Outside the box? There is NO box...
Do you remember the scene in The Matrix where Neo is sitting in the waiting room of the Oracle awaiting to find out if he is ‘the one’? In case you don’t, let me attempt to describe it for you.
Neo is in what could be described as an a very ordinary waiting room. A little boy sits on the floor in the lotus position, he resembles a young monk, already enlightened and quite spiritual. He holds a desert spoon in one hand, looks at it and the spoon proceeds to bend it in many ways. His focused stare leads the ausdience to believe this is occurring through the power of his mind. Neo is intrigued and bends down, takes the spoon and sits on the floor with the boy. Neo decides he has to have a crack at this. If he is ‘the one’ this should be a piece of cake. Neo is handed the spoon and he looks at it with wonder as he feels its smooth surfaces.
The boy cuts Neo a break and shares some wisdom with Neo: “Do not try and bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead only try and realise the truth.” “What is the truth” Neo asks confused. “There is no spoon.” the wise young man replies. The simple fact that the writers of ‘The Matrix’ use a boy for this scene should have given Neo a heads up that he was being setup. Nevertheless he proceeds to attempt his inaugural spoon bending. He fails.
Perhaps I should retitle this my blog: “Everything I learnt about innovation I got from The Matrix”. That being said, some of the messages in the movie do fit well with thinking on innovation. It is a science fiction movie and history has shown that science fiction has been a good precursor to many an invention. Now we can also use it to help us think in general and find a way to operate the underutilised potential of our brains.
If you work in any organisation that likes to believe it is trying to grow or has an ambition to be market leader, I am guessing you have been asked to something like ‘we need you to think outside the box/square on this one’.
Although this can often feel like being told “Everything you have come up with in the past isn’t good enough”, what we have found is that when someone asks you this question, it can feel like a box is instantly constructed around your mind. Perhaps for some of you though your response is calmness and serenity, your breath slowing and concentrated and naturally you start plucking ideas from the free air? For most of us, we are more like the former than the latter. The suggestion itself of “thinking outside” defines a state that declares that inside is not good enough. Inside has not delivered. Inside does not hold the answers we need to deliver the x% for the future. It is certainly enough to shut down free thinking and most forms of creativity. It assumes that we don’t normally think in this way and we need to be told when it is appropriate to think at the next level. What some people may feel when challenged in this way is “How can i possibly get my brain to compose something that I have never managed to create before?”
For the last couple of years, we have been coaching people in organisations with a short course of ‘lateral thinking’. This has inspired by some great thinkers including Edward de Bono, Kathryn Schultz, John Cleese, Seth Godin, science fiction, creative advertising and many other out there ideas. All of these thinkers have the capability to think outside their box, based on the concepts and outcomes they have produced and various things they have added to the world. Most of them are also able to describe their process for stretching their mind into the state that enables this type of thinking. It is a conscious process for them. What could seem like magic to us is flicking a switch on at the right time to dig deep on a theme, on instinct and roll with where it takes them. They can describe the environments that best stimulate their creative muscles and produce the disruptive ideas.
From all of what I have understood from these visionaries, I have distilled most of it down into this ‘lateral thinking’ course and somewhere during the first 3 hour session, I blurt out a one line summary: “There is no box”. To some of the participants in the session it can seem like a very abstract concept. Believe in the spirits and the power of mother-earth and all that is intangible. To others it a very simple and elegant message with a potentially powerful undertone. Like Neo in The Matrix, the more we try to bend the spoon or get outside the box the more we are actually making that concept harder to do. We can end up reinforcing the structure of the box. However, if there is no box, then the previously constrained world that I lived in has been transformed into a boundaryless land of opportunity. Perfect. So how do you or I dismantle this box that we spend so much time constructing? How do we cause the solid wall to evaporate? What does it look like to operate like Godin and flick a switch on possibility and deliver new creations into your daily existence?
I believe that you have constraints that actually construct the boxes that obstruct our vision. The more we are aware of these constraints, the better that we understand how they work and what triggers them, the more we can influence their strength, dismantle them or make them translucent.
Understand the experience and knowledge that enables you to deliver value today. When you are aware of these traits you will know when your mind activates these and not allow them to constrain your thinking on what is possible tomorrow. Rather than having to think outside the box, there won’t be a box to worry about.