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The exhortation to think outside the box

has become ubiquitous in business. So much so that it has become the new box inside of which everyone thinks. It worships the notion of transformation without really understanding the difference between transformation and change, and often without tolerance for the real thinking that must occur for an idea to be truly outside the existing paradigm.

But worse than that, the advice is backwards. You cannot possibly think outside the box unless you understand the nature of the box that bounds your current thinking. You must come to know that nature deeply. You must have real insight into it. You must accept it, and embrace it at some level, before it will ever release you.

There's a Zen saying, "What you resist persists, and what you allow to be disappears." Thinking outside the box without understanding the box is a petulant exercise in resistance — every idea that comes from the process has the box written all over it. It's a reaction to the box. It's fighting the box. It's a child of the box.

I always start by trying to grasp the nature of the box within which we're thinking. It is a process bordering on meditation. If you're not calm, it won't come to you. The box thrives on your impatience with it. If truly you want to get perspective on a matter be sure to have a matter to observe, first. Build your box, love it, groom it. Eventually, it will let you go when all of its boundaries are overflowing. Forerunning, innovation, show off for the only sake of it are no business language. Nor creative language. Not a language at all. 

Progress, evolution take place naturally blossoming out of well cared middle grounds. Turbulent genius is of no use without a background of calm intelligence and when the genius is going to last a butterfly's lifespan the calm intelligence will carry on, and on, and on. Make sure you build the latter first, then. 

'Think outside the box' is bold line on my Business Bullshit Blacklist for it belongs to the modern culture of memes and content-free thinking I steer well clear of. 

So figure out the box you're in. If you try to get out before you understand the box's parameters, you'll just stay stuck inside of it. And that's exactly what it wants.