'Working Wounded': Thinking Outside the Box

— -- D E A R R E A D E R S: Have you ever been told to "think outside of the box"? And how do we get stuck in boxes in the first place?

For answers, we interviewed Gordon MacKenzie, who formerly held the title of "creative paradox" at Hallmark Cards. His job was to stimulate innovation. He's also the author of Orbiting the Giant Hairball (Viking, 1998 ), a creativity primer for today's workplace.

Q: Can you give me a few practical tips to stimulate thinking out of the box?

A: Think in metaphors, fantasize, anything that might bring broader perspective. When I worked at Hallmark, I used to fantasize that I was the founder of the company. I didn't share this fantasy with my boss — that would have created unproductive turmoil. But by secretly pretending that I was Mr. Hallmark, I assumed responsibility for seeing what most needed tending to, and I attended to it.

Q: Where did the notion of the "box" come from?

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A: Eons ago, Oog Puk Sham, the world's first CEO, issued an order: "I want a list of our whole staff, in descending order of importance, with me at the top followed by my direct reports, then all the slaves at the bottom. To keep things tidy, let's draw a box around each grouping. And since there are so few of us and so many of them, let's spread our list out sideways at the bottom. That way the boxes will look sort of like the stone blocks of the holy pyramid." Zoom to this century. We still have the boxes. Some employees even like the boxes they're stored in, because they seem like good places to hide.

Q: If bosses "store" their employees in boxes, why do they then tell them to think outside of them?

A: A boss' request to employees to think outside of the box probably stems from a longing for the fruits of original thinking; the untainted insights of "beginner's mind" (thinking uncontaminated by the biases of the box). But the direction of a beginner's mind is unpredictable. This creates a conflict: The boss often wants the rewards of his or her employees' original thinking, but may be intolerant of the resulting behaviors.