Think Outside the Box

Every time I hear this phrase, I roll my eyes. Its usually said by someone who is leading a brainstorming meeting, and they seem to think that it will cause everyone to "be creative" in their thinking. The reality is the leader of the group probably has a preconceived idea of the outcome of the meeting but wants attendees to feel they have "buy-in."

Think Outside the Box started as a puzzle first published in 1914 – the Nine Dot Puzzle. You are presented with nine dots set up in a 3x3 square formation. 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 – i.e., you must not lift your pen from the paper once you start drawing. Most people assume you must stay within the confines of the square. But to solve the puzzle, you must draw lines that extend beyond the dots – thus the phrase Thinking Outside the Box. (A quick note - the solution I show is not the traditional one - but hey, I think outside the box!)

Business management types adopted the phrase in the 1970s and 1980s. It became their go-to (another overused phrase) statement for “let’s get a little crazy,” or “before we go right back to the thing we normally do, let’s pretend to brainstorm” (another one.)

It’s become one of the squares on the Business Jargon Bingo card that many of us play while listening to some expert drone on during a meeting, especially if it is online and the speaker can’t see what you’re doing. (I bet you can figure out some of the other squares – “Low hanging fruit," “give 110%”, “drink the kool-aid," and a personal favorite of mine – “bio break.”)

Full disclosure: I will admit to using go-to and brainstorm as I think they convey actual activities that can produce results. Sometimes the go-to tried-and-true action is precisely right. The go-to person is the one who has the experience needed to move an idea along. I see nothing wrong with using history and established expertise as a means to an end. Brainstorming? When done to challenge the norm or use a collective mind to encourage creativity, the results can be amazing and the process fun! Start with a blank piece of paper and watch the ideas flow!

But Think Outside the Box?

First of all, what box? Is it a cardboard box? Is it sealed up tightly? Or has the top (after determining which side is up) been pulled open to expose what is inside? Who sent it? How did it get here? Is it full of packaging peanuts hiding the actual package buried deep in the bottom corner?

Use any analogy you like – but the box we are supposed to think outside of was put together by someone and sealed tight. So, if we open it up, dump out the packaging material, then open the box inside the box – what have we accomplished? Do we save the box? Or break it down for recycling? If we destroy it, does that mean we can never use it again?

So many questions…but they are all about the box, when what we’re really after is what is in it. (Admit it, you used to dump almost the entire box of CrackerJacks to get at the prize inside, didn't you?)

Businesses love boxes. Organizational charts are full of them with lines to keep us on the right path. Gannt charts show blocks of time chronicling a project’s progress. (I’m more of a Venn diagram person – much more wiggle room.) Blank Excel spreadsheet boxes just beg for you to fill them in. And look at the cubicle farms that fill offices. There, being outside the box is known as prairie-dogging. (You know when everyone pops their head up above the dividers to see what is going on.) Heck, even a corner office is a box of sorts, just with a better view.

Some will argue that having those boxes is necessary. Its how things work. We have to make sure we “check all the boxes” to move forward. Standards processes make it easier to determine success or failure. And that is where the thinking outside the box theory falls apart. Either you're in the box, or you're not. If you step outside the box and play "what if" games and then just return to the safety of the "what I know "area, forgetting all the (possible) good ideas that came out of those “ifs” and nothing changes - what’s the point?

Real innovation assumes there is no box, and maybe there never will be. (I know, heresy!)

Take what is happening in education right now in response to COVID 19. I teach at a local university (adjunct in the Business Department.) My schedule was Tuesdays and Thursdays – an advertising class from 2-3:15, followed by a Digital and Social Media Marketing class from 3:30-4:45. There were assigned classrooms, syllabi to develop, achievements to be measured. All the usual boxes of education. Then everything changed.

Suddenly there were no regularly scheduled blocks of time or places to be. No more whiteboards to write on or an ability to walk around the room to change perspectives and engage the folks in the back. Uh oh. What do we do now? How? The answer was to move online– on Zoom - aka the Brady Bunch on steroids.

Online learning isn't new, but changing in-class teaching to a completely different format required creativity and commitment. I have a new-found respect for the folks who teach online all the time. There is an art to it, and I still have a long way to go to even come close to mastering it. But here was a chance to rethink everything. Get outside the box.

My chapter notes? I tried to put them in documents to upload online – but I got bogged down. In class, I write a chapter outline of essential notes on the board, but during my lecture, I move from one item to another and back again. I can't do that with a PowerPoint. (And the students will tell you – I hate PowerPoint.) So out the window that went, and instead, I focused on incorporating the significant points in the weekly writing assignments – yup, those could continue – just email it to me. Check!

But the main focus of both classes were term-long group projects. Here I made a discovery. I would have been asking the groups to present in class (on a Tuesday or Thursday) and offering feedback in the same class. Instead, I used new boxes to help me jump out of the old box. I set up Zoom sessions with each of the groups separately. All of a sudden, I was able to discuss very different projects in depth with a small group – much more so than if they had presented in class. In the end, this worked so well I am going to incorporate Zoom project meetings into the syllabus for next year. Why didn’t I think of this before? I was stuck in a box.

Zoom has provided us with new ways to reach out, communicate, and hold meetings. We work out with a trainer on Zoom. Have quarantini's with friends on Zoom. Play online games with friends and family on Zoom. Of course, there’s an irony here - we are using a new idea but are now in onscreen boxes! And those business meetings? We now play Business Jargon Bingo 2.0 – the Zoom version - which includes such categories as "you're on mute," "sorry, you go first,” “is this recording,” “close-ups,” “can everybody see my screen,” “dogs barking in the background,” and a new personal favorite “I have a hard stop at…” I guess some things will never change.

PS. My mother loves to see all our smiling faces at once on Zoom (although we have discovered she can’t always hear us, so we’re getting her some earphones.)  And my all-time favorite Zoom session thus far was for my mother-in-law’s 92nd birthday. My husband and I went to her house, set up the laptop, and then – magic! She could see all of her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids! We lit the cake and sang Happy Birthday. Teddy (our 2-year-old) knows what comes next, blowing out the candles. He could see the cake on the screen and started blowing. My husband blew out the candles in time with Teddy’s puffs.

It was perfect “out of the box” thinking.