Everyone on this planet has a duty to think.
From What’s it trying to say?, a song performed by the 1970s pop star Dean Friedman on the opening of the Wakefield Media Centre
SAME BOX, SMALLER BOX AND BIGGER
Pen Blue Cake Compare how many of the words are exactly the same on different lists. If you have the same words check if they are in the same order, written in capitals or lower case, or if there are any other differences. Having done this exercise with hundreds of groups in my creativity sessions I have never had a team where three or four people have the same five words.
The reason you each use different words, even with apparently relatively simple concepts such as ‘pen’, ‘blue’, and ‘cake’ is because you perceive the world, every object within it, uniquely through a picture frame shaped by your values, beliefs, experi-ences and connections. This metaphorical picture frame is called by psychologists a ‘frame’. It can also be called a ‘paradigm’.
The word ‘paradigm’ tends to be used to describe a frame of reference shaping how you perceive the world. It is generally used for describing a general mind state. In the creativity context a narrower definition of the term ‘paradigm’ meaning ‘the bound-aries of a perception’ can be used.
Paradigms are a fundamental tool enabling each of us to make sense of the complex world we live in. Paradigms act as a filter, a short cut to manage the complexity of information in the world around you.
A typical photograph can contain over a million individual pixels. But you do not take in each individual pixel. Instead, you decide the picture represents a shape familiar to your experience.
There is a marvellous apocryphal story about the artist Picasso who, as legend has it, was recognized by a stranger on a train.
During the journey the stranger remonstrated with Picasso, asking why he didn’t make his paintings more life-like. The artist wanted to know what the man meant by ‘life-like’. In response the man took out from his wallet a photograph of his wife to which Picasso responded by observing how flat and small she was. The stranger had created a paradigm of the small, flat, representational image of his wife defining what he perceived as ‘life-like’.
Paradigms can limit your vision of the world around you, acting as invisible boundaries, prison cells, that define the boundaries of your thinking and define your available options when you seek to solve problems.
Paradigms have been described as picture frames. The picture frame is created by assumptions. The most powerful analytical
How you think in ‘boxes’
tool – indeed, one of the most powerful creativity tools at your disposal – is a simple question: ‘What assumptions are we making here?’ This may seem like basic common sense, but as the old adage goes: ‘What is common is not often sensible, and what is sensible is not often common.’
By asking ‘What assumptions are we making here?’ – and extending this question to identify the assumptions being made by you, your colleagues, competitors, the marketplace – you can iden-tify the different paradigms at work that are dictating how the situation is being perceived.
A popular thinking challenge is the ‘nine dot’ exercise. The chal-lenge is to connect all nine dots in Figure 3.1 by using four straight lines without lifting your pen off of the paper. It can be a frus-trating exercise. (Even if they have done it before, most people forget the regularly proffered solution given in Figure 3.2 on page 34.)
This exercise is believed to have led to the phrase ‘outside-the-box’
thinking to describe a new way of doing, a solution outside the boundaries of how everyone else perceived it. I will go on to demonstrate how there is no such thing as ‘outside-the-box’
thinking. Before this it will be worth revisiting the nine dot chal-lenge to explore even more potential solutions to emphasize how everyone’s thinking is riddled with assumptions. Two solutions I have witnessed on my creativity courses which I have not come across in texts are as follows.
One delegate, a graphic designer, drew a four-line box around the nine dots, therefore connecting them all within the concept of a square; challenging the assumption about what we mean by
‘connect’ – does connecting have to involve a physical connection?
Creativity in public relations
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Figure 3.1 The nine-dot problem
Another delegate drew four lines to connect the outer dots and then laid her pen down across the centre dots to connect all the dots; challenging the assumption that the lines had to be ‘ink lines’.
It is possible to connect all the dots in three lines by drawing diagonal lines touching the outer edge of the top dot, the centre of the middle dot and the inner edge of the bottom dot and by repeating the journey successfully connecting all the dots; chal-lenging the assumption that it is the centre of the dots that have to be connected.
You can even connect all nine dots in one line – by using a very large pen; challenging the assumption that the lines are of a smaller size to the dots.
It is possible to complete the exercise with no lines: by manipu-lating the surface, which is assumed to be paper, you can keep your pen still and bring the dots to the pen; challenging the assumption the surface is a flat, undynamic entity.