Which box?

After a year of flirting with re-employment in a traditional employee/employer relationship, I suspect that a lot of employers may be looking to the wrong people to bring them what they desire.

While at Los Angeles Times/Tribune, my experience with the existing staff was that they were firmly living 'inside the box.' Once Sam Zell and his minions tore away the chains of oppression and kicked open the door to freedom, there was a collective sigh and much joy. The reality is very few rushed to embrace that freedom and many did not even know what to do with it as they stared at it for the first time.

My colleagues and I were dumbfounded that after years of complaining how they didn't have the freedom to even air ideas, let alone try and implement them, now that they were staring at the wide open space they were not prepared to actually explore it. The realization came to me later that the type of person that would not only make the cut to get hired here, but had made it for years in the previous culture, were wholly and completely not qualified to survive in this new environment.

As we were lured under the auspices of 'greenfield' and building a dotcom with the financial backing of a corporation with 22,000 employees, this was very appealing to most of us, if not all of us. But we were all from Internet companies and were used to creative thinking, energizing workspaces and the other perks standard in the dotcom world. The environment we encountered was the exact opposite. The walls were biege, the trim was a dark brown and most offices had huge doors that locked. While we managed to breathe some life into our floor, this office had not been remodeled for decades(I assume.) It felt like a bank as featured in every 70's era movie. And everyone, existing technology team members included, wore very formal office attire. Shiny shoes, crisp starched collars, probably sock suspenders, etc. And I will only speak for myself and say I hated it and it was depressing, but many felt the same way.

So when you think of the type of person that can show up to work, day in and day out, to that type of physical environment, and the matching 1970's management style, you think of Milton from Office Space. So when the Zellites demanded 'innovation' it was met with a resounding thud.

(In all fairness, there were a handful of people that were not this bad, but when you try to implement a culture change that big in that short amount of time, it really was a slog for those people.)

http://www.clowncrack.com/about/

So why would you ask for 'outside the box' thinking from someone who is firmly residing inside the box? Wouldn't it be far better to ask someone not confined to said box for their thoughts?

My career, much like my life, has taken a non-linear path. And I don't think or live in the typical box.  So when you ask if I think 'outside the box' understand when I reply "Which box?"

Some further reading:

"The entire “social media” marketplace is now taking viewers, and ad dollars, from traditional media bringing the limelight to CEOs at Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in.  While newspaper companies like Tribune Corp., NYT, Dow Jones and Washington Post have faltered, pop publisher Arianna Huffington created $315M of value by hiring a group of bloggers to populate the on-line news tabloid Huffington Post.  And Apple is close to becoming the world’s most valuable publicly traded company on the back of new product innovations.

But, asking again, would your company hire the leaders of these companies?  Would it hire the Vice-President’s, Directors and Managers?  Or would you consider them too avant-garde? "

From  "Why Steve Jobs couldn't find a job today" - Forbes