The Outside of the Box Copy

I’ll be honest, when I first started putting boxes on people’s heads, I really didn’t care about the outside of their box. To me, I was thinking of how the box limits our thinking. When I put the first box on my head, I didn’t feel the impact of the outside of the box, I just felt the four walls surrounding me, and saw those walls as the metaphor for my limiting beliefs.

But every time I ran a Thinking In & Out of the Box program, participants would ask for more time to decorate the outside of their box.

I once expressed my frustration with a group that was spending to much time on the outside of the box when  a participant replied, “You know, a box isn’t just used to carry things, it is used to advertise the contents too. We’d like a little more time to work on our branding please.”

As I sat there watching the group laboring away at the outside of their box, it led to a realization that our thinking has an “outside” too.  We have certain aspects of ourselves that we gladly put on public display. It may be about our work, our education, our family situation, or our hobbies. It may be parts of our temperament or our preferences in how we get work done.

Now we budget time for participants to decorate the outside and ask that they use pictures or words that have meaning to them and represent areas about themselves that they want other people to know or think about them.

The Outside is Where I Put the Best of me.

We want to be liked, respected, listened to, understood, and included.  To do that we put the best of ourselves out for others to experience and connect to.

A little like a movie trailer puts the highlights of the movie out to the public to generate interest, we have stories and ways of being that we put out to those around us to generate interest and understanding.

One way of understanding the outside of the box is that it is a like our personal brand. We put information on offer to have conversations about things that support who we think we are and who we want others to think we are.

I once had a participant who stopped decorating her box after about one minute, and then just sat there as others drew pictures, used a number of colors, or even searched on the internet for inspiration.  I was a little worried that she was not engaged in the process so I went to see what she had written on her box. All she had done is written three words on the front of the box, “Walk the talk!”  When I asked her if she felt like that was enough she replied, “If you know me, then you know this is how I live life.”   Walk the talk was her personal brand, and she (and everyone around her) was very clear about that.

The person that others get to know from the outside of a box is simpler, less complex and less robust than their true selves. It is ‘branding’ in the sense that it projects what they would like to be known for; what they would like people to think of them and what they are happy to share feely with others as they meet and get to know them.

Another way talking about the outside of the box is that it is our public face. In many Asian cultures there is a very clear concept of face. Our ‘face’ is our conscious projection of ourselves to the world. When we show respect to others, we are ‘giving them face’. If something happens that undermines our desired image, we ‘lose face.’  We can make others lose face, by making them look bad in public – and vice versa. As we make decisions, we often consider whether or not they would cause us (or others, if we are empathetic!) to lose or gain face (be embarrassed or gain public acknowledgment) as one criterion for action.

Once the outsides are complete, we invite participants to get to know each other a little better by sharing the outsides of their boxes. The conversation is always light and fun. People are talking about what they want to talk about and are comfortable sharing. In many cases what we talk about on the outside of the box is well rehearsed. You may notice that if you know someone for quite a while, each time they meet new people, you hear the same stories over and over. The well polished stories are a part of our public face, our personal brand, the outside of our box.

The Impact of the Outside of the Box on Creativity

The outside of the box impacts our decision-making in a very subtle, but significant way. When given options, we are more likely to choose the option that is in alignment with our pubic face or personal branding.

As an example of this, I asked a group of new managers if the outside of their box had changed since they became managers, and they all rolled their eyes and nodded their heads. One participant told the group, “I was always known as Mr. Nice Guy. If you needed a favor, you knew you could come to me.  About a month after I became a manager, we went through a restructuring and I had to reduce our head count. I understood the rationale for the change, and agreed that it was the best move. I was even prepared to offer to reduce my team by an additional head count as I knew that we were overstaffed. It wasn’t until I thought about what other people would think of me if I made this decision. I would no longer be seen as “Mr. Nice Guy.” In the end I didn’t offer to reduce my team’s head count and it was the outside of my box that made me change my mind.”

Another way that the outside of the box impacts our creativity is that in general, we want people to agree with our ideas. Especially the boss. I was working with managers for a large bank when they introduced to me the most popular game in the company, “Say what the boss wants to hear.”  The rules are simple. If the boss asks a question and you know what they want to hear, you say that. If you don’t know what they want to hear, you just say you don’t know. If you make the boss lose face by disagreeing in a meeting, you lose the game. If you say a creative idea that the boss doesn’t like, you lose the game. If you play it safe, and you don’t stand out, you win.

There is an understandable gap between what we think, and what we say. We consider how our words are going to affect those around us, and what impact that will have on how we are perceived by them. Being cautious with which thoughts we put into the public domain is a great way to survive, but a terrible way to be creative.

In the short, we care about what others think about us and we are willing to adjust our thinking in order to protect our current image, or project a better image. As such, the outside of the box represents our first subtle, yet impactful limitation on our thinking.