I recently came across two very different writings about the problem with strategy and boxes or categories.
The first one is from Henry Minzbergs book ‘The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning’ (p 302):
“Note that the problem in such planning systems in not any specific category so much as the process of categorization itself. No amount of rearranging of boxes could resolve the problem of the very existence of boxes (…). Strategy formation, like creativity (…), needs to function beyond boxes, to create new perspectives as well as new combinations. As someone once quipped, ‘life is larger than our categories.’”
The other piece is from a Tom Clancy novel, in which some CIA official, who was obviously disappointed with the results he got, says:
“We asked them to think outside the box. And they built better boxes.”

I think this is a very important point. One reason why so many people have problems to develop really good strategies or strategic ideas is that it is so difficult to think outside our own mental boxes and categories. In view of a complex and unstructured problem – such as strategic planning – our mind naturally tries to refer back to some known categories, just to find a way to tackle the problem. This is probably the reason why all those management models and tools are so popular. They help us to structure, process and consolidate the vast amount of information and the fuzzy, complex situation. The point is, however, as long as we stick to these known categories, we are rather unlikely to come up with really new insights and ideas.
I guess most of us are simply not trained to think beyond our familiar mental boxes and categories. To my experience, one approach for solving this dilemma is to infuse some out of the box thinking by bringing in people from outside our boxes. This might be an industry outsider. Even if he brings along his own boxes – these are other boxes and by applying them to our problem we from the inside may start to see things from a new perspective.
Google for instance does that by deliberately hiring people with very different and even unusual hobbies and CVs. Thus they ensure a constant inflow of new ideas, new ways of seeing, understanding and handling things. I assume this large array of very different boxes helps all of them to think a bit more outside their individual boxes.

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