Think Outside the Box and Work Inside a BoxThink Outside the Box

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know about “think outside the box.” There is no shortage of articles and books written about the topic (i.e. continuous improvement, innovation). Here is a quick refresher.

“Think Outside the Box” is challenging business-as-usual (BAU). It is considering and choosing new paths that are more aligned to the big picture (more effective and/or efficient). A few best practices for “think outside the box” are:

New Perspectives : This is explicitly seeking feedback from new sources. This ranges from giving a voice to a team member who has not normally been asked for feedback to soliciting perspectives from outside of your team, company, or industry. Challenge Assumptions : Identify and remove assumptions when brainstorming. Assumptions can be explicit and seen or implicit and unspoken. Even though the assumptions might be immovable obstacles, visualizing how things would look without them will generate interesting ideas. In my experience, in this process you come to believe that maybe the insurmountable challenge is not as big a constraint as you think. Be a Positive Force : When you are negative, you are less likely to see possibilities. Tomorrow is just going to be the “same old same old.” When you are positive, you believe things can get better. Tomorrow has the possibility to be better based on your actions today.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Let’s move to the second topic, which is my primary reason for writing this post.

Work Inside a Box

You have already applied “think outside the box” to plot the path forward. Now it is time to put your plan into action. When doing that, it is often helpful to “work inside a box.” Wait, am I saying you should put constraints on yourself? Yes.

You have a task in front of you. It might be standalone, or it might be a task broken out from a larger project. Allocate the amount of time that you are 80% confident you can complete the task. This is my version of timeboxing. Here are a few of the advantages:

Force Priority : Knowing how much time you are allocating to the task allows you to prioritize it relative to everything else in your work queue for the day. Since you can schedule that time, your calendar does not have the fuzzy edges of an open-ended task. Make Progress : You might not finish the task in the allotted time. Remember, it was an 80% confidence time estimate. But, you will absolutely make progress. Without a timebox, it is easy to procrastinate the open-ended task. Know When Good Enough is Good Enough : Is the goal to accomplish the task or achieve perfection? Too often in my past, I have continued to work on a task well beyond the point of diminishing returns. I was chasing perfection. However, perfection is rarely needed to accomplish the task. When incremental time would be better applied to other activities, you are done. Learning to work in a timebox means you know when good enough is good enough.

If you timebox, you will find that you box (fight with) time much less frequently. Sorry, that was driven by my penchant for dad jokes.

Know when you and your team are thinking and when you are working. How you structure your time for each type of activity is quite different. So, do you think outside the box and work inside a box?

Thank you for reading my leadership blog post. I hope you found it interesting and thought provoking.

Check out “Strategic Pause” on Amazon. Follow me on X (@DonThinks).

© 2025 Don Graumann. All Rights Reserved. Other than personal sharing, please do not redistribute without permission.