Have you heard of the box? You’re probably in it right now. The box is everything normal, everything that has been done before and that has proved to work. It’s a great place to be; it’s nice and warm and it just feels very safe and comfortable. Now I hear you wonder… What’s outside that amazing box?
The world outside the box is new, exciting, fast changing and above all, very scary. Everything outside the box has never been done before and still needs to prove itself. It’s the paths that no one has walked on and therefore there are no pavements to follow and there are a lot of bumps and obstacles along the way.
So, why would you want to go there? Well, without people going outside the box, we would live in a very boring world without anything exciting going on. Inventions like the wheel, the television, the airplane, the radio, the internet or let’s say Facebook, would never have been done. All those inventions needed someone who didn’t think the way everyone else did. The inventors of those things we now use daily asked themselves questions that no one had ever even thought of. Sometimes the answer was simple, but without the question there would not be an answer.
Now we know we aren’t all great minds who can think of something like a television, but that’s not the point we want to make. Thinking outside the box can apply to very small things as well, and small things can make a big difference. By asking yourself new questions and by answering them in new ways, you can set yourself apart from your competitors and maybe even make the world a little more exciting. Successful companies all have one thing in common: they were different from everyone else.
Marketers sometimes ask themselves questions like these to solve a problem or to come up with new ideas: ‘What would superman do if he was in my position?’, ‘What would happen if the world was upside down?’ or ‘What if there was no gravity?’. That might sound very silly, but asking yourself questions like that without setting any boundaries for the answers can definitely help. You might have to bring it down a little bit afterwards, but it makes you take those first steps outside that nice and safe box.
If you have a hotel or other company, try not to be afraid to open that door into a new world. You’ll see that it will not only make your life more exciting; it will also make you achieve great things!