Thinking Out of the Box for Leaders
You know the saying:
Think outside the box.
I recently learned where it came from in the book, ‘The Last Word on Power,’ by Tracy Goss. I’m now committed to looking outside the box as a practice to reach my highest potential.
When we take things at face value, with assumptions and with all of our past experiences as a guide, we limit our potential. We see things as they are, and make decisions from there.
High-achievers want to think out of the box, but are you?
Thinking out of the box has come to mean that you’ve moved from conventional thinking to non-conventional thinking with the hope that doing so will produce a new result.
The nine-dot creativity puzzle demonstrates this. To start, take out a clean sheet of paper and make three dots across and three dots down in a square as done below.
To solve the problem, you need to join all nine dots by drawing no more than four straight lines. The straight lines must be continuous. That means not lifting your pen from the paper once you start drawing.
PLEASE DON’T READ BELOW UNTIL YOU’VE GIVEN IT A TRY.
If you’re like most people, including me, you tried to solve the problem keeping your lines within the structure of the box created by the dots. Following the instructions as written.
Our natural tendency is to stay inside the framework of the nine dots. Seeing the box as the limit. Following the rules.
When I did this with a client, after several failed tries, he said, do we have to stay in the box?
Ahhhhh, and there it is.
There is no requirement in the instructions to stay in the box.
When you allow your brain to go outside of the 9-dot box to find a new solution, a new approach and new access, you’ve taken what felt impossible and made it possible.
When you break through the box by drawing beyond the dots, you experience an unwritten rule.
Now it seems obvious. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it
When you take things at face value, with assumptions, with all of your past experiences as a guide, you limit your potential. You follow the rules as they are written, and in doing so you limit possibility.
What rules are you following right now that make zero sense? What expectations are you following that no longer serve you or your business?
Our minds are wired to resist and to stay in the box, to say no or that’s now how it’s done.
You've heard creating your future from past experiences will get you more of the same results. That's in the box thinking.
If you don’t allow yourself to imagine what’s possible, you don't allow yourself to come up with breakthrough ideas that will truly transform you or your business.
To imagine new possibilities, you must let go of limiting mental models and habits you’ve become accustomed to. Habits which may have served you successfully up until this point, but have now become limiting.
Start thinking like a challenger to your default thinking. Challengers are open and curious.
Challengers look for the unlikely new angles.
Challengers look to write a new set of rules.
Drawing outside the lines begins with thinking differently with an open mind to uncovering and discovering the answers to the question:
What if?
To get you to, why not? And then to, I must!
Management guru Peter Drucker said, “the best way to predict the future is to create it’. Outside the box is where to begin.
What Clients Are Saying:
"Christina did a great job helping me surface both the vision for my life/career and also what I am most passionate about. She did not approach the work with a set agenda or outcome, but instead listened and helped me clarify my own feelings and needs surrounding work. She also challenged me to be a better self-advocate."
