The Four Cages of Context

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The Four Cages of Context

December 8, 2008. By Peter Lloyd

You and I are Creative Animals. Like all the other animals in our kingdom, we're here today because we've passed the test of Natural Selection. We clothing-covered bipeds passed this test by learning to innovate, invent, and solve problems in remarkably creative ways.

But to continue surviving, we have to keep solving problems, which becomes a problem itself as our problems keep getting tougher.

Some of us Creative Animals are better at solving problems than others. But all of us can become better problem solvers by learning to escape the Four Cages of Context.

In the Rebellion Workout, I related how Americans agreed or disagreed with the quote, "The Tree of Liberty must be fed from time to time with the blood of Patriots," depending on whose name appeared below it as the author. That's because they got stuck in a cage of context.

Words, ideas, activities, views, plans, philosophies, opinions, blueprints, maps, mechanical configurations... everything can change with context. And if you can't escape context, you won't do so well solving problems.

Consider the act of cutting someone with a knife. It's neither a good thing nor a bad thing all by itself. If you doubt that, you're stuck in a context. You haven't asked, "Who's cutting? A surgeon or an assassin?"

Thinking out of context is not unlike lateral thinking. In lateral thinking, we challenge every assumption associated with a problem. Assumptions come from context, which tend to confine our thinking, much like the way a cage confines an animal in a zoo.

In order to free our Creative Animal and allow it to hunt down a solution, we must learn to think out context. It can be done and it gets easier with practice. But first, we need to identify those confining cages.

In the next four Monday Right Brain Workouts, we'll look at four Cages of Context: Knowledge, Affinity, Order, and Success.

I'll show how each one holds us Creative Animals back when we try to solve problems, invent, innovate, or create. Then I'll suggest how to escape.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest business problems.

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