Abraham Wald was a mathematical genius born in Austria-Hungary in 1902. Wald escaped the pre-World War II Nazi regime, came to New York and ended up working for the U.S. war effort in what was called the Statistical Research Group.
The group was made up of thinkers who used math to find solutions to various military problems, including this one: How do we keep our bomber aircraft from getting shot down? The obvious answer was, add more armor. But bombers, like the B-17 flying fortress, were big, heavy planes. The lumbering giants were instrumental to winning the war, but they were already as slow as snails in the sky, and reinforcing them would only make them bigger, heavier, and slower. The key would be to use as little extra reinforcement as possible, and only in places that really needed more protection.
The military was already on the case. When bombers that had been shot were able to make it back to the ground, the military would check where the bullet holes were and add armor to those areas. Makes sense, right?
Hold on, said Wald. You are going about this all wrong. You are adding armor to the strongest parts of the plane. How did he know these were the strongest parts?
Well, he realised that, despite the bullet holes, planes that had been shot at in these areas still landed in one piece. Wald suggested that these were the areas that did not need armor, instead, he said, use the armor elsewhere on the planes. Wald had noticed that the planes that had been shot at and still landed in one piece never had bullet holes near the engines.
That led him to the conclusion that the planes that never made it back were the ones that had been hit near the engines. His solution add armor there. And that is what the military did. Walt’s counterintuitive thinking no doubt saved the lives of numerous pilots and crew. Looking at problems differently can turn our personal and business lives into a success.
Thinking outside of the box is more than a business cliché. It means approaching problems in new, innovative ways; conceptualising problems differently, and understanding your position in relation to any situation in a way you would have never thought of before.
Here are three ways to develop your out-of-the-box thinking skills:
Think in pictures
Drawing a picture can help break our left-brain’s hold on a problem. Visualising a problem also engages other modes of thinking that we do not normally use, bringing us another creative boost.
Flip it on its head
Turning something upside-down, whether physically by flipping a piece of paper around or metaphorically by re-imagining it can help us see patterns that would not otherwise be apparent. For example, you might ask what a problem would look like if the least important outcome were the most important, and how you would try to solve it.
Reverse engineer the process
My cousins and I would always have a chuckle when one of us would say ‘reverse backwards.’ Perhaps you and your social circle also have similar redundant ideas – after all, can a person really reverse backwards? I think we all have things we say with not much thought.
The phrases, ideas and cultural sayings serve as a window to our lighter and humorous sides. On a more critical and productive level, working backwards, which is practical, breaks the brain’s normal conception of causality. Here is an exercise that you may find of value: Start with a goal and think back through the steps needed to reach it until you get to where you are right now.
Thinking outside the box starts before we are ‘boxed-in.’ Cultivate the ability to look at things differently by thinking in pictures, flipping problems on their heads and by reverse engineering processes. Thinking outside the box allows us to understand our position in relation to any problem or challenge in ways we may not have thought of before.
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