In a planned sequence, it’s invaluable to have a set time for the Black Hat.

1. Fight your own confirmation bias. Allows everyone, including the person who proposed an idea, to be critical and find potential pitfalls.
2. Use more of your brain. People who are habitually cautious can excel at fault-finding in a formal setting, thus allowing them to be creative or optimistic at other times. Many of those people welcome the use of the Six Thinking Hats and have been surprised by how creative they can be by wearing the Green Hat for example.

What is the Black Hat for?

Logical fault & danger finding

The Black Hat is always logical. Unlike with the Red Hat, we do have to give good reasons for our concerns.

“I don’t like the idea of lowering the prices.

That is Red Hat Thinking. Please give me your Black Hat Thinking. We need your logical reasons.

Fine. In our past experience — which I can show you with sales figures — lowering prices has not resulted in enough additional sales to offset the reduction in profit margin. Also our competitors have typically lowered their prices to match the competition.”

Pretend it is the future and look back on why a plan has failed

An excellent way to find risks and flaws in a plan is the Murphy Jitsu method I learned in a CFAR workshop!

It allows us to leverage our “Inner Simulator / System 1” to find flaws in plans. We play a movie in our head of the plan and can ‘sense’ where things go wrong.

“Let’s wear our Black Hats and pretend it’s three months from now. If we missed our sales numbers, what were the likely reasons?”

Design Stage vs. Assessment Stage

The Black Hat functions quite differently if we are in the design stage or assessment stage of an idea or project.

Suppose we have a project that is 95% excellent and has 5% flaws.

Most of us have a tendency to focus on the 5% flaws.

In the design stage, it’s totally legitimate to point out the flaws and spend significant time to correct for them, say using the Green Hat.

In the assessment stage however, we should acknowledge the 5% flaws but mostly focus on the 95% benefits.

“We have found good reasons to support this idea. Now let’s have some strong black hat thinking to find weaknesses so we can do something about them at the design stage.”

Overuse

The most important thing about the black hat is that you wear it consciously.

So that when it is not worn, you are keeping an open mind and not criticizing others ideas yet.

We have natural tendency to be critical of others’ ideas. We should use this very useful skill while wearing the Black Hat. Then we can be more open and creative with ideas of others with the other Hats.

Questions to ask with the Black Hat

• Check against white hat: Does it fit the data?
• Does it fit our values and ethics?
• Is it profitable?
• Is it legal?
• Can we afford it?
• Will clients like this?

Your Turn

Training

• When can you apply the Black Hat next?
• What difficult decision do you have to make soon? Can you lay out what you see under the Black Hat?
• What is your Black Hat thinking about the Six Thinking Hats?

Next Steps

Read about Yellow Hat!

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Overview of the Six Thinking Hats

Flavio Rump is an entrepreneur and investor. He shares decision-making models from the world’s best decision makers. You can read his articles, watch his YouTube Videos or join his free newsletter to learn how to make better decisions.

The Red Hat is an incredibly important hat. The red color stands for fire 🔥 and emotions. It is mainly concerned with feelings and emotions.

When we conduct a business discussion, we’re not supposed to let emotions sip in. They end up doing so anyway, but we disguise them as logic.

“I sense that this is not the right person for the job.”

“I don’t feel like you will make the deadline.”

With the Red Hat, people are given a chance to

• express their true feelings.
• say things that they don’t have to validate.
• make critical statements seem less personally attacking.

The Red Hat is the opposite of the fact-based White Hat.

Emotions in decision-making

There is some impressive research done by Antonio Damasio and others on patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). While the patients still have normal attention, memory, learning and language capabilities, they perform significantly worse in every-day decision-making. They are hardly able to decide what to eat and how to behave socially.

The vmPFC is an integral part of emotion processing and can help us predict how the future will look like. In other words, without emotions, we become indecisive and erratic.

Feelings, hunches, and intuitions aren’t always right. They can introduce any of a long list of mental biases.

But they are based on the entirety of our past experiences.

They help us make sense of a situation very quickly. Emotions are also able to give us a sense of how specific scenarios might play out in the future. As such, they are critical to our decision-making process.

You feel uneasy about a new person you meet. You might not be able to put it into words, but something seems off. This is your intuition at work. It’s best to be on guard and proceed very cautiously until you either can confirm your suspicions or they get dispelled by evidence refuting those suspicions.

The Red Hat allows these emotions, hunches, and intuitions to be voiced with a clear label.

Some basic rules for the Red Hat

• They should always be applied to a specific idea or situation. “Give me your Red Hat thinking on calling up our competitors customers and asking them to switch to us.”
• Not allowed to say ‘pass’. You can say ‘neutral, mixed, confused, doubtful, undecided’. If described as ‘mixed’, the facilitator may ask ‘What goes into the mix?’
• Don’t justify or explain your feelings

When to apply the Red Hat?

There are two major ways you can use the Red Hat.

1. In a planned sequence of hats: At the beginning and the end.
2. Single-use: For important emotional topics

Planned use of The Red Hat within a sequence of Hats

The Red Hat aims to capture the feeling that is present towards a situation right now. It’s ok if the feeling changes and we feel different in 20 minutes.

Hence it is often useful to apply at the beginning of a discussion and towards the end. So we can also feel if the feelings have changed at all?

Imagine the decision is on whether we should go ahead with a risky marketing campaign. In the beginning, some people may say with their Red Hats that they don’t like it (a legitimate use of the Red Hat).

But after all the facts (White Hat), chances (Yellow Hat) and dangers (Black Hat) have been pointed out, maybe some feelings will shift. The Red Hat is used again and everyone now agrees to go ahead with the decision.

Every decision must be emotional in the end. With an emphasis to the ‘in the end’. After drawing the map with our thinking we chose the route with our values and emotions.

Feelings will lurk around anyway. Best to give them a clear outlet and label them as such.

“Don’t ask me why, but this is a terrible deal.” 💁‍♂️

“I do not like him and do not want to do business with him.” 🙅‍♀️

“That design is hideous. It will never catch on and is a huge waste of money.” 🙅‍♂️

“I don’t think it’s fair to withhold this information until after the deal is signed.”✋🏼

Single use of the Red Hat

• Use it if it’s an important matter.
• You want to get someone’s Red Hat thinking formally.
• You say something that is potentially strong emotionally.
• Don’t use it every time you want to express a feeling, this might seem absurd.

“I want to make a Red Hat statement. I feel like we are being bullied into an agreement we don’t want.”

“Please stop using the Red Hat now for the next 20 minutes.”

Once emotions have surfaced, we can work with them.

How can the Red Hat be used?

There may be fear, anger, jealousy or love at play when making decisions. The Red Hat allows for our unspoken background feelings to appear.

1. Pointing out feelings towards others’ motivations
2. Putting forward feelings about an upcoming decision
3. Admitting emotions such as jealousy

Pointing out feelings towards others’ motivations

Once we see a person in a certain light, it’s hard to change our perception of them. We ought to point out these feelings as soon as they arise.

“If I were to put on my Red Hat, it seems to me that you want to oppose the merger in order to preserve your own job rather than benefit shareholders.”

“You are hesitant about this deal. You don’t want in, but you also don’t want to be left out. You want to be in an antechamber, waiting to be called in whenever it suits you.”

Putting forward feelings about an upcoming decision

After the map of the situation has been laid out with facts, ideas, evidence, and threats, it’s important to include our emotions to paint a full picture.

“If I put on my Red Hat, I feel like we shouldn’t end the strike yet. We aren’t ready to start negotiations; both parties aren’t hurting enough to be willing to make real concessions.

Admitting emotions such as jealousy

“I will put on my Red Hat and state that I am opposing Anne’s promotion because I am jealous of her and her quick rise to power.”

Most of us probably won’t manage to be that honest.

However, we can soften the statement as follows:

“With my Red Hat, I can sense that my opposition is in part based on jealousy.”

Alternatively, we could also say:

“I am going to take cover under my Red Hat and say that I am opposed to Anne’s promotion. It’s just a feeling that I have.”

How to deal with intuitions

Intuitions are the system 1 response to a specific situation that has built up over time, through experience in dealing with this type of situation.

“I strongly feel most vegans won’t like GMO vegan food.”

Treat intuitions like an advisor. They can be very, very valuable.

The more someone’s (including your own) intuitions have been right in the past, the more you should trust them.

However, they are not the only source of truth.

Pro Tip: Check intuition for believability on a particular subject.

Good intuition in one area does not translate into good intuition in another, unrelated area.

Just because someone has made a ton of money selling real estate, doesn’t mean they’ll be specially qualified to call a presidential race.

Use the Red Hat with a focus

Emotions can be fickle. A questionnaire asked Americans whether they generally favored an involvement of US troops Central America. The majority favored the involvement. But for each proposed interventions, there was a majority opposed to it.

This doesn’t make sense rationally but makes sense emotionally.

So make sure to use the Red Hat on a specific question or issue.

Examples

“Can you please give me your Red Hat thinking on selling vegan salmon burgers?”

“My Red Hat tells me that this offer is not going to be accepted.”

Additional ways of using the Red Hat idiom

1. Voice critical thoughts without appearing attacking.
2. Ask for feelings
3. Reframe
4. Bring to awareness
5. Negotiate

Voice Critical Thoughts without appearing attacking.

One strength of working with the Six Thinking Hats is that introduces a certain playfulness. This can render statements seem less personally attacking.

“Sandra, it is my Red Hat view that you never listen to anyone else.”

“I’m going to reach for my Red Hat and say that I don’t like how this meeting is being conducted.”

See how now I don’t have to point out specific examples who could lead to debating whether they are accurate or not? I can simply state what I feel.

At first, the hat feels artificial. Should we really “put on our hats” all the time just to voice a feeling?

But artificiality is its key strength: Switch in and out of the emotion mode

• Usually, emotions can take a while to build up and to simmer down. Offense is taken, and offense is given.
• Can reduce the amount of bickering. If you have to put on the red hat every time something mildly insults you, you might stop bothering to respond and thus keep the unproductive back-and-forth to a minimum.
• By creating a formal channel for feelings and emotion, there is no longer a need to intrude at every point.

Simply ask for feelings

Another significant benefit is that you no more need to guess the feelings of others. Simply ask them directly.

“I suspect you don’t like me. Is it true? I want a Red Hat answer.”

“Can we just have one overall Red Hat view from you on this subject Michael?

Reframe

A powerful way to use the Red Hat is to let people access their feelings with new points of view.

“Don’t look at like a defeat, but an expensive way to learn an important lesson.”

“If this proposal were to come from your side, would it be agreeable to you?”

“There is a feeling that everything is outside of our control. Let’s imagine for a while that this isn’t so and that we can very well influence the situation.”

Bring to awareness

It’s also really good to voice and acknowledge critical circumstances.

“Let’s be aware of the anger in the background that is present.”

“The restriction on your ability to work with competitive companies is a sensitive point. Let’s leave that aside for now and come back to it later.”

Negotiate

Declare what is important to you for emotional reasons.

“It’s critical to us that we can have a say in product development.”

“We must insist that those procedures are followed. That’s very important for safety.”

Things have a different value for different people. These things can be expressed directly under a Red Hat.

“What is most important to you in this deal Jonas?”

“The ability for our team to set their own vacation times is critical.”

Only by expressing those items can we maximize the outcome of negotiations by expanding the pie.

Summary of Red Hat

• With the Red Hat, you’re allowed to say “This is how I feel about the matter.”
• Acknowledging feelings as feelings is better than keeping them as supposed logic.
• The Red Hat allows people to switch on & off the feeling mode.
• Within the Red Hat, you don’t have to justify anything.
• It allows you to ask other people how they feel.
• Can be used both to cover strong emotions such as fear and jealousy but also to cover more subtle hunches and intuitions.

Your Turn

Training

• When can you apply the Red Hat next?
• What difficult decision do you have to make soon? Can you lay out what you see under the Red Hat?
• What is your Red Hat thinking about this article? Let me know in the comments below!

Next Steps

Next time we’ll dig into the Black Hat!

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Overview of the Six Thinking Hats

Flavio Rump is an entrepreneur and investor. He shares decision-making models from the world’s best decision makers. You can read his articles, watch his YouTube Videos or join his free newsletter to learn how to make better decisions.