1. Thinking Outside the Box
Leadership Training
Problem Solving
Thinking Outside the Box

2. Your Box Inside The Box Represents …
The sum total of all that you have learned over the course of your life or career, good or bad.
The ideas, habits, perceptions, and prejudices you grew up learning. Your opinions that you hold tightly to.
What feels completely natural or comfortable to you.
Your view of the world and how things are, right or wrong, functional or dysfunctional.
Never been to china
Your Box

3. Your Box Outside The Box Represents…
Knowledge that you are yet to learn.
Other peoples ideas opinions and prejudices that you may be able to learn from.
Habits, tendencies and presuppositions that have never or rarely crossed your mind.
Your potential - The sum total of what you are capable of or could experience if you think outside the box.
The truth of how things really are apart from your perception.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."  Socrates
My wifes keys
Your Box

4. 6 Steps to Problem Solving and Decision Making
Obstacle
No Obstacle
Self-Control
Timing
Results
Educate yourself and others
Explore your options
Tell yourself the truth

5. Self Control
People often remove themselves from the equation of problem solving by disengaging themselves emotionally.
By nature we tend to let our feelings control how we respond to problems because this is what we have always done. It requires no discipline to react emotionally.
We become angry, anxious or stressed out because we don’t know what else to do. We feel trapped “inside the box” by a limited number of options.
We become our worse enemy when we lose self-control. We have a limited view of reality when our thinking is erratic.

6. Timing
There are many factors that determine the best time to address an issue.
Sometimes problems need to be solved immediately.
Sometimes they need to be scheduled.
Sometimes they need to be in a group setting.
Sometimes they need to be in private.
Sometimes we need to gather more information before addressing.
Our reflexes kick in and we make rash decisions, or we become paralyzed by the decision and make no decision at all.

7. Results Make a decision! Problems don’t solve themselves.
Unsolved problems always lead to more and greater problems when left unsolved. They tend to spiral out of control easily.
Our default position (inside the box) is to do nothing. It takes thinking “outside the box” to do something.
“If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice”
The great philosopher Geddy Lee (Rush)
When you are unsure of the best timing or paralyzed by procrastination, set a date to decide. Then….
Make a decision!

8. Results
To live day to day, week to week without purpose, problems to solve, wrongs to right, or goals to accomplish is the ultimate “in the box” experience. We are capable of so much more than we think we are. Our box keeps us in the dark and a slave to our familiar ways of doing things. Thinking “outside the box” opens up a new world of potential, vision and worthy causes to explore. You will never be free to succeed while “in your box”. To accomplish a new set of results, you may need to find a new way of thinking!

9. Educate yourself and others
Find out the truth of the matter…
Don’t jump to conclusions. The first person to present their case is believed until someone else challenges it.
Pay attention to what we know to be true and don’t focus on opinions and hollow accusations. “Just the facts, ma’am, Just the facts” -- Dragnet
Get a cross-view from several sources. Your conclusion will have more credibility and your odds of being right will be increased.
When we believe we have all the knowledge we need “inside the box” to determine the solution, our results will always be “inside the box” results. Our box will never expand.
When we explore as much knowledge as we can from “outside the box” to determine the solution, our results will have results “outside the box”.
Our box will automatically expand. This is called maturity.

10. Educate yourself and others
Great problem solvers and decision makers make the majority of their decisions before the problem arises.
Educating ourselves on the dangers or risks of a situation before it happens can help us anticipate our options and help us be ready with a solution when the need arises.
Educate others of the risks and consequences of the situation so they are prepared to make the most responsible decision. This may eliminate the problem before it becomes one.
Communicate clearly to others what is expected and the extent you are willing to go to get these results. Get others to help you with solutions rather than contribute to your problems.

11. Explore your options
Always have options – The more options you have the easier your decision making process will be.
Forecasting is looking at the past and present to get an idea of the future. We should try to anticipate a few of the most likely scenarios and determine a course of action for each using “If/then” statements.
If person A doesn’t work out, then do you have a person B?
If we are busier or slower than expected, then what will we need to do?
If we are wrong, then what?
If _________, then _________?

12. Explore your options Options means leverage Options put you in control
Options increase your chances
Options never come about by mistake
Option never come in a box
Options don’t typically just come to you. You have to go out and find them.

13. Tell yourself the truth
There’s no problem here. All is well…

14. Tell yourself the truth
Sometimes it’s easiest just to come up with a reason not to deal with it. We bury our heads in the sand (our box).
We ignore it and hope it goes away.
We justify it and deny that it even is a problem.
We pass the buck (this is different than delegation, it’s escapism)
We run away as fast as we can.
We give up.
Self-deception is simply lying to yourself. People who lie to themselves cannot trust themselves, trust others or be fully trusted.
If we cannot tell ourselves the truth, how are we going to solve any problems?
We need to pull our heads out of our “box” and see the big picture the way it really is and not simply how we wish to see it or how it used to be.

15. Tell yourself the truth
Often times we allow fear to keep us captive.
Fear of failure
Fear of success
Fear of the unknown
Fear of suffering
Fear of losing what we think is important
Fear of the truth
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ― Plato

16. Expanding our Box

17. Expanding our Box “We don’t know what we don’t know”
How can we decrease what we don’t know?
When you embrace a solution “outside the box”, your box expands, the problem will never be a mystery again.
People who regularly think outside the box don’t continually have a problem thinking “the grass is always greener” as others do. They make their own grass whatever color they want.
“If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.“ --Tony Robbins
What we know
What we don’t know

18. Questions:
What areas in your job do you fall into the habit of “inside the box” thinking?
What obstacles have you been avoiding?
What steps are you willing to take to become a better problem solver?