What is
it about the “thinking outside the box” people?
Like a
lot of business managers, I have been to many meetings and conferences, and
been in conversation with colleagues and bosses about life, the universe,
everything and all the bs in between. More often than not, someone
will say eventually: “It’s not rocket science” or “let’s think
outside the box”. It is the latter expression that intrigues
me.
Who
owned the first box and who was the first thinker outside of it? What was in
the box before it was an empty box that we could climb into, get a mental block
and then get out of it to think things through? When was the
decision made to get in and out of a box as a process of contemplation? What
happened to the original thinker’s box? When did thinking inside the
box become such an untrendy thing to do? We hear this “outside the
box” stuff so often that is has become pretty meaningless, rather like that
rocket science blah. If we all thought outside the box, some guru
would start to encourage us to do the opposite.
We never
seem to elaborate on the “think tank” idea by suggesting that people should
think outside of the tank, do we? If we had our thinking cap on, no
one suggests we think with the cap off. The inventor of exterior box
thinking thought he was onto something and I wonder if he ever considered
thinking about his invention inside or outside of another receptacle altogether
– a bin, a carton, a crate, a chest, a basket, a hamper, a cauldron, etc, etc.
To take
it to extremes, what about a tropical fish thinking outside the aquarium, or a
dog thinking outside the kennel, or a bird thinking outside the nest, or an
undertaker thinking outside the coffin or a window cleaner thinking outside the
bucket? Okay, I’ll stop this nonsense.
Let’s
get rid of the box and just, er, think inside our heads!
