Thinking Outside
the Box
By
Deborah Gill-Hesselgrave
The phrase
think outside the box is an allusion to a puzzle that was popular
among management consultants during the 1970s and 1980s.
To solve the puzzle, you must connect each of the nine dots shown here
using only four lines and without lifting your pencil from the paper.
The only way to solve this puzzle in the prescribed manner is to extend the lines beyond the perceived edges of the "box" formed by the nine dots.
This exercise was used to demonstrate how unwarranted assumptions—like the belief that the four lines must remain within the confines of the grid—can result in your failing to see the best solution (or the only solution) to a problem.
As this phrase has become cliché, it has come to stand as an exhortation to innovate, "Come on, team, let's think outside the box!"
Considering that we've all heard this expression before and have perhaps even used it ourselves to urge our teams to come up with something new, how many of us understand what is actually required to think outside the box?
Methods for Thinking Outside the Box (1)
Howard Eisner
(2), a professor of engineering management at The George Washington University,
developed 10 practices designed to release you from the constraints of
your current thinking and to serve as springboards to help you expand
your problem-solving skills.
1. Generalize and broaden your thinking. An example of this first
practice is the story of the railroad company that, as part of their strategic
planning, confirmed that they were in the "railroading" business.
Some years later, they were almost bankrupt. Had they generalized and
broadened their strategic view of their business by redefining themselves
as being in the "transportation" business, they may have avoided
their fate.
When you generalize and broaden your outlook, you expand your vistas. In the case of this "railroading" company, recasting themselves as a "transportation" company could have opened up their thinking to include new market opportunities (for example, marine or air transportation).
By generalizing and broadening your thinking you can begin to leave your current ways of thinking simply by expanding on them.
2. Cross over to new applications. Here you look for solutions developed in one domain and apply them to another domain. An example is the push over the last decade by the Department of Defense (DoD) to accept commercial practices and off-the-shelf systems as part of their arsenals and infrastructure. By crossing over to solutions that work in other disciplines, the DoD now has a cost-effective model for doing business, even though it took a while for it to truly be accepted and embraced.
3. Question conventional wisdom. This approach often deals with simply challenging statements like "we can't do that" and "that's not the way we do it around here" with "why not?" These statements, bounded by cultural negativity, often echo up and down the halls of business and government.
The next time you hear statements like these ask, "Why?" and persist until you get a specific answer.
4. Think laterally. Edward de Bono is credited with identifying lateral thinking as a method that results in developing novel solutions to given problems. According to de Bono, there are four factors critical to lateral thinking:
- recognizing the dominant ideas that polarize the different perceptions of the problem
- searching for different ways to look at the situation
- relaxing the rigid control of thinking
- using chance to encourage other ideas
By applying the factors of lateral thinking to your own problem-solving situations, you can move your thinking well outside its current box to create new and unique solutions.
5. Think systematically. This approach is an integral part of systems engineering. Through this practice, you force yourself to expand the dimensions of all possible solutions through the systematic consideration of alternatives.
Consider the power of employing the highly creative method of lateral thinking with a systematic model of evaluating the options you develop. By leveraging these right-brain/left-brain best practices, you will generate novel alternatives that you can then trace systematically to their roots.
This practice allows you to iterate on each possible answer and to test each solution systematically.
6. Remove constraints. When you're faced with a sticky problem, try identifying the constraints and then removing them one at a time. You might find that some constraints are unnecessary or artificial and are forcing the rejection of possible solutions.
7. Consider your opposite personality type. If you are a highly intuitive person, you will tend to come at an issue differently from your personality opposite—someone who is a highly sensing type. This suggests that one way to break out of your current box is for you to explore solutions with someone with an opposite personality profile, whether that is an employee, your boss, or even your spouse.
8. Analyze backwards. This approach begins with your imagining a valid answer and then working backward to see what steps are needed to get you to that answer. This method helps to prevent you from diverging away from the goal, which can happen when you move from the known input towards an unarticulated output.
Instead, articulate the desired output, or solution, and reverse your way through the process to arrive at the problem statement. If you can get from the output to the input, you can generate a solution.
9. Use only the back of the envelope. This refers to sketching your thoughts and solutions in a limited space. This technique forces you to puzzle your way through very complicated problems while following the k.i.s.s. [keep it simple] principle.
This practice is an excellent method for helping you to develop a clearer understanding of the most significant factors related to the issues at hand.
10. Practice obversity. This peculiar word actually is the counterpart of an affirmative proposition. In an affirmative proposition, one states that "All A is B." For example: All spaniels are dogs. The obverse of that is, "No A is not B," or no spaniel is not a dog.
In his role at The George Washington University, Eisner has experimented with the technique of using obversity to initiate out-of-the-box thinking by distributing a list of "Two Dozen Ways to Move Inexorably in the Direction of Failure" and then exploring the various reactions of his audience.
He reports
that people pay more attention to the "failure" list than
they do to a complementary list that tells them how to succeed. By turning
popular wisdom upside down and accepted conventions inside out, you are
more likely to start thinking outside of the box.
Obstacles to Thinking Outside the Box
When you embark on the journey of moving your thinking outside the box, you need to be aware of how likely your team—from your boss to your staff to your peers in other departments—will take to your efforts at innovation.
Pareto's 80-20 Rule—You'll Be on Your Own 20 Percent of the Time
When your boss is encouraging you to think outside the box, consider whether she is open to the results that might flow from such thinking.
If you are thinking outside the box, it's likely that at least the Pareto 80-20 rule is working. That is, it's probable that no more than about 20 percent of your colleagues (and probably considerably less than that) are able to think outside the box. On an 80-20 basis, 80 percent of your teammates, from senior management to the rank-and-file implementers, will likely not find your ideas interesting or workable. This means that most of the time you'll have more detractors than supporters.
If such is the case, then you'll have to learn how to be patient, explaining more than once how you got to your result and why it's the right answer. (This is where method 5, "Thinking systematically," comes in handy.) Even though this represents an additional burden for you to deal with, it's worth the effort if you value innovation and creativity.
When Mental Models Get in the Way
Other obstacles to being successful at thinking outside the box come from aspects of an arcane subject known as psychological decision theory. Two such features are fixed mental models and loss (or risk) avoidance.
The first says that many folks stick with prior mental models, even if current data suggests a different situation. If your boss holds tightly to her fixed mental models, your new facts may not be able to penetrate her established prejudice.
Similarly, if your boss perceives your solution to have even a minor amount of risk, even if the potential rewards are very substantial, she may be so wed to loss avoidance that, again, she won't be able to accept your solution as valid.
An early
exercise to prepare you for the rigors of thinking outside the box is
for you to explore your reactions to the following conventional wisdoms:
Once you have acknowledged that your thinking is inside the box and you have made the commitment to think outside it, you will be ready to challenge existing assumptions—yours and your organization's. That's when you can begin to inspect alternatives from a variety of perspectives.
As you practice and gain success with some of the principles I've outlined here, you will begin to expand your box, and you will eventually cross the boundaries of the box—just as you saw in the solution to the nine-dot puzzle.
Now come on, team, let's think outside the box! The benefit to you and to your organization will be increased creativity and innovation.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks go to Mark Hall, principal and lead user experience architect with Hallmark Consulting, for his support reviewing and editing an early version of this article.
(1) Used
with permission from American City Business Journals Inc. and Washington
Business Journal. Copyright 1999 and 2000. American City Business Journals
Inc. and Washington Business Journal.
(2) Howard Eisner, professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
at The George Washington University, has served as president of two high-tech
companies. His column appears in each technology special report.
Copyright 2003, Deborah Gill-Hesselgrave. All rights reserved.
