Challenge 7: Is out of the box thinking a value within your company?
Diagnosis
Thinking outside the box means thinking about something in a way that is new and different. To envision something beyond what is considered usual, traditional, and conventional.
Creativity and innovation are thriving when thinking outside the box is a value in a professional environment. In a company, this leads to increased efficacy and productivity, finding better solutions to both everyday problems as well as difficult challenges, more effective communication between employees and between employees and other stakeholders, better adaptation to the market requirements and competitive advantages to stand out of the competition on a long-term basis.
The less you, as a leader, encourage thinking outside the box value within your company, the less your employees will generate new creative ideas, you will find a more effective and efficient solution to your problems, your employees will participate in developing more innovative products and services, you will pay attention to market opportunities and be prepared to face competition.
To try to understand the importance of fostering out of the box thinking, please analyse the aspects presented in the table below.
Positive aspects | Negative aspects |
|---|---|
Do you organize brainstorming meetings with your employees when getting stuck and looking for different approaches? Are you open to receive unrealistic proposals in your quest for a few really awesome ideas? | You do not consider that brainstorming is a good way of finding solutions or generate ideas. There will be plenty of useless ideas and a lot of time spent with possible no outcome. |
When you have a big challenge in your company like increasing sales, for example, what do you do to take out the pressure? Do you start splitting it in more specific detailed parts and try to brainstorm from bottom to top addressing each part differently to avoid getting lost in the big picture? | When you have a big challenge, and the pressure is huge on your shoulders, organizing brainstorms within your company do not seams the best thing to do. You take the decision at hand and communicate it to the managers to implement it. |
Do you discuss during meetings with your team about the worst-case scenario? You know that it is a sensitive subject, and everybody fears this happening, but you appreciate boldness and exposure, and this will help you be prepared if this scenario occurs. | You avoid talking openly to your employees about the worst-case scenario because you consider this will take away their motivation on short-term. |
Do you encourage eliminating negativity from your thinking and your employees’? Do you consider that any idea is a good one no matter if it will be used in the end or not? This is the approach you take to avoid limiting yourself and others without even noticing. | You put yourself and your employees a lot of limitation regarding ideas proposal. You ask for realistic ones, feasible, maybe already used, bet neglected for some time. You do not want to lose time sorting out useless ideas. |
Do you encourage your team(s) to study a different industry to see how people outside the current market are working? Do you and your team find useful ideas in different professional areas that could be applied to the current business? | You do not consider that totally different markets have much in common and what applies in one sector can be used in the one you are acting on. It is a waste of time trying to find solutions in another type of economic sector. |
Do you encourage your employees to constantly learn something new? Do you facilitate for them the access to learning a music instrument or a new language? You are aware that this will help their creativity and openness to new contexts. | You do not consider that organizing lessons outside the professional field of the business for your employees is really your responsibility. you do not think that this will have a significant impact on the company development. |
Are you aware that the out of the box idea that you finally chose after several brainstorms may not be the best choice for your company? This is part of the worst-case scenario you have already taken into consideration, and this is why you are ok with the possibility of failure and starting again from scratch. | You are extremely stressed when an idea is not offering you the expected results. You do not embrace failure and consider that starting again from scratch is a waste of time and resources. |
1. Fill in the table with your initial assessment regarding each aspect and the way it is reflected in your company.
2. Take between 2 and 4 weeks to intentionally observe the way you behave to new ideas coming from you or your employees, the way you encourage or not creative thinking, react to worst-case scenarios approaching and embrace failure.
3. Go around the departments and try to find out their’ opinion on out of the box thinking, failure, frustration and getting started from scratches, their negativity towards generating new ideas.
4. At the end of the selected period, organize a meeting with all employees and discuss about creativity, boldness, courage in expressing new concepts, trying, and failing, starting again maybe sometimes for several times. Identify and start implementing actions that will encourage creative thinking in your company.
Actions for implementation
If you observe that negative aspects are common in your company, while positive aspects are barely present, you must take seriously implementing a different approach on creative thinking and out of the box ideas.
Your objective should be to learn yourself and teach your employees how to overcome the difficulties of thinking outside the box. People like habits and acting according to new creative ideas will imply leaving the comfort zone. Also, a lot of risk may be associated with adopting out of the box ideas and this is not too popular among managers and leaders, mostly because of the cultural background. Last, but not least, out of the box thinking requires the ability to challenge own beliefs and conventional procedures you have always followed.
Actions to be implemented to reach your goal can include starting with a series of intentional steps that anyone can take to solve problems:
- Form a group of people from your company with diverse backgrounds and experience areas. This will help you have a broad approach on the subject from different perspectives.
- Set a meeting with the group members, either face-to-face or online, and organize recording the entire meeting so that no idea to get overlooked.
- Select a problem that you want to solve and give it a full context. Discuss with your team and brainstorm reasons why you need to solve it. Select the ideas that will best help you during future discussions.
- Translate the chosen problem into a series of How Might We questions, e.g., ‘children’ clothes sales from local producers went down because of Chinese, cheaper ones - How might we enhance the experience of purchasing children’ clothes again from local producers?’ Select the questions that might give a broader opportunity for discussion.
- Encourage group members to do a solo brainstorming on the chosen options without interfering with the rest of the group so that the number of ideas to not be affected.
- Each team member will present their own ideas and receive feedback from the other team members. Add any adjustments necessary at this point.
- Remember the original problem and challenge statements. Analyse again all options, this time in small details, and select the best possible option as a group. Set together the action plan and next steps for your team.