Are you tired of being told  to think out-of-the-box when you face a management or leadership challenge?  Has the nine-dot exercise lost its impact on you?  I understand your frustration.

Reinvigorated management and leadership principles often fall prey to becoming another overused buzz word.  Resist the temptation to devalue the power of the term think out-of-the-box, however.  Thinking out-of-the-box is another term for assumption challenging.  Assumption challenging is at the core of innovative and creative thinking and problem solving.

One foundation of breakthrough solutions is that assumptions have to be challenged for innovation and creativity to occur.  If you only operate within the limitations of your current reality, new solutions are not possible.

In this picture, the famous nine dot exercise is shown.  In leadership and management training, this exercise shows the power of looking beyond our limitations.  The challenge is to connect all the dots by using only four lines and not lifting your pen off of the paper.

Most people the first time they do this exercise will assume they have to connect the dots by staying within the box of nine dots.  Some people will spend a great deal of time trying to connect the dots under this assumption only to get frustrated after much effort and say in frustration, This cannot be done!  The problem is not the exercise, however.  The problem is human thinking!

Photo by Steve Gustafson

The instructions do not say to stay within the box of nine dots. We, humans make that assumption when they do the exercise.  The only way to do this exercise is to challenge the assumption that you have to stay within the box.   You can only connect the nine dots by going outside of the box (see the diagram to the left).  Outside-of-the-box thinking is Assumption Challenging.  Assumption Challenging is questioning every assumption about a problem you face.

As Maya Angelou said, as children we are naturally creative,–until it is driven out of us by the pressure to conform.  Children are always questioning your assumptions.  They are always asking why something has to been done a certain way and who made up those rules anyway!  It is often the reason young people are the initiators of major societal change.  They challenge the assumptions!

To achieve breakthrough solutions you have to challenge every accepted assumption about the problem you face.  Once you do this you can engage in breakthrough thinking that truly separates what assumptions are valid and what assumptions have long since outlived their usefulness.  With this information, you have the data you need to make transformative change in your workplace or your life.

If you manage or lead a group, you can get valuable breakthrough thinking from your team with this tool.  First, have your group collectively identify the assumptions behind the problem or issue you face.  Next, give them permission to challenge the assumptions to come up with different ideas.  Third, have the group generate as many ideas as possible (with no evaluation of the feasibility of the ideas allowed initially).  Next, after the group brainstorms its ideas, evaluate the ideas and select the best ones for the issue you vace. Finally, prioritize the ideas and develop next steps.  If the group feels genuinely empowered by you to challenge the assumptions without being punished in any way, you will find you have a list of potential breakthrough solutions.

The next time you face a difficult problem identify the assumptions that you and others are making about this issue.  From there, you can begin a process of challenging those assumptions and ask yourself what assumptions you can discard, soften, or alter.  This is when you can engage in breakthrough thinking that leads to breakthrough solutions.

Assumption challenging is an important tool for innovative and creative thinking and problem solving. For more tips on assumption challenging see Three Questions You Must Ask to Improve Workplace Innovation and Creativity! and Four Lessons on Creativity and Innovation.