Thinking outside the box. Will Barratt, Ph.D.

The Box Paradox!

The paradox is this:

What makes you successful today makes it hard for you to be successful tomorrow.
Because things always change.
Guaranteed!

Successful businesses are run by people who are good at incremental change.

Successful businesses hire and retain people who are good at incremental change. People who are different are winnowed from the staff. This makes for a successful and smoothly running organization.

This also makes for a company unable to successfully identify and manage innovative change.

Thriving in a stable world means incremental changes are used to solve incremental problems. Thriving in a changing world means identifying and managing innovative changes, challenging your current practices, your values and your paradigms. But thinking outside your box goes against the grain of a smoothly running organization, causing dissention and stress in work teams. People who think outside your box are hard to manage.

Everything your organization does is designed to solve problems. Are you solving the right problems? Most problems require incremental solutions, but some problems require innovative thinking even to see them as problems.

You don't need to think outside your box!

Some of us are just not incremental. Some of us are more flexible, more innovative, than others. Innovative people are disruptive to your organization, always wanting to try new things, to do different things, and to do things differently. These are the natural 'outside the box' thinkers and are an undervalued resource.

You need to listen to to your innovators

I guarantee that 10 years ago someone in your organization was talking about E-mail, e-learning, e-commerce, and how technology was going to transform your business. Who listens to those people?

Your innovators need to learn to speak incremental

I guarantee that the innovator's proposals for technology were not framed in terms of incremental change. Its as if innovators speak a different dialect.

Box? What Box? What is this Box everyone always talks about?

“The box” is what you believe about the world, the values, and paradigms you use daily. What we believe about the world limits our creativity, our ability to see and solve problems, our thinking and our action. Organizations hire people who share their values and paradigms. Organizations promote people who actively confirm those values and paradigms. This is a time tested business practice, yet this limits the range of solutions these people will find.

Why do you need to listen to innovators who are “outside your box”?

What you are doing is not getting you what you want.
Your results are slipping in spite of your changes.
Your team is moving slowly and the business environment is moving quickly.

Effective management teams need stable people who solve problems by within current practice. In times of rapid change, this tried and true technique will not continue to work; rapid changes require new problem solving strategies.

What does it cost if you listen to innovators who are “think outside your box”?

Stability falters when you move outside your box. People who think in different ways, who are innovative, tend to be disruptive, undisciplined, unruly, and generally difficult to work with in a team environment. And everyone can be trained to play well with others.

Your organization needs long-term stability, and it needs an occasional jolt of innovation.

What does it cost if you don’t listen to innovators who “think outside your box”?

Your competition will. You should take every edge you can to stay in business. Your competition does.

Diversity in perspective will help to re-affirm your basic values while it helps you find new ways to succeed.

People cannot learn to “think outside the box”?

People can learn techniques to solve problems and manage change more effectively. This is a good thing. Train your staff in creativity and problem solving and you will have efficient linear, incremental problem solvers.

True innovative thinking is not paint-by-the-numbers. “Thinking outside the box” is a stable personality trait, and you can’t change personality. You can hire innovative problem solvers to work and consult with you, and you can learn to listen to them, and teach them to speak "incremental".

What we can do for you.

We’re not like most consultants; we don’t confirm what you already believe.

Half, full, or multi-day learning experiences.
- Identify innovators who already work with you and train your team members to work together more effectively.
- Help your management team to identify different and important problems that need to be addressed.
- Help you generate new perspectives on current problems.
- Help you examine and re-affirm your basic values.
Site visits
- We help you create novel and workable solution strategies for management, process, design, evaluation and implementation problems.
- We can help you develop a program to identify and take advantage of innovations as they emerge.
Individual coaching
- We can provide individual learning experiences for managers on how to manage innovators.

About us:

Dr. Barratt has identified many exceptional people who are highly innovative and who are highly successful in a work environment.

Each person has performed successfully in an incremental, stable team-work environment and speaks fluent 'incremental'.

Each person has an advanced graduate degree.

Each person has a proven track record of successfully working and thinking innovatively, successfully generating solution strategies grounded in limited resources.

Each person has experience in international and multicultural settings.

Each person is not like other people.

Where do you find people like this?

Wherever talented people are solving complicated problems requiring innovative solutions.

Our best recommendation is our success working with inside-the-box people.

Contact Dr. Barratt about having his team help you out of your box. will at willbarratt dot com

Excellence with an edge.