Whither the proverbial box out of which we think?

I am back from facilitating a workshop with a group of managers. One of the topics we discussed and worked on is out-of-the-box thinking; in other words, thinking differently about the work we do, about managing, and about the way we think.

In a side conversation one of the participants shared the following: “I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it”.

Hard to disagree.