I often hear this tired old phrase, “think outside the box” or a slightly modified iteration. What does that mean? What do people really want to say when resorting to that well-worn cliche? I’m posting from Kunming, in Yunnan province, where I just presented an invited lecture (career management in a global environment) to students and faculty on the campus of Kunming University of Science and Technology.
The framework for the activities was Happenstance Learning Theory (Krumboltz, 2009) so we focused on the five skills of curiosity, risk-taking, persistence, flexibility, and optimism. Planned Happenstance (PH), or the increased probability of controlling one’s own fate, was an instant hit with the Chinese audience. The participants in the audience were already familiar with networking because China basically runs on Guan Xi (literally, quality connections). One might also claim that the Chinese are quite naturally persistent. However as a culture the Han Chinese and the Communist Party traditionally have been equally resistant to the other four PH skills. I found (during my dissertation research and five plus years of teaching/training in China) that a majority of Chinese are guided by an extreme external Locus of Control (Rotter, 1968).
During discussions, one young man stated, “China has too many people and too few jobs” and then asked me, “if you can give us advice about one thing we should do, what is that?” I answered without hesitation, “over deliver; do more than anyone expects of you” l asked him to forget about his passions for now and make whatever he does meaningful, by being the best. I continued by saying that I believed that was the most important thing to do but it wasn’t enough. We need to strengthen our personal learning and development networks. We need to prune the ineffective and/or negative connections and cultivate the positive connections. The best way to do that is by volunteering your time and energy to your community; make your elders happy by visiting retirement homes. Make orphans happy by visiting, and then do fundraising activities to buy the kids stuff. Volunteer to teach in (rural or poor) areas without schools. Become the most positive networker anybody knows.
The young man responded that I was asking them to really think outside the box more than he had imagined.
Without really thinking I said, “No, I’m saying we don’t need the boxes. Don’t throw them away because we might find the materials useful. Let’s recycle the box!
What could we do with all those broken-down boxes?