The Prepared Mind: The Road to Eureka is Paved With Doubt

ROTMAN Magazine

Fostering a climate of doubt is essential in an environment where ideas

have shorter and shorter shelf-lives.

by Luc de Brabandere and Alan Iny

IMAGINE IF YOU WORKED for a company where, every Monday morning at 9am, an all-staff e-mail arrived in your inbox from the CEO with the following subject line: Our Company’s New Strategy. After a few weeks of this, surely nobody would get any work done, in anticipation of the next announcement of a change in direction.

While this is an extreme example, the fact is, any idea or Strategy must be temporarily ‘frozen in time’ if you want to make anything significant happen. The problem is, our world is not frozen at all: change continues apace, and the gap between your strategy and the world around you is continually shifting (and usually, increasing).

If it hasn’t already happened at your organization, the day will come when a new strategy will be required, and in the realm of business this tends to happen in one of two ways: having what we term a Eureka moment or a Caramba moment. Eureka and Caramba are two sides of the same coin: Netflix’s Eureka was Blockbuster’s Caramba. Kodak’s Caramba was Fuji’s Eureka.  In most cases, potential disruptions are theoretically evident to all players. So why do some companies ‘get it’ while others with equally smart managers miss out?

We would argue that what differentiates the losers from the winners is not a paucity of ideas, but rather, cognitive rigidity and closed-mindedness. Outmoded and unchallenged mental models blind managers to opportunities that are ‘hiding’ in plain sight.

Together, we have developed a five-step approach to creativity, or what we refer to as ‘thinking in new boxes’, as detailed in our book [Thinking in New Boxes: A New Paradigm for Business Creativity]. In this article we will focus on the first step: Doubt Everything. As Louis Pasteur once famously said, “chance favours the prepared mind.” It is our hope that we can assist in preparing your mind for greater creativity, in a world that demands more of it every day.

Understanding Your ‘Boxes’

The story of creativity is an epic of freedom: you have to be free in order to create. But in order to break free, you must first recognize that you are a prisoner of your current mental models, or what we call ‘boxes’. This is true no matter how smart you are and no matter how well-run your organization. We all become trapped by our boxes over time. As a result, doubting what you think you’re seeing — and what you think you know — is an indispensable ingredient in our approach to creativity.

For years, managers have been told of the merits of ‘thinking outside the box’—of moving beyond their current mental model of the way something works. The problem with this approach is that it helps people avoid solutions that are obvious or conventional, but it offers little to no guidance about where the best solutions can be found.

When we work with executives to help them think in new boxes, we ask them to first take stock of some of their most deeply- held beliefs and assumptions. Since your brain needs boxes to function, the key to being creative — to managing change during times of uncertainty — is to first understand your existing boxes to a greater degree, and then attack any situation or issue by developing a range of new boxes. These new ways of thinking will free you to see not only what is possible, but also what you must do to survive and thrive.

Understanding the dimensions and drawbacks of the box you’re currently in begins with creating a climate of doubt. We encourage you to doubt absolutely everything: your most fundamental beliefs, your perceptions of reality and your assumptions about the future. Doubt that your current tactics, models and strategies are the best ones. Above all, doubt that the way you’ve been going about getting everything done will continue to serve you well in the long run.

What we are encouraging you to do is develop a whole new mindset, grounded in personal (and sometimes institutional) humility. Creativity is only possible when you are humble about your existing approaches to thinking about things. When you continually probe whether everything you think or believe is actually true, you become much more creative and more capable of preparing for inevitable changes. Fostering a climate of doubt means recognizing that intelligent people get things wrong all the time — and understanding how these mistakes occur. A wide range of unavoidable human tendencies and cognitive biases cause us to create, and hold on to, mental models that are misleading.  How fully are you sensitized to the many ways in which normal cognitive biases are shaping your mental models and assumptions?  Are some of them holding you back from thinking in more open-minded, creative ways?

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a mid-level executive or a CEO, an engineer or an architect, you are a human being with your own values, preferences, past experiences and working hypotheses about everything. When confronted by situations entailing lots of moving parts, you will use heuristics — literally ‘ways of finding’ — to make decisions big and small. Some of our pre-existing ideas and concepts may be so entrenched that you may not even realize the sway they have over you. This could include everything from your approach to annual strategic planning, to how you celebrate colleagues’ birthdays to the way you organize weekly meetings.

To get started, we suggest you explicitly identify some of the ‘boxes’ within which you currently operate. What are some of the key models and assumptions you are relying upon? How well are they serving you and your organization? In what ways can they be challenged, and how should they be revised, enhanced or replaced? We invite you to become the Magellan of the uncharted seas of the world in front of you by asking the following questions:

• WHAT BUSINESS ARE YOU REALLY IN? Trying to describe your business without using the most expected five key words could lead you to a different ‘box’. For example, it might have gotten rail companies to think of themselves as being in the transport business decades ago (with a tip of the hat to Harvard’s Theodore Levitt). Alternatively, try to describe your business in a way that might make sense to a seven-year-old, or a 94-year-old. Or imagine how a disruptive competitor would describe your company to their first customers.

• WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS, AND YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS?

Are there people who use your products in ways you hadn’t predicted? How could you redefine your market? For example, Western companies in emerging markets often think they’re doing well because their growth rates are 10 to 20 per cent, while in reality they are only addressing a sliver of the actual market, and local upstart companies are achieving 100 to 200 per cent growth (e.g. Unilever vs. Nirma in India in the 1970s-80s.)

• WHAT ARE THE CORE PILLARS OF “THE WAY WE DO THINGS AROUND HERE”? Shining a light on the articulated and unarticulated assumptions under which your organization operates can be very powerful. Deconstructing this ‘catechism’ and looking at each pillar with fresh eyes can bring teams to surprising places. Which constraints can be completely shattered or flipped around?

Next, it’s time to carefully frame a set of boxes, issues or questions to investigate further and to indicate the outcomes you’re hoping to achieve. Having analyzed your current strategies, attitudes, constrains, approaches or other boxes for their vulnerabilities,

• What are the most essential questions or problems that you should now be trying to address?

• What can you learn by looking at these questions or problems from a range of fresh perspectives?

• How can you frame (or re-frame) them in a way that will enable you to generate new ideas and approaches, broaden your vision and enhance the overall creative process?

• How should you move forward to investigate the world in front of you in relevant, efficient, productive ways?

• What are the specific outcomes that you intend to accomplish, and what would constitute ‘success’?

By addressing these core sets of questions, you will see that some of your current views need to be re-evaluated—or even overhauled. As you begin to zero in on the issues or questions that seem the most paramount, and the new kinds of boxes you would like to create, continue to doubt! Doubt that the question you initially thought was the most critical is, in fact, the right one.  Doubt that you’ve framed it appropriately. Doubt that your way of looking at it or expressing what it is, is definitely the best way.

Above all, what can you learn by looking at this question or problem from a range of diverse perspectives? How can you delineate the question or problem you’re eager to solve in a way that will enable you to generate many new ideas and approaches, open up your range of vision and enhance the overall creative process?

We recently encouraged leaders at a major global airline to take the perspective of Michael O’Leary, the wildly successful CEO of Ryanair, who has become well-known for doubting current models, bucking convention and introducing successful new consumer-friendly tactics. For United, Air France and other mainstream airlines, the basic rule-set, for decades, has included such things as offering worldwide routes using a varied fleet of planes; selling tickets via travel agents; and using major airports near big cities. But it is these very rules that have made it hard for mainstream airlines to successfully compete with airlines like Ryanair.

Ryanair moved the sales channel away from travel agents by creating an innovative online ticketless approach so that passengers merely have to present their passports and a booking reference in order to be given a seat. It decided to employ only one type of plane, and thereby reportedly scored huge discounts form Boeing, along with a simpler approach to maintenance and scheduling, since mechanics needed to be trained for only one plane type and the stocking of spare parts was much simpler.  Ryanair chose to operate only short and medium-haul flights, rely primarily upon secondary but less convenient airports, and offer open seating. The mainline carriers have now copied Ryanair’s strategy of charging for bags and in-flight meals, and other such ‘unbundling’ tactics.

At its core, the ‘invention’ of Ryanair as an enterprise—and a new box—required fundamental changes to several of the most established ‘rules’ of the airline business. With Ryanair’s example and O’Leary’s specific perspective in mind, how could you reformulate the central questions and issues for your organization?

Watch Out for Weak Signals

No two people will ever see or interpret any stimulus in front of them in exactly the same way. No matter how objectively ‘bright’ or ‘dim’ various signs may be, people and organizations, based on their unique subjective mental frameworks, will tend

to see some of them more clearly and quickly than others.

That is why you must create your own customized list of these more elusive signals, especially those that are likely to be the most relevant to you, your organization and your industry.  Armed with this list (which we hope you will continue to monitor and revise), you can then scan for them carefully and respond proactively if you notice them beginning to occur. Some common signals to watch out for include:

A CHANGING VALUE PROPOSITION. For instance, it’s getting harder to charge a price premium for the product you’re marketing. You’re in charge of a luxury bus company and notice that there are a range of new companies that have far less luxurious interiors but pick people up at specific spots on the street and offer online $19 fares between Manhattan and Washington, D.C., whereas yours are all $75 or higher. Or perhaps there are substitute versions of the same product that cost significantly less (for example, you’re a book publisher who notices that e-books are retailing for $3.99, displacing the hardcover books you’re currently selling for $24.95.)

NEW UNMET CUSTOMER NEEDS. For example, you’re running a company that manufactures laser printers and you’re still only marketing black-and-white ones, whereas most consumers have come to expect colour as a standard option; or you own an office products store and see that following the introduction of the iPad, there are no inexpensive, attractive protective cases for them yet available in the marketplace.

THE ENTRY OF NEW COMPETITORS, SUPPLIERS OR MENACING CHANGES IN WHAT YOUR DIRECT BUSINESS PARTNERS ARE DOING OR OFFERING.

For example, you’re T.J. Maxx, and H&M arrives on the scene; you’re a high-end builder of luxury apartments and you’re still sourcing granite from New Hampshire while your competitors are getting better quality stone at lower prices from suppliers in Italy and India; or you’re Sony Music Entertainment and see that many of the musicians whose songs you used to distribute are now selling songs online independently.

THE ADVENT OF NEW BREAKTHROUGH TECHNOLOGIES AND/OR PRODUCT OR SERVICE OFFERINGS. For example, the airline you’re operating only offers coach-class passenger seats, organized in tightly squeezed-in rows, whereas several of your competitors are offering premium coach-class seats that provide extra legroom and recline into beds; or you’re still manufacturing and distributing conventional wristwatches whereas innovative companies are offering Wi-Fi-connected ‘Wrist-Pods’ that not only tell you the current time but offer voice-recognition GPS and glow in different colours to indicate the weather wherever you happen to be.

CHANGES IN YOUR ORGANIZATION’S CORE PERFORMANCE METRICS. For

example, quarterly sales of one of your most important products suddenly increase or decrease, your inventory across all product categories is stagnant for long periods of time, or your annual revenues are much lower this year than last. We often like to compare the challenges of monitoring such metrics to the act of flying a helicopter: a helicopter pilot has to pay attention to many different dials that show critical aspects of the flight and need to remain within expected parameters. Of course, some dials are more critical than others; but in general, if one key dial exceeds its parameters, the pilot needs to pay attention to that particular issue. If two dials show unusual results, a broader problem may be affecting the helicopter; if three or more dials are abnormal, there may be an emergency.

Of course, managers can only operate in this way if they have a clear view of which ‘dials’ need to be monitored and optimized.  You need to know the metrics that matter before you can notice — and act upon — the fact that they’re not quite right. Depending on your organization, these ‘dials’ could include inventory levels, monthly revenue, share price, weekly expenses, hits on your website, sales in a particular segment, or market share.

UNFULFILLED BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES. Sometimes you may be astonished to notice something that has not yet occurred or been fulfilled, and therefore it signals to you an opportunity — and the need to replace your current boxes with new ones. For instance, if you were an executive at a traditional TV news network in the 1970s who couldn’t sleep, turned on the television and wondered, “Why isn’t there a 24-hour network dedicated to covering the news around the clock?”, you might have decided it was time to replace the ‘We summarize the news at six o’clock’ box with the ‘We cover all the news, all the time’ box. If you worked in business strategy for a bus company and noticed large numbers of farm and factory workers milling outside of a newly constructed casino 90 miles from Manhattan—that is, large groups with apparently no way of getting home after finishing gambling—you might decide it’s high time you tried to come up with some new routes for the company, including special buses going to and from the casino.

BROAD DISRUPTIVE EVENTS. You may also feel motivated to re-examine your current boxes in light of relatively broad disruptive events signaling that change is afoot. Among other things, these could include a new regulatory scheme, a shift of all production in your industry to overseas facilities, a prolonged drought or change in environmental patterns, macroeconomic changes such as ongoing inflated commodity prices, or sociological changes such as increased movements for democracy in the Arab world.

These are just a few examples of weak signals. As you think about all the different factors influencing you and your organization going forward, you will be able to identify many others.

In closing

Imagine a company where operations are running superbly, everything functions with perfect efficiency, and revenues and profits are excellent. In such an environment, what is the role of senior leaders? It would be tempting for them to sit back and say, “Just keep on doing what you’re doing.” But in reality, the leaders of such a company have to run the current strategy without hesitation while simultaneously fostering an ‘always doubt’ attitude. 

Embracing doubt is a critical element of a new paradigm for creativity that recognizes that no idea is good forever. In the end, surviving success can be just as challenging as succeeding in the first place.

Luc de Brabandere is a Fellow and senior advisor with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Alan Iny is the senior global specialist for creativity and scenario planning at BCG.

They are the co-authors of Thinking in New Boxes: A New Paradigm for Business Creativity (Random House, 2013), from which this article is excerpted.