Thinking outside the box

How often have we heard the cliche ” we need to do some thinking outside of the box” when we are being “inspired” by our well meaning bosses – mistaking management jingoism for leadership.

In order to risk being creative we need two things,  confidence in our position to be radical, innovative and challenging, and also some structure to deviate from – pure blue sky thinking is really just that, dreaming, nightmare stuff. Companies need to have some idea of the context of their industry first, the position they are in now – before they start to T.O.T.B   Leaders don’t ignore where we are now – extolling only a vision, without reference to where we are now. Context is important – it shapes our starting point, it helps place us on the map in the first place, so we can navigate to somewhere else. In order to think outside the box we need two things – a box in the first place, and the space and confidence to think !!