As originally published by David Sable on Linkedin. Subscribe to the newsletter!

To Think Outside the Box, Look Inwards

“Think out of the box!”

How many times have you heard that exhortation as a rallying cry to energize tired, old thinking? A phrase that, in my opinion, has become an overused synonym for innovation…like agile and modern. Not only is it hackneyed, I would argue that it is the wrong admonition to apply to the social ills of the world so roiling our society today.

Don’t get me wrong. I, too, have used it, but with a twist, and have written about the creativity and drive needed to think out of the box, out of sight of the box, and yes, sometimes even in the box, as oftentimes the biggest creative challenge and opportunity is to finish a half done canvas. (As we all know, creating on a blank white canvas can be easier than finishing a half-completed task).

Yet, as I ponder the past couple of months and look at who has flourished personally and professionally, I have been struck (as I noted in my previous newsletter) that the secret sauce for success and sanity has been, in my estimation, ingenuity. Ingenuity, from my perspective, is the solving of specific problems, the overcoming of particular barriers, and the creation of fresh, new energy with creativity, smarts, and the resources you have on hand.

I liken the terms innovation to spending millions on getting me pizza quicker and hotter (although, I will swear that the kid on the bicycle brought it as quick and fresher not just hotter), and ingenuity to being the parent who builds a dream castle out of discarded (and sanitized) Amazon boxes…the home industry of personal pandemic masks and, of course, the quick turnaround of cheap, serviceable respirators when there weren’t enough of the $50k model to go around.

And then I had a revelation…a revelation that linked the boxes in, out, and out of sight; the times we live in; personal motivation and ingenuity.

Think about this: What do we tell people who are faced with huge personal challenges? What do we say to help motivate those who have been hit hard by tragedy? What do ask folks to do when it seems all is lost? Where do we look for strength? For inspiration? For the will to go on…?

“Dig deep,” we say. Look within for the power. The strength is inside of you.

See where I’m going?

No one suggests that healing or redemption comes from the outside (religion looks to deity, but even then, it comes from an inward focus). No one suggests that healing or redemption comes out of sight of oneself…to the contrary, we mine our own inner power.

LeBron James talks about what it means to dig deep:

“Basketball isn’t easy. All my life I’ve been striving to make myself better. It’s a full-time commitment. To be the best, you have to work the hardest. You have to chase what seems impossible over and over and over again, because giving up is not an option, and when you feel like you’ve reached your limit, it’s only the beginning, that’s when the time to dig deep, to find the courage to push some more, because if you’ve got the drive, the discipline, and the resolve to do what it takes to make yourself great, then the rewards are endless.”

And that’s where it all came together for me.

Ingenuity is about digging deep. All bets are off—options seem to have disappeared, problems seem insurmountable, faces are long, and despair starts taking over.

And then we look inward. We think deeply inside the box. We take what we have, and we use it in ways we hadn’t thought about before. We apply all that we have to solve the problem and the outcome— it may not be as pretty as we’d like or as neat, tied up with a bow—as we’d wish it to be, but the outcome solves the problem—saves the day…and then who knows?

Racism. Hatred. Violence against others—none of it can be solved out of the box and clearly not out of sight of the box. Unless we address the issues head on, we will never change society…change the world. You see people tend to be serial haters. If I’m a racist, chances are I’m a homophobe. And if I’m Islamophobic, bets are that I’m also an Anti-Semite, and chances are all four and more.

I need to address the box. Each one. It’s so easy to say, “all lives matter.” It is way harder to action Black Lives Matter. One is out of the box and the other is inside it. When I’m outside of the box, and somehow conflate every ill of society together as one—including things like climate issues and shoddy political policy—I might sound “agile and modern”—maybe even woke to some. But I will not get to the problem at hand.

Bill Gates, one of those icons who has emerged, once again, as a true leader over the past few months understands the dynamic:

“When you are failing, you are forced to be creative, to dig deep and think, night and day.”

Let’s apply this dynamic, creative ingenuity that we are all capable of to create real change. Listen:

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama

And there you have it…

While I look forward to the innovation of faster, hotter, and hopefully fresher pizza delivery, my money for today is on ingenuity—creativity applied to problem solving with few resources.

Dig deep and don’t get caught in the trap, the false start of being forced to look elsewhere other than in. What do you think?

As originally published by David Sable on Linkedin. Subscribe to the newsletter!

I don’t know about you, but I am tired of Apocalyptic talk…the endless blaming, the advice for the “new normal,” and the ten ways to look better on ZOOM.

My view is that we need to learn from what was FUBAR, understand the difference between Planning and Plans, gain human insight from the intense, all-in, focus group we have lived in the past few months, and orient ourselves towards a PEOPLE FIRST world, embracing ingenuity instead of our favorite buzzword (“Innovation”). Doing so, will become a critical component of our recovery, as you will see…read on…

As if our current predicament hasn’t presented us with enough challenges, we need to think about one other vital task: we need to ditch politics—partisanship of the worst order—and embrace our ability to come together as people with a common cause, without hate, without racism, without fear.

And, while I am writing this with an eye to the United States (apologies to all my non-U.S. readers), the basic lesson is true and powerful. Most importantly, I will argue that the unique and defining DNA of the United States has been lying dormant, awaiting an awakening call to continue its story.

This story has a beginning that takes us back to 1831 and a young French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, who arrived in the United States on a mission from the July Monarchy to study prisons and penitentiaries. Which he did…but more importantly for us he traveled all over, took copious notes and in 1835 published a book called De la Démocratie en Amérique, or as we call it in the U.S., Democracy in America.

de Tocqueville was obsessed with the economic, social and geographic forces that were transforming America, and he hoped that he could help his own country better navigate the rapids between the dying aristocratic system and the nascent democracy that was beginning to take form.

Much of the book is about liberty and equality. Government and politics. Democracy and tyranny…old and new. Yet, at a lecture I recently attended (via conference call, of course) de Tocqueville’s views on “Association in Civil Life” came to life, and I realized here was the core—the DNA—of our social and economic recovery.

In a heading titled, “On the Use that Americans Make of Association in Civil Life,” de Tocqueville writes:

“I do not wish to speak of those political associations with aid of which men seek to defend themselves against the despotic action of a majority…the political associations that exist in the United States form only a detail in the midst of the immense picture that the sum of associations presents here.” (I am quoting from the translation of his book by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop—amazingly only the second translation ever of this momentous manuscript.)

In my view, it’s that “sum of associations” that presents us with the biggest opportunity to triumph as we contemplate our world while we emerge from lockdown. And it is my fear that we have lost direct contact with our heritage and are in dire need of rediscovering it.

de Tocqueville’s words resonate across the centuries.

“Americans,” he wrote, “of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite…if it is a question of bringing to life a truth…they associate.” He then says that in France, the government would lead, and in England, some lord might, but in the U.S., it would be an association that leads. To prove the point, we just witnessed how huge protests of associations of likeminded people over the past few weeks have already begun to spearhead change.

He then writes, “I often admired the infinite art with which the inhabitants of the United States managed to fix a common goal to the efforts of many men and to get them to advance it freely.” And, finally, “The science of association is the mother science; the progress of all others depends on the progress of that one.”

And there you have it. An admonition from our past calling out to us to unite—a Frenchman dispassionately observing what makes us unique. The way forward for us as a nation can come from de Tocqueville’s observation of our past, our roots.

We were a country that was founded on ingenuity. People who naturally coalesced to solve problems, who could focus on a common goal and make it happen. And, we seem to have lost our way.

Yet, this questing French Aristocrat, gave us the answer…listen:

“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults”

We are standing at a unique moment in time. A time not to reset, but to rethink. A time not to yearn for a “new normal,” but to embrace constant and dynamic change in an inclusive and powerful way. A time to remember that it wasn’t partisanship that made America Great, but rather our ability to unite and create associations. A time for trust and truth and fixing.

Politics are a mere detail. Innovation is about technology. Ingenuity is about People First.