In the 1990s I worked for a director who had seemed to have made a personal discovery of the relationship between boxes and thinking. Every monthly meeting he would find some pretext to tell us about at least two examples of thinking outside the box. The inside the box thinkers, including myself, then spent a harrowing three or four weeks trying to come up with some credible out of the box thinking that would come to his attention and be praised at the next meeting. As you have guessed, we were never too sure how far outside the box we could venture without being seen as foolish. Fortunately all mention of boxes at meetings disappeared within a year and a half and we no longer had to worry about whether we were thinking in or out of them. This was a trendy business idea that had made more than a few management gurus and motivational speakers a lot of money, but it could not sustain the test of time beyond a couple of years. So, I was really surprised when I heard it again on the radio.
As it happened, I was driving from the Metro station to my home this week listening to a careers program, where the theme was about making it big in business. A fellow from the electrical goods industry was telling how he came to the city with empty pockets and became a millionaire a year later. Of course, we understood that he had to mention at least five times about how he succeeded because of his great passion for what he was doing, selling toasters and coffee-makers. We also half-expected him to tell us that he had only been able to do this because he had such talented staff, and on this he didn't disappoint us. However, he then just went too far when he stated, in his own words, that all of his success was due to thinking out of the box. Unable to hold back any longer, I was forced to wind down my window and evacuate the contents of my lunch box. There's nothing worse than doing anything inside or outside a box.
