Boxes of Thinking

For years creative thinking in the workplace have talked about Out-of-the-Box Thinking. I have stressed the easiest way for people to be creative was to think out-of-the-box, to break their paradigms or mindsets and their ways of thinking. I think the damage thinking can produce and stressed the counteractive effects upon the total organization and its more global goals and mission. Many people have their problems center on the debris, anger, frustration they leave in their wake when they do tear done or damage boxes.

Jumping out of a box or tearing it down eliminates many possibilities of ideas and solutions that can come from staying in-the-box. If we stay in our box we can examine what has worked?, what hasnt worked?, what might work if we only....?, how can we capitalize on what is working while still changing or improving it? By forcing ourselves to leave our box we cut ourselves from the confusing thing or not-thoroughly communicated or experienced existing knowledge within our existing box.

By using new box thinking instead of out-of-the-box thinking we provide ourselves with controllable and measurable limits or useful restraints. New Box Thinking is a controlled form of out-of-the-box thinking. The best analogy is one that Edward de Bono has used often to describe the difference between vertical thinking (box) and lateral thinking (out-of-the-box, actually new box). He has written that vertical thinking is comparable to digging the same hole deeper to find the treasure and horizontal or lateral thinking is digging new holes in many locations (new boxes). Out-of-the-box thinking would go beyond simply digging new holes it might involve looking in the air, under the sea or using other tools or methods beyond simply a shovel As Abraham Maslow has told us, If you see your only tool as a hammer (shovel), then you will see all your problems as nails (holes to be dug).

Other-Box Thinking involves leaving yours and entering someone else once again. An example might be for the creative department to send people to work in the finance, purchasing, shipping, manufacturing departments to learn what the grass on the other side of the fence is really like in the other boxes.

No-Box Thinking might mean complete open thinking with no limits or Virtual/Transparent-Box Thinking. No-Box thinking challenges the greatest majority of people because of the tremendously potential risks involved. Anything can wrong at any time. There is no box to provide any protection. No fortress or castle walls. Yet if people are encouraged to use out-of-the-box thinking as part of their job, a small percentage at first expanding as they are ready.