How to think outside the box to solve problems

Early in my career, working for a disability support service, I attended a meeting to problem solve an issue one of our clients was having.

Ryan, a high school student with an acquired brain injury, kept forgetting to take his books home to complete homework.

When teachers reminded him and he did take his books home, he would forget to bring them back to school. As a result, he was falling further behind in his studies. His parents and teachers also suspected he may have been playing up his disability somewhat, purposefully not carrying his books with him to get out of doing homework. (Cheeky teenager!) 

After several minutes of listening to the room of teachers, counsellors, and his parents exhaust ideas for ways to prompt him to remember his books, I asked,  

“Can he have a set of books at school and another set at home?” 

Everyone in the room looked at me amazed. 

“We never thought of that,” one of the teachers finally said. 

In listening to the conversation, I heard the others fixating on the idea they needed to get Ryan to engage in a practice the other students did – carrying a set of books to and from school. As an outsider, I thought about what the fundamental issue was. It wasn’t that he needed to remember to carry his books. It was that he needed access to his books both at school and at home.  

It’s very easy to get set in routines and ways of thinking that make up your everyday life. This, in turn, can impact your ability to think “outside the box” as the traditions, practices, and rules you observe every day create a familiar and comfortable structure. There are many things we do in our daily routines automatically and without deeper consideration. However, when problems arise, we need to look at the context of the problem with new eyes.  

One of my favourite aspects of helping others to solve problems is getting to ask the naïve questions. I ask them to tell me about the environment the problem has arisen in, tell me how things are supposed to work, and why there is something that isn’t. I continue to ask questions about how their context or process works, as well as reframing back to them what I am hearing them say to check my interpretation with them. Through this process, the person I am helping has to come off autopilot and make explicit the things they understand about their environment, the context, their daily activities – things they may have taken for granted or not had to explain before.  

Talking aloud and explaining something to someone else is a way of thinking. It unlocks different pathways in the mind from when you think about something quietly on your own. This question-and-explain dialogue helps the other person to start thinking differently about their context and the problem.  

Writing is also a way of thinking. The use of whiteboards, post-its, note pads, and such also unlock a different pathway to thoughts in one’s mind.  

Given I usually don’t have the same job or work in the same context as the people I assist, I’m also not bound in my thinking to their context when suggesting solutions. “What if we tried this? What if this happened?” may be ideas the other can’t conceive of on their own because they are too close to the context to see it differently. There may be social pressure to not make suggestions outside the box for fear of looking dumb. Social conformity is strong in teams and groups that work closely. I am more than happy to play the disruptor, to suggest ideas that may initially seem ridiculous to the group. The ideas may even be truly ridiculous but putting them out there in the problem-solving space can spark further ideas, of which one will eventually be the idea needed to solve the problem.  

So you need to tackle a problem? Disrupt your ways of thinking, invite in an outsider to ask you questions and make you explain, write things down and share them, and regard ideas as steps along the way to reach your solution.   

If you’d like the experience and expertise of a team that can disrupt your ways of thinking and help solve problems, to deliver great experiences for your team and for your customers, get in touch with Three6 here or email us at hello@three6.com.au and let’s have a conversation about how we can assist your company!