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Accounting InformationOutside The Box
by:
Phillip A. Ross
Outside The Box
Thinking "outside the box" or as it is sometimes called, "coloring outside the lines" is a popular idea in the business earth today. Folk and organizations are told to think outside the box or color outside the lines as a way to stimulate creative thinking once
they need to solve problems like streamlining production, establishing a new product, or developing a new process. And it's true that creative thinking and innovation often arise from unexpected and unconventional thinking.
But there is a serious problem with trying to apply such thinking too broadly.
For instance, creative thinking is valued in art and advertising, but not in banking and accounting. An accounting firm recently ran an ad suggesting that it could think "outside the box." Do you actually want your business to be associated with creative accounting? Aren't accountants supposed to put the amount in the right box? Wasn't creative accounting a serious problem for Enron?
In reality, clean thinking and the creative thinking that it produces are seldom
a matter of thinking outside the box. And coloring outside the lines is for the most part just sloppy workmanship. The art of clean thinking is a matter of golf stroke thoughts in to the right boxes or categories. Clean thinking is a matter of mental organization. Conversely, sloppy thinking involves the confusion of categories, of golf stroke ideas into the wrong boxes or not golf stroke them in order at all. Is a child who wish not straighten his or her room creative or just sloppy? There is a significant difference. Spell creative thinking sometimes looks sloppy to an outside observer, it makes not issue from sloppiness.
Picasso was a creative artist.
But his creative thinking was not a matter of the art he produced. In reality his abstract activity is technically sloppy. It looks like the activity of a child. Painter could sell his abstract art only because he had antecedently
established himself as an creative person who could color inside the lines really well. Had he not 1st evidenced his artistic talent in the traditional way, his abstract art would-be have been worth more less. He used his reputation as a traditional creative person to establish a new direction in art. He didn't so more color outside the box, as he enlarged the boundaries and definition of the box. But the point is that his abstract creations were valuable only because of his evidenced abilities in the traditional arts.
Contrast my own efforts to establish myself as an abstract artist. My art has gone ignored because I have not been able to prove myself as a traditional artist. Not that I actually tried to do so, but I am victimisation myself as an example to do the point. The creative thinking of a novel idea requires the discipline of order and structure to be valuable. Picasso's art is valuable because he was an accomplished painter who by choice colored outside the lines. My art is not valuable because I am not an accomplished painter and I accidentally color outside the lines. Spell the two products may look similar, the difference is critical.
Creativity is more than breaking the rules.
Similarly, Joseph Heller was able to break the rules of English synchronic linguistics in his book, Thing
Happened (Scribner, 1974), only because he was intimately familiar with them. Having schooled English at the University of South Carolina, he was a master of grammar. And only out of his expertness could he creatively exploit, expand and redefine the boundaries of grammar. And so it is with regard to thinking outside the box.
Thinking outside the box apart from being able to think inside the box is worthless.
Such thought is just plain sloppy. Thus, the suggestion that creative thinking lies in the ability to think outside the box is mostly nonsense. Creative thinking issues from talent, ability and discipline. Talent must be imitative
and shaped on the anvil of discipline in order to develop ability. Great ability is always the result of study, discipline and practice.
Creativity is more a matter of seeing that the boxes themselves are inadequate and suggesting a better arrangement or a better definition. Creative thinking doesn't just discard the boxes, it redefines and/or rearranges them after becoming intimately familiar with them. Real creative thinking is always the fruit of discipline and order. Creativity, in order to be genuinely creative and not just sloppy disorganization, must emerge out of discipline and order as an intentional effort.
While a creative idea often comes uninvited
out of unexpected places, it requires discipline, study and order to do thing
of it. Apart from discipline and order, what passes for creative thinking is nonsense, and to suggest otherwise actually undermines and/or weakens the creative process.
What makes this mean for our industry? Distributors and suppliers should apply themselves to mastering the basics before attempting to break the rules in the name of creativity. Don't start outside the box. First, establish your ability to think inside
the box. Master the rules before you suggest breaking them. For example, before a distributorship presents a wild, innovative idea to a client for a campaign, it should 1st establish its expertness with campaigns and/or ideas that have a track record of yielding nice ROI. Designers, artists, and copy writers should establish their mastery of basics before experimenting outside the box. For the most part the important stuff is inside the box.
©2002 Phillip A. Ross
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