“Inside the Box Thinking”: How to Prevent it?
Just decades ago, DEC, Xerox, and Kodak were household names: companies that had achieved so much success that their products stocked almost every office. For years, the biggest threat to their brand was the risk of being undersold by imitators, but then, all at once, the game changed. What happened to these giants?
DEC, Xerox, and Kodak all fell victim to “Inside the box thinking”: when changing circumstances and innovation on the part of competitors presented a threat to the health of their business, their decision to take a passive role cost them millions of dollars in profits, market potential, and, in the case of DEC and Kodak, existence itself.
Despite being well-established businesses, all three were ultimately undermined by "disruptive technology," a phenomenon examined by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen in his study “The Innovator’s Dilemma." When presented with a new idea, these companies were likely to identify flaws as prohibitive barriers rather than as obstacles to be overcome.
They were distracted by minutiae when they should have been challenging the core idea by asking a vital question: is our job the right one?
As Steve Rivkin points out in his book “Repositioning”, The bigger a company, the harder this line of inquiry becomes. Corporate politics and a strict hierarchy force those in power to execute orders rather than seeking a way to improve the status quo.
A company’s business suffers when its employees are immobilized in a "terror" environment: by challenging what’s already in place, they might risk compromising their career’s longevity. This knowledge intimidates them into silence, causing an immeasurable loss of ideas and opportunities.
3 Keys to prevent the above to happen
1. Creativeship
As ASTD puts it, creativeship is "the creation of sustainable cultures and business models." It doesn't simply satisfy a small team of people, it prepares an entire corporation to meet challenges by using six key principles: purpose, engagement, performance, innovation, tri-branding and global growth. Working with a creativeship leader instills employees with an individual sense of purpose, makes them feel engaged and interested in contributing to the team, and reminds them that good performance is rewarded fairly. As a creativeship leader, you understand that your employee's loyalty to your brand is just as important as customer loyalty (also called Ownership Quotient), and no matter how large or small your company is, you're always thinking about growing globally.
Creativeship halts “Inside the box thinking” by instilling a sense of productivity and company responsibility in every single employee. It also ensures that no matter what hardships the company faces, all employees will be determined to overcome the challenges and assist in the continued growth of the business.
2. Collective Intelligence Thinking
If Creativeship is a great method to drive the overall corporate global interests, then Collective Intelligence Thinking (also known as Bottom-Up Thinking) is the method to manage teams, or groups of employees. “Inside the box thinking” strikes hardest when employees feel as though their voices and opinions don’t matter. However, we all know that sometimes unpleasant decisions need to be made for the good of the entire company. If you simply make the hard choice and explain the logic to everyone after the fact, your employees will feel hurt and angry.
With the use of Collective Intelligence Thinking, employees are given all the data and facts, then skillfully led to the obvious decision. It works because everyone feels as though they were consulted, and that their worries were considered just as important as those from top management. Because all of the details were explained in advance, they will remain open-minded and ready to keep working hard for the leaders who put so much trust and faith in them.
3. On The Spot Thinking
Creativeship motives on a corporate and global level, Collective Intelligence Thinking motivates teams and On the Spot Thinking motivates individuals. When employees are already properly motivated through creativeship and Collective Intelligence Thinking, they'll work hard and think innovatively in an effort to help the company.
However, simple motivation is not enough to train employees to be creative. Individuals must also be trained to cope with high stress situations, like meetings with top managers.
Developing On the Spot Thinking Skills is all about practice. First, you practice divergent thinking, which helps to generate creative ideas in a manner similar to brainstorming. Then, you take the raw results and apply a process called convergent thinking, which screens the ideas in terms of probability and marketable desirability. In the final step you try to predict possible negative reactions and then defend your idea. The point of practicing On the Spot Thinking is not to constantly generate creative ideas, but to prepare the individual to think this way so they will be able to perform at a high level under pressure.
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