What is “the box?”
April 2nd, 2006
In my last post, I included “think outside the box” as one of the ten phrases I never want to hear again. Of course, I have no illusions that I’ll get my wish anytime soon, so I thought it would be useful to consider what “the box” is so we can begin to demolish it once and for all.
If we assume that the box is three-dimensional, we can infer that there are six sides of wrong-headed belief limiting our perspectives and proscribing our thinking. I’m reasonably confident I have them figured out and I wanted to share them and ask for your reaction:
- Our association’s challenges are unique.
- Our association can control outcomes.
- Our association is immune to change.
- Our association always avoids risk.
- Our association prefers its past to any future.
- Our association is owned by its members.
Taken individually, these beliefs are frustrating obstacles that we try to overcome to let innovation flourish. Collectively, however, they form the de facto strategic principles on which I believe the preponderance of associations operate. In certain associations, some of these beliefs may be explicit but, by and large, I suspect they are mostly tacit and never talked about. Indeed, not only don’t we talk about them, we also are unable to discuss the fact that we don’t or won’t talk about them. They remain undiscussable, as is the very fact that they are undiscussable.
You may look at this list and say to yourself, “I don’t think this way.” Although I’m usually skeptical of such claims, I’m willing to give you the benefit of that doubt. But you are not exempted from digging more deeply into your own thinking to surface how these core assumptions have constrained you, other leaders and your organization. Constraints can often induce greater creativity, but not these constraints. These fundamental assumptions are profoundly insidious, and they are transmitted in very subtle ways that make them hard to defeat. Yet defeat them we must if we’re going to end all of the talk of boxes and getting outside of them. Once these ways of thinking are gone, we’ll always be outside of the box.
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Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Innovation, Associations, Ten Things
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