Saturday, February 8, 2014

Quote-A-Day: Day 39

It's okay to think inside the box, as long as the box can fit multiple people + can be assembled in multiple ways.

Innovation doesn't necessarily require totally new thinking.  In fact, we don't have to think "outside of the box" to truly innovate.  Rather, we can work with the box we're in and change how we look at things.  Sometimes that accomplishes more than a truly "novel" idea.

The most important piece, though, is that if we are going to work with the box that we've currently got, that we can fit other people inside the box, and that the box doesn't have just one series of steps to put it together.  Multiple brains are always better than one, particularly when it comes to ideation and troubleshooting.  If our box is too small, we'll never get the required sample size necessary to truly develop great ideas.

We also have to be able to assemble our box in a multitude of ways.  A "one-size-fits-all" box never truly does, and we have to enter into brainstorming sessions being open to the fact that the result may not be what we envisioned (or personally hoped for).

And in the end, that just means that leaders and learners have to be open to letting go and allowing the power of the group to influence decision-making.  Otherwise, it doesn't matter whether we're working outside the box or inside it, as all stakeholders will end up feeling claustrophobic.

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