How often have you heard the following? “I am thinking outside the box here, and if we only had this budget we could make it work.” Or how about this? “I am thinking outside the box but I keep getting shutdown because of the people around here.”
Thinking outside of the box has become synonymous with wishful thinking.
It is great to be different, to be unconventional, and to tackle problems from new perspectives. The box, however, is very real. There are budget constraints. There are time constraints. Possible solutions must make sense to the people who will make the idea a reality. Claiming to “think outside the box” while bemoaning a lack of progress is ineffective.
I say, think inside the box. Come up with creative solutions that incorporate as much of what we know about the industry, the organization, the teams, the people. Come up with creative solutions that we can afford, and solutions that we have the time to implement. Leverage the close relationship you have as an internal IT person to make solutions that outperform those that anyone else could do.
First, think inside the box. Then, understanding the box, we can get creative.
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