Thinking Outside the Box

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." John F. Kennedy, “Remarks at a Dinner Honoring Nobel Prize Winners of the Western Hemisphere,” 29 Apr. 1962. 

High performance requires us to break with conformity, conventional wisdom and the safe, predictable boundaries of pre-existing knowledge, "best practices" and experience. As the speaker in the TED talk explains, about 3 percent of people thinks that way.

Routine, habit, best practices and methodologies, tried and proven models provide "boxes" and rails to facilitate what Nobel Prize Daniel Kahneman calls "system one-thinking" or "thinking fast"

High-level, "system two" -type of "slow" thinking requires also to "think outside the box", in other words, to step outside the boundaries of habit, experience and received, accepted wisdom. 

Models such as Kahneman's and "decoupling" can serve as examples of "thinking out of the box", in other words, escaping existing models.

Think of:

1. Reversing cause and effect ("what if...")
2. Step back (and back again) until you see the whole, the larger framework
3. Ask, listen, set your eyes on the street without a previous purpose
4. Identify steps in the value chain that add value and try to separate them from those who don't. Is there a better way?
5. Think as an end user, try it on, walk it, drive it.
6. Look at analogies, metaphors

Look at this image and tell yourself how many squares you can see here:

There is a fast answer. Write that one down. Try to find more. All those possible. The difference between the fast answer and the last answer is the difference between fast thinking and deep thinking, between thinking inside and outside the box, between standard performance (16?) and high performance (34?).  Majorities tend to fall into "group thinking" and conformity, unless you invite them to think "out of the box". Maybe asking them questions, looking at other people's ideas or points of view, arguing, asking them to show or explain what they see or thinks differently. These are some proven techniques.

In 1895, dramatist Henryck Ibsen wrote a play about this problem "An Enemy of the People" where the main character explains why "the majority is always wrong":

Ibsen's dilemma shows that "thinking outside the box" poses social conflicts: (a) between those who stay with the majority and the standard and those who look beyond and (b) between social conformity and acceptance / encouragement of dissent.

Well before Ibsen, Plato explained this problem with the allegory of the cave, which exposes the process of knowledge as the conflict between thinking inside and outside the "box":

 "Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality. Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the manufactured reality that is the shadows seen by the prisoners. The inmates of this place do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life. The prisoners manage to break their bonds one day, and discover that their reality was not what they thought it was. They discovered the sun, which Plato uses as an analogy for the fire that man cannot see behind. Like the fire that cast light on the walls of the cave, the human condition is forever bound to the impressions that are received through the senses. "

Kahneman's formulation helps focus on forms of thinking that we can (and often have to) use alternatively in order to address different kind of situations.