Getting out of the Box

A friend of mine once told elementary school students that we all need to think outside the box! One child responded by saying; “What Box?” We are not born in a box. In our early years we are unlimited in our thinking. We saw connections where adults failed to see them. Sometimes we saw connections that really did not exist. In those times, adults made sure we knew the error of our thinking. By repeatedly pointing out how our logic was flawed, adults created the boxes that now constrain us. Because of how painful those experiences were, we have grown to become quite comfortable in our boxes. The problem is, however, as Einstein is reported to have said; “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Thinking differently requires getting out of the box.

Coming up with out of the box ideas requires organizations to create space for thinking differently. To do this is quite simple but, once again, it is a task that can be very hard to accomplish. We are trained to get things to fit into neat little boxes. It creates efficiency and organizations everywhere are always looking for more efficiency. But efficiency without effectiveness is useless. Maximizing both efficiency and effectiveness can often require us to look at our world differently and this means getting outside of our boxes. The simplicity of encouraging outside the box thinking lies in providing incentives for doing so and eliminating all reprisals for failures that result from out of the box efforts. Although the idea is quite simple, the implementation of the idea is quite complex. Not all people will respond to the same incentives so a variety of incentives may be required and this creates the potential for inequities in how our team members are treated. Plus, allowing people to fail, over and over, we run the risk of severely reducing productivity. So it’s a simple idea that is very difficult to implement. So how do we safely and smoothly get outside our the box?

My recommendation is to establish an “I got an idea” program in your organization. With this program, any organization member who get’s an idea about how things might be improved by doing something different, is encouraged, through incentives and assurances of safety, to bring that idea to an “I got an idea” meeting. In that meeting, the innovator would share the idea with a team of people whose job it will be to pick it apart, not to demonstrate that it won’t work, but to figure out how to make it work. If the team cannot, in a reasonable time, figure out how to make the idea work, the idea gets placed on the idea shelf and is revisited from time to time to figure out if it can work. The cornerstone of the program must be trust. Your people must have a level of trust that allows them to be vulnerable with the full belief that they will not be taken advantage of and that they will benefit from being an innovator. The incentives used should relate to what motivates the people who bring the idea to the meeting. The incentives should not be standardized. They should be as out of the box as the system you are creating. Resist the temptation of using material rewards as the only means of incentivizing this creative work. If money or material gain is the only reward, you will miss those who are more motivated by aesthetics, altruism, knowledge, independence, order and structure, or opportunities for leadership. If you can, establish a specific location to be the “Innovation Center.” It can be a room or just a space where innovators can go to hold out of the box conversations.

How these systems work is as different as are the companies that use them. Companies like Google, Zappos, and Southwest Airlines are known for their creative cultures but there are dozens more that are not so well known, but are equally invested in finding the creative gems hiding in the ranks of their team members. I would encourage any leader to investigate what these more unheard of companies are doing. As I researched these companies for this blog post, I was overwhelmed by the number of companies that are truly innovators. Some may not be the largest organizations but some were huge. Check out what New York Life is doing or Signify (previously known as Phillips Lighting) or even AT & T! If there are so many innovative companies out there, why are so many others still entrenched in their boxes. Even more critical is the question, why are so many schools still stuck in boxes that are so old? It’s a wonder that they haven’t disintegrated into dust.