One the great catchphrases of the management consulting movement of the 80’s and 90’s was “think outside of the box”. Most agree that this slogan had its genesis in the “nine dots puzzle” where you are asked to connect nine dots, arranged in a 3 x 3 configuration, with four straight lines … but without lifting the pencil off the paper.
The only way it can be done is if the pencil travels outside of the area covered by the nine dots.
Many transformation programs can only be performed if we think outside of the box – in this instance, the box representing existing processes, cultural inertia, well-established rules and a range of other constraints to imaginative thinking.
But … what if there was no box?
That’s right, no box. No constraints. No limits. No restrictions on your transformative thinking.
We call that TransformaginationTM/sup>. How very Untypical.