THINKING INSIDE THE BOX!

Let’s talk this week about boxes! Not just any box though, lets chat about thinking boxes. What are thinking boxes? Thinking boxes are the patterns of thinking we all tend to fall into on any given topic that, on occasion, keep us from seeing things in a different light. In essence, the metaphor suggests that we are too close to a problem to see it clearly and, therefore, stuck in the box. You know what follows this idea, of course, a suggestion to do some ‘outside the box’ thinking! Anytime most of us hear the phrase, ‘outside the box’, these days a little bit of us dies inside and I think, maybe somewhere an angel loses their wings. The phrase has been used heavily by management consultants since the 80’s and 90’s as a way to get people to think creatively, inventively, and to look outside of their normal paradigm for potential answers and solutions. Its not a bad suggestion, by any means, since we all suffer from the inability to see beyond the problem from time to time. I talked in the last episode about something called ‘cognitive entrenchment’, which is the tendency for highly educated and very experienced individuals to become entrenched in a particular way of thinking, so much so that they have trouble with any problems and solutions that may exist outside of their body of knowledge. They are too cognitively entrenched to think outside of their well defended box, so to speak. 

You know the saying, if the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like a nail. In fact, this saying comes from Abraham Maslow, the guy we often refer to when talking about the hierarchy of needs. He said, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” It has since come to be known as Maslow’s Hammer, or the law of the hammer. Its also attributed to another Abraham, Abraham Kaplan, who called it the law of the instrument. He said, “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.” Both Maslow and Kaplan were imploring scientists and thinkers to recognize the tendency to use the tools we have at hand to solve all of our problems and how this can be limiting. Just because certain tools or methods tend to be handy, or its all we know, does not mean that that tool or method can adequately solve the problem, or is appropriate for all problems. We’ve all encountered this when trying to solve for a vexing value issue on an appraisal. We tend to look at almost everything just like we did yesterday, and the day before, and like we have on the thousands of other similar scenarios. Then you run into one where something doesn’t make sense and you’re forced to step back a bit and ask some new questions. You look at from a new view, you make some calls and ask some new questions, maybe you get some perspective from a couple colleagues in the office, or maybe from an online group, and BOOM, you have a new perspective and the answer to your question. At least that’s the way it’s been for me, and I quite like that process. I love having my mind changed and opened up on things that I may have been entrenched in prior to that. I have often times caught myself being stuck in a pattern of thinking only to be blasted out of it by someone with a better way of seeing the situation, but you have to be open to that. It stabs at your ego to have to admit you were wrong on something. 

So, this idea of thinking outside the box, lets chat briefly about where it comes from and then how we can think both inside and outside of it. The term, ‘think outside of the box’, is actually much older than you might imagine. There are references to this idea dating back to the early 1900’s and almost all the references come from a puzzle you’re probably familiar with. It’s called the 9 Dot puzzle and it goes like this: 9 dots, 3 rows of 3 dots stacked on top of each other. The instructions are simple: without lifting your pencil from the paper, connect all of the dots using the fewest number of lines. There are several solutions to the problem, by the way, but all of them entail thinking ‘outside the box’, so to speak, because all of the solutions to the problem require the puzzler to move their pencil outside of the imaginary box that’s created by the 9 dots. It highlights how our brains tend to place imaginary boundaries around the 9 dots and restrict our thinking to only solving the puzzle within those imaginary boundaries. Why do we do this? Its just the way most of our brains work and how we were raised. Without going into a long rant about the educational system, almost all of us were taught exactly that! Stay in the lines, follow the instructions, don’t stand out, follow orders, stand in line, be like everyone else, and fit within these arbitrary testing standards or be labeled something that might stigmatize and limit you for the rest of your life. The education system, at least in the U.S., was developed to create workers for the industrial revolution. We were moving from agricultural societies and structures into industrial and manufacturing societies and structures and the world needed workers, not just farmers. How do you best train workers? Teach them reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, and also to fall in line and follow the rules. If you can do that, you’ll make a good worker and have a decent living. What worked well way back when, and what it was designed to do, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best way now, or that it guarantees us the best tools and outcomes in a vastly different world. 

We tend to think that the solution lies within the imaginary boundaries created by the 9 dots. In fact, there are no boundaries, so our brains fill in the boundaries making the 9 dots appear as if it’s a square. This also comes from our innate survival programming to locate patterns in the world. This aids in our survival to some degree. Nevertheless, if you’ve ever done this little puzzle, you’ll know that there are several ways to solve the puzzle, and all of them entail taking your pencil beyond the dots, outside the imaginary boundaries, and then coming back into the box to complete the puzzle. In fact, one of the ways to solve the puzzle is to curl up the paper the 9 dots are written on and imagine that its like a globe and then just have your pencil travel around the globe continually until you have traveled through each set of the 3 rows of dots. Ingenious really! When you see the various methods for solving the puzzle, you almost get mad at yourself for not seeing it initially and then realizing how your way of thinking kept you from seeing what is now quite obvious. The invisible shackles of our thinking processes keep us in patterns and limit, not only how we see the world, but what we end up seeing in the world. 

What I’d like to do in this episode is talk about several methods for helping to open our brains and our ways of seeing the world, thus maybe giving us some more tools to creatively solve problems in our daily lives and businesses. There’s a great book called ‘Think Inside the Box’, by Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg. In that book they talk about an idea that was devised by a man named Roni Horowitz that came to be called the closed world principle. The closed world principle basically says that, when solving a problem or trying to come up with a new solution for some issue, one should try using only those resources that exist within the product or system itself, or in the immediate vicinity. This principle, and the theory it proposes, is that the further away from a problem or system you travel to find a solution, the less creative the solution will likely be. When you recruit resources from within the boundaries of the problem or the system, the ideas tend to be more creative. Of course, this is just their theory, and they do a good job of supporting their theory with examples in the book. I don’t know if this idea is true all of the time in every situation, although I would tend to doubt that it does, but the idea is sound if it is looked at as one of the steps in the creative problem-solving process. As in, when you have a problem, you’re trying to solve, or maybe you’re trying to come up with new business ideas or ways of doing something, you start first from within the boundaries of the system and look for solutions that might be right under your nose, instead of trying to look miles away in other domains for solutions. They use a good analogy in the book of a zoom lens on a camera where they describe the process as zooming in and out to get different perspectives on the problem and then looking for creative solutions that way. They call this idea, thinking inside the box instead of ‘outside the box’ thinking. Personally, I think its just semantics and thinking beyond the 9 dots, whatever you decide to call it. 

The first method for creative problem solving is simply to subtract something. An offshoot of this method is to subtract something from the problem or system and then replace it with something else from somewhere else. Tim Ferriss, when talking about startups and creative problem solving once said, “what if I could only subtract to solve problems?” He was referring to the process of simplifying things and, so, one of his methods is to first look at a process and ask, ‘do we need this in here?’ Or ‘why are we doing this?’ Sometimes the best answer to a problem is simply to subtract something from the process that just doesn’t need to be there. I’ll give you some examples of the subtraction method of problem solving so that you have an idea of how this might look. Take, for example, traditional headphones. You know the ones, the standard audiophile type headphones with the big foam ear pads that go over your head and around your ears. I’m wearing a set of these right now as I record this episode. At some point, somebody must’ve said, ‘this is ridiculous! I can’t be wearing these big thing when I go to the gym, or for a run!’, so somebody set out to solve the problem of how to get the music into your ears in a more convenient and travel friendly way. Subtract the ear cup, the foam, and even the part that holds them onto your head and, voila, you have wired ear buds. Within a couple years of that somebody must’ve been really annoyed by the imposing cord connecting the ear buds and so they subtracted the wire to come up with wireless ear buds. Enter the air pods, galaxy buds, etcetera. Take the Sony Walkman, subtract almost everything about it except what it does, puts music into your ears in a small and travel friendly way, and figure out a way to solve for one the Walkman’s big issues: you’ve got to have tapes or cds on you to put into the thing. Cool, subtract all of it and BOOM, you have the Ipod. Take the first cell phones and remove all the physical keypads and buttons and you have touch screen phones. In fact, you can see this process in full effect with almost every Apple product as they slowly iterate and remove ports. 

One of the big selling points for buying a Samsung phone a few years ago was that they intentionally left in the 3.5mm headphone jack when Apple removed theirs from iPhone. Even I touted this as a benefit. Now, you couldn’t get me to plug headphones into my phone if you paid me. I use my ear buds with my phone via Bluetooth and love it. Apple took their world changing Iphone, simply removed the calling functionality, and called it the Ipod touch. Same basic thing, just one thing subtracted, millions sold! To take this one step further and with the same company, look at the Ipod shuffle. In some creative meeting at Apple somebody must have said, ‘how can we make this awesome iPod different, less expensive to build, but still do essentially the same things?’ Voila! ‘Let’s remove the screen and almost all functionality from it except for play, pause, and stop!’, the Ipod shuffle was born. No screen, it only randomly plays music, but its relatively cheap and it plays music. It was tiny, $49, and they sold millions and millions of them. Subtract, or subtract and replace as a method for creative problem solving. What I recommend all of you do from time to time is to write out all of your processes within your business and place each step on a sticky note. Place all the sticky notes on a white board or a wall. Stare at the sticky notes for a few days while asking yourself the question, ‘why?’ Why do we this, and why do we do this this way? What is the purpose? Do we need to do it this way? Can we eliminate any of these steps? Could we replace any of these steps with more efficient steps? Subtract, simplify, and pare down to the bare essentials of any product, process, or system and see what happens. 

For all my appraiser friends, an easy one in this regard is the sales grid on the sales comparison page. I know many of you already do this, so its not groundbreaking, but for those who don’t yet, on almost all of our private appraisals we’ve removed the sales grid and just include 8-12 MLS sheets for the comps, an explanation of the low end, high end, and middle of the range, and then a reconciliation explanation with a value range. We’ve been doing this for close to 10 years and have never had anybody complain or request a sales grid with adjustments. Why don’t they? Because they don’t have a sales grid and adjustments as an expectation, and they don’t know any different. They get as much, in many cases, more information than appraisals for lending purposes and are quite happy with that format of appraisal. Subtract the grid and the adjustments and you subtract lots of time spent trying to support and justify something for a client that doesn’t care about that stuff. Is it required? Nope! Is it necessary? Nope! Can you develop a solid opinion of value without a grid and adjustments? Absolutely! Subtract it! Another obvious one for appraisers using the subtract and replace concept is subtracting any part of the process that you used to do twice and find a way to only do it once. The easiest answer for that is with technology. You subtract anything that has paper and a pen or pencil involved and replace it with software, a tablet or phone, a stylus, sketching software and digital photographs. Subtract and replace. The creative answer is often right under your nose so don’t look too far away for the answers. 

The next method for creative thinking and problem solving is the D&R method, which stands for divide and rearrange. Remember earlier when I suggested that you write down every step in your process and put each one on a sticky note? Well, the first step after that is to see if there is anything that you can subtract from the process. Find everything that is not absolutely necessary to complete the process or add value. The second phase is to then look at the remaining sticky notes and see what parts of the process could be arranged to create greater efficiency in the process and potentially added value. Divide the process up into its component steps and then rearrange them. What you can also do with this method is to divide and rearrange what we call the experience points. After writing down all of your steps in a particular process, then grab some different colored sticky notes and write down every point in the process where a client or customer has an experience or is interacted with, or, and this is a big one, where they should be interacted with. You divide and rearrange the touch points where a change would create greater communication, better service, and/or added value in some way. An easy one to point to in the appraisal world is to divide up the appraisal process into its component parts and then rearrange not only how they’re done, but who is going to do them. We’re working on this with coaching members all the time. For many, the answer was to ‘outsource’ parts of the process to others who, with a little bit of training, can complete those processes just as well as the original appraiser, which allows the chief appraiser the opportunity to work on bigger, better, more important, and more valuable things. Its not subtracting that part of the process completely, like we talked about before, its dividing it into its component parts and then rearranging the timing and location of its completion. Having somebody else do all of the low-cost parts of the process allows the business owner to increase their dollars per hour significantly, and also focus on more important things. Using this divide and rearrange process also greatly increases efficiency in the system because its is effectively cloning yourself.

One of the big issues many one and two person businesses face is how to scale the business. To scale a business, you have to figure out ways to duplicate and clone yourself because you’re only one person and can only complete one thing at a time. You can only ever be working on one appraisal, for example, while all the other appraisals waiting to be completed just sit there waiting for your attention. Why not divide and conquer, so to speak, and have somebody else be working on all those other reports while you’re wrapping up the prior one? Divide and rearrange your processes, your systems, and your experience points in ways that create better efficiencies, better experiences for everybody involved, and more opportunities to scale the business. 

Which leads us to the final creative problem-solving method, at least in this episode, which is multiplication. So, we’ve talked about subtracting, dividing, in some cases adding, and now we can use the act of multiplying to creatively develop ideas and solutions. And since we just talked about one of the biggest issues for most small businesses being scalability and there being a limited amount of time in the day for one person, this is where multiplication comes in. An easy and common example of this one would be the men’s and women’s shaving razor industry. Everyone knows the Gillette razors and how they seem to just keep adding additional blades as a form of innovation. Well, I’m sure it was much easier when there was only one or two blades, but that first few iterations were a perfect example of multiplying as a method of creative problem solving and creative product development. They didn’t just add a second blade, they added a second blade that was slightly different from the first one so that the first blade angle would lift the hairs so that the second blade could get a closer shave. Over time they realized they could do this with several blades and multiply the effect. Another example would be taking a motorcycle and adding a 3rd wheel. If you haven’t seen one of these vehicles, be on the lookout for them. Of course, you’ve probably seen the creative iteration of the traditional three wheeled motorcycle called the Can-Am Spyder where they’ve simply turned the chassis around, so the two wheels are in the front, instead of the back, with only one wheel in the back. This is a great example of somebody simply saying, ‘why? why does it always have to be two wheels in the back?‘ And then having the guts to play around with conventional thinking. Another variation of the two wheeled motorcycle is simply the 4 wheeled ATV. Multiply the number of wheels and, voila! you have a 4 wheeled vehicle you can use off-road. 

Where does multiplication come in for a business? Simple, but vital questions! It comes in primarily when we start asking the question, “how can I multiply my own efforts?” If you’re not asking this question, you need to start. This does not mean that you have to build a company with 10 or 20 employees, it means you simply have to start asking the question. If the business relies heavily on you, what happens if you can’t produce? What happens when you want to take a vacation? What happens when you want to earn more, but you’re already maxed out for time and patience? The answer is that you have to find a way to multiply your efforts by essentially cloning yourself, or at least cloning aspects of what you do. We’ve already talked about outsourcing or hiring somebody to do parts of the process for you, and that is essentially multiplication in action. Anytime you have other people doing things that you once did, and maybe still do, you are multiplying your efforts. One of the most impactful ideas I’ve ever come across is the idea of making money while you sleep. I don’t necessarily mean literally, although I am also including the literal meaning as well. The idea of making money while you sleep refers to having, say, an online business where you could literally have somebody buy something in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping. Maybe you sell courses teaching something digitally and, once you make the content and put it up online, it can literally be sold while you sleep 24-7-365. I’ve done this with martial arts instructional courses that are still selling today, 15 years after I created them. It hit me one day while standing in my dojo teaching classes that I was getting tired of always having to drive the 20 miles back and forth to the dojo to teach the students, especially when only 10 or 12 people out of the 100 would show up. I love teaching, I just figured there had to be a better way. I had already duplicated myself 10 or 12 times by teaching other black belts who were teaching for me in my dojo, but I could still only teach to the people who would show up and be in front of me. Enter the digital world of online video courses and I could now multiply my efforts infinitely. Teach it once to the camera and sell it forever on the internet all around the world. 

While you don’t necessarily have to make money while you are literally sleeping, I do recommend that you at least start asking the question, “how can I make money when I’m not working?” For most of you, you only make money while you’re working. As soon as you stop and turn off the computer, the income production stops, as does the creative thinking. To be a builder of businesses you have to always be asking the question, “how can I do more with less, create income even while I’m not actually producing or working myself, and how can I multiply my efforts exponentially so that I can leverage my knowledge and experience for greater opportunity?” There are a variety of ways to multiply yourself, your knowledge, your experience, and your efforts, you just must look for them on a constant basis if you want it actually to benefit you and your business.

There it is, 3 methods for creative problem solving and creative business building. I hope I’ve been able to add some value for you with this one and get you thinking about creative ways to iterate and innovate. As the theory suggests, the further away from the problem you must go to find an answer, the less creative its likely to be so look at what is right under your nose and see what bubbles up. Taking from last week’s episode, then we must look at everything as merely a hypothesis and test it out. The chances of you screwing something up majorly by testing different things out is extremely small, so get to testing! If you’d like some help thinking through some of these creative solutions, that might be where I can come in and help you. If you’re ready to get some coaching and take your business to the next level, whatever level that may be for you, let’s chat and customize a program to fit you and your situation. We have 3 levels of coaching for everybody at whatever stage and interest level they may have. Our level 1 Coaching and Mastermind group is a low-cost membership with no strings attached and tons of info, guest coaches teaching something new every month, monthly coaching videos and zoom calls, and a variety of other cool things. Our Black Belt team coaching is small teams of 3-4 people, higher accountability, a little higher cost, but considerably faster and more profitable growth than the level 1. Our third level is one on one coaching with me. Higher cost, higher accountability, more intimate one on one conversations. Wherever you are in the process, if you have questions just reach out to us and see what might be right for you. You might be surprised, but I won’t sell you on hiring me as your coach. We don’t accept everybody because we’re not right for everybody. We’ll chat, we’ll figure out where you are and what you may need, we’ll figure out if I’m the right coach for you and then we’ll talk about your options. And you’re options always include potentially hiring a different coach than me, that’s one of the aspects of a good coach and one of the responsibilities I believe I have. I may tell you that I’m not the right coach for you and your situation, but I’m going to give you some value on that call and you’ll hang up with some things to do immediately to push your business forward. That part is completely free so give me a shout and let’s chat. Call me at 616-334-7681 or just click here to see our coaching options for appraisers.