Imagine yourself in a room, there's a meeting, 8 other people are there and the boss is speaking in monologue, talking about everything from hard facts to gut feelings, taking in points from one or two of the others in the room as he/she sees it fit. Most people sit there and take in whatever is being said, and hence is agreeing to whatever the decisions of that meeting are. Recognize it?

Edward de Bono introduced in 1985, Six Thinking Hats, as a framework of thinking about things. A framework that works in meetings as well as your own thinking. Lets look at the hats.

Six distinct hats are identified:

Questions The White Hat - considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
Emotions The Red Hat - instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification)
Bad points judgement The Black Hat - logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
Good points The Yellow Hat - logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony

- Creativity The Green Hat - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
- Thinking The Blue Hat - thinking about thinking

Using the Thinking Hats in a meeting, has proven itself well worth the time it took to understand and explain them. It allowed me and others to stop the Boss's inconsistent monologue, and say: "Now take on the White Hat" (Hard facts with no prejudice) or "Take on the Red Hat for a minute" and get the gut feeling about the subject from all the people around the table.
Sometimes having too much information can interfere with the accuracy of a judgment, commonly called "Analysis paralysis." The challenge is to sift through and focus on only the most critical information to make a decision. It is a lot easier to give input on a subject, when you are forced to think about it in a certain manner, which the thinking hats facilitates to nicely.