Ritual Dissent and Black Hat Sessions

These are techniques for difficult conversations.  First and most important is to create safety.  By ritualizing the activity and asking people to be more brutal than they can be, we remove filters by the reviewers.  The recipients do not get damaged because they know reviewers are being told they cannot be mean enough.  We remove the straight line to the heart.  

Ritual Dissent (http://cognitive-edge.com/methods/ritual-dissent/) is best for improving plans

For beating up an idea, I use "Black Hat Sessions" which is modified from six hats (http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php).  I learned this from a San Francisco based design firm.  They were not getting satisfactory feedback from clients, so they would enter into a Black Hat session to rip their own designs to shreds.  Story I remember is then they would go have drinks...