The First Lesson in Thinking Outside the Box: There is No Box
In the 1999 movie The Matrix, Neo encounters a boy able to bend a spoon with his mind. Neo tries without success. The kid explains, “Do not try to bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth…there is no spoon. Then you’ll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”
We often hear about thinking outside the box. Or we’re told to stay in our lane (a form of box). What are these boxes, who created them, and why do they exist?
Unless you’re doing five to ten in a box for breaking and entering someone else’s box, or you work for Amazon or a moving company, the boxes are typically made up.
Boxes, in a systems context, are largely self-imposed constraints to reduce complexity. They may be designed to delineate ownership, turf, or control. They may also be created to stop or divide us.
We usually don't see these boxes in real life. We connect our computer to the Internet. We attach a keyboard, monitor, and printer. We upload and download with the cloud. We post to social media. While some may draw boxes around these things, we move seamlessly between them. We don’t see any boxes.
A car may be defined as a system with a box drawn around it. Are the people that ride in the car, the stuff we haul, roads, mechanics, repair parts, fuel, taxes, insurance, etc. part of the system? Where does one box end and the other begin?
Some try to put us in a box based on age, income, race, nationality, etc. Does that mean we must conform to the rules they set for the box?
I have a degree in systems and have been schooled in the traditional approach. In nearly every class delineation of the system verses the environment (everything not in the system) was drilled into our heads.
Systems thinking has value (I’m a big believer) and sometimes drawing boxes around things is useful, but the more I work with systems, the more interested I am in behaviors and interactions rather than how someone drew the boxes.
Boxes are limiting. They establish our place. They define what does and doesn’t belong. They say we can’t look over there for answers. They restrict working with others or adopting their ideas.
If you want creativity and innovation, forget about the boxes. Go where things take you. Cross the lines and look for ideas everywhere.
Photo: The Matrix
Boxes are illusive. There are no boxes, so we can't start 'thinking outside the box'. We either think or not. Many thanks!
Think outside the box is possibly the worst way to say it. It means nothing. Yet that is our culture's chosen metaphor for saying it.. So I will give you one that I prefer instead. It's not think outside of the box, it's think of all the other possible explanations that you could make for this object. Then there is no box.
Our education and culture says there is only one answer to every question. Not true, there is never only one answer for every question. There are as many answers as their are perspectives. Think of all the ways the spoon could be something else to someone else in as many different situations as you can and suddenly the spoon begins to contort because it's no longer just a spoon, it is also a million other things.