Creativity
“Thinking
Out of the Box”
by Jun Salipsip
We were having a business problem and a meeting was set up to
come up with a creative solution. Our
boss said, “Think out of the box.” As
soon as he said that, I recalled an exercise we went through in one of our creativity
and innovation training programs.
One exercise in the workshop was this paper with nine
dots arranged in a set of three rows that was handed to us. The facilitator said, “Draw four straight
lines which go through all of the dots without taking your pencil off the paper.”
I thought it was cinch. I said, “This is easy… four straight lines
only.”
But now when I think back on how I
tried to solve the puzzle I remember the difficulty I had. At the beginning I
tried thinking how the lines should be drawn but it did not take me long to see
that one dot remained unconnected. The other alternatives that I came up with
did not also work. I concluded that it
couldn’t be done with only four lines but five lines.
I tried the “trial and error”
method by drawing the lines with the pencil that was given to us, and I came up
with more lines than four. I tried many more times but I only succeeded in
reducing the size of the eraser on the pencil because I had to keep erasing the
lines I had previously drawn.
After a few minutes, my initial
conclusion became a little bit more established. There must be five or more lines to include
all the dots. I expected no less.
But as you will know later, I
couldn’t be further from the truth. The
solution as you must have already known is related to what our boss said,
“Think out of the box.”
When the facilitator revealed the
solution to the puzzle, there was a lot of astonishment and complaint, “You did
not tell us we could get out of the box.”
And the reply of the facilitator
was, “But I didn’t tell you that you could not go out of the box.”
The comment of the facilitator was
met with a lot groaning and complaining about the lack of fairness. Above the din, the facilitator said that we
were having difficulty solving the problem creatively by thinking inside the
box. He said that our box is our
assumptions created by our traditions, culture, values, beliefs, education and
the rules that we live by day by day. It
is the filter by which we interpret or perceive reality.
The facilitator said, “When we are
working on a problem, we need to look at it in more detail rather than jumping
into conclusion.”
Then he presented a picture on the
screen and asked us what we see. The
answers were mixed. Some said that they see
an old lady; another group said it’s a young lady; and a few said that they see
both the old and young lady. To some of
us who only saw one image it was frustrating, to say the least. We couldn’t figure out where or how the other
figure could be seen. We tried looking
at the image with half closed eyes, and then with one eye covered with the hope
that a blurred view would somehow miraculously force the unseen image to
appear.
The facilitator smiled and asked
us to do the opposite. He said that by
looking at the details of the picture, like looking at the black dot in the
middle of the image and the dark line below it, causes the image of the old
woman to come out. And by paying attention on the small curved line in the
middle of the image on the left hand side and the feather coming out of the dark
hair on the upper left-hand side, the young lady emerges. When he pointed
out those details it was amazing how it became easier to see both images.
He said that for us to find
creative solution we must define and understand the real problem by getting
more details about the situation. He
said that we must spend more time analyzing the details of the situation and by
being more thorough before arriving at the real problem.
Next, he flashed a sign on the
screen and asked, “What do the sign say?”
Practically everyone read it as
“Paris in the spring.” The facilitator
asked us to read again, and we repeated, “Paris in the spring.” He asked us to read again several times and
we read it the same way. The facilitator
asked if we were sure of what we read and most of our responses were positive.
He said there are 2
"THE" in the sentence. He said
most people are blind to this and
automatically filter out one of the "THEs" and read it out loud as
"Paris in the spring" He said
that our brains twist or bend information to fit our experience or what we
know. If something is missing or odd, the
brain compensates for it. He cautioned
us to look more closely, to ask more questions to find out what the real situation
is. He said that when we talk to people
we need to actively listen and observe more carefully for the verbal and
nonverbal cues that we get.
Most of us were surprised why we
did not see the double “THE”.
The workshop facilitator said that
our biases may lead us to only see what we want to see and to hear only what we
want to hear thereby preventing us from really coming up with a creative
solution. He said it is always good to
seek and be open to differing or opposing opinions.
Finally, we were presented with another
figure that has an unexpected configuration (see figure below) and were asked,
“How would you feel if your expectations were not met? For example, at the beginning you probably thought
there are more lines than four… how did you feel when I showed you that you
really only need four lines?”
Many of the participants repeated
what they said earlier, “We felt it was unfair because you did not tell us we
could get out of the box. We had
difficulty accepting the result.”
The facilitator said those
feelings are understandable because of the risk of being wrong or being laughed
at if perchance getting out of the box is not allowed. To a structured mind, everything must be
clear to minimize risk. But we know that
in today’s world change creates more complexity thereby increasing ambiguity. To succeed in today’s world, one must learn
how to deal with ambiguity.
Asking questions could have
clarified the ambiguity of the situation.
But one would need to know what questions to ask to get the information
one needs to solve the puzzle. As
information becomes available, i.e. that one is allowed to get out of the box, one
should begin to anticipate or expect the possibility of different outcomes.
He concluded by saying that
getting out of the box is done by becoming more familiar with the details of
the problem, by questioning our assumptions to find out what is allowed and
what is not allowed and by dealing with ambiguity.
In spite of what the facilitator
said, I thought that getting out of the box is easier said than done. I am the box.
How do I get out of myself? How can I take the same information that everyone else has and look at it
differently, often finding a better way to solve problems and make any business
more efficient and profitable?
Over time, I took what the
facilitator said to mean as practicing to open our boxes more often so that new
ideas could come in and interact with other ideas already inside our boxes. As a result I became less judgmental so that
new ideas could be understood and accepted.
I began to have more patience and spent more time in trying to
understand different points of view and in gaining the same perspective that
others have so that it was easier to accept new ideas. I became more aware of my own prejudices thereby
allowing me not to always insist on being right all the time.
“Think out of the box,” said our
boss again.
The reminder jolted me back to the
meeting we were having. The discussions
had already started in earnest and as you may have already expected, there were
multiple solutions that came up constituting breaks with traditions, exploitation
of loopholes, and flouting of conventions.
It reminded me of what Thomas A. Edison
once said, “There are no rules here… we are trying to accomplish something.”
