For so many years while working with couple of major banking conglomerates, I’ve been hearing about “think out of the box”. And I was like – OK – but how. How do I need to think outside of box and what exactly it takes to think outside of box? Because in many one on one meeting and specially at the time of appraisal, whenever I got average rating I’ve always been given with the example “Boss – You really need to think outside of box to get good rating” and I’m stuck with real dilemma what the hack is this outside of box thinking. And I’ve given with couple of example which are:
You introduced something new which has completely changed the way of doing the work
You saved thousands of dollars by streamlining and improving the processes
Bla….bla….bla…..
This is what I thought after hearing all their examples but after sometime I thought that the above examples are really need out of the box thinking because in today’s scenarios the work are so much established and have lot of stakeholders that when you implement one change it affects many people and processes.
So the real question is how to put all these examples in such a framework which can help to get the real time benefits to both the employee and the employer. Well I would talk only about the employee side because that’s where the interest is and below are my experiences while figuring out the framework for this:-
- Understanding the business and its relevant processes.
- Not just doing our specific work but knowing how the work is affecting the work of other peoples.
- Creating and discussing the holistic view of business with its stakeholders.
- Consistent thinking of implementing new technological solution to take the business one step up.
- To figure out the solution of a problem it’s important to spend maximum time (I suggest 70%) to understand the problem because it will result in effective and long term solution of the problem.
- Listen the business and care for the business and its stakeholders.
- Last but not the least is to understand all the insider dimensions of box to think out of the box.
These are some of the dimensions that I’ve figured out during my stint and it helped me a lot whenever I was given with new problems and business challenges. They have helped me to become more and more detail oriented so that whenever I’m designing a solution for a new problem, I’ve all its aspects and their relevant magnitude in my mind which will impact the stakeholders with a specific frequency.
I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.
Hi Abhishek,
Thoughtful of you for bringing up the words we have been hearing too.
My question is how you define the box, n who does that?? Your manager??
I believe everyone who has given all those sleepless nights to get into an organisation are good enough to see themselves growing individually with the organisation.
We have to think in the box to come out of the box…appreciated
Thanks Shilpi!!!
In my view the definition of the box is – “The expectation of business from you” and nothing more than that but we need the understand the word “Expectation”.
Expectation of the business – In this ever changing environment the business has it problems related to changes it faces on a everyday basis and if you are giving the solution what excatly business wants in this ever changing scenario than you are thinking out of the box. But again one need to understand that the solution would be something which will simplify the process and change the way of doing the business.
So at the end the business is the one which we need to understand and its expectations is the box which enable us to think outside of box to provide an awesome solution.
Regards,