When you're feeling that you want to be out of the box for someone, in that moment you're already out. You're feeling that way because you're now seeing him or her as a person. In feeling that way toward that person, you're already out of the box.
Leadership and Self-deception: Getting Out of the Box by Arbinger Institute. Berrett-Koehler. 2002. p.127
"You can't focus on results because in the box you're focused on yourself."
...Even most of the people you've encountered in your career who you think are results-focused really aren't. They value results primarily for the purpose of creating or sustaining their own stellar reputations. And you can tell because they generally don't feel that other people's results are as important as their own. Think about it - most people aren't nearly so happy when other people in the organization succeed as they are when they themselves do. So they run all over people trying to get only their own results - with devastating effects. They might beat their chests and preach focusing on results, but it's a lie. In the box, they, like everyone else, are just focused on themselves. But in the box, they, like everyone else, can't see it.
And it's even worse than that. Because, remember, in the box we provoke others to get in the box. We withhold information, for example, which gives others reason to do the same. We try to control others, which provokes the very resistance that we feel the need to control all the more. We withhold resources from others, who then feel the need to protect resources from us. We blame others for dragging their feet and in so doing give them reason to feel justified in dragging their feet all the more. And so on.
And through it all we think that all our problems would be solved if Jack wouldn't do this or if Linda wouldn't do that or if XYZ department would just straighten up of if the company would get a clue. But it's a lie. It's a lie even if Jack, Linda, XYZ department, and the company need to improve, which they surely do. Because when I'm blaming them, I'm not doing it because they need to improve, I'm blaming them because their shortcomings justify my failure to improve.
So, one person in an organization, by being in the box and failing to focus on results, provokes his or her coworkers to fail to focus on results as well. Collusion spreads far and wide, and the end result is that coworkers position themselves against coworkers, workgroups against workgroups, departments against departments. People who came together to help an organization succeed actually end up delighting in each other's failures and resenting each other's successes.
Leadership and Self-deception: Getting Out of the Box by Arbinger Institute. Berrett-Koehler. 2002. p.105-107
Leadership and Self-deception: Getting Out of the Box by Arbinger Institute. Berrett-Koehler. 2002. p.43
Leadership and Self-deception: Getting Out of the Box by Arbinger Institute. Berrett-Koehler. 2002. p.41
Guinness World Records Ltd. announced that the Brazilian sales manager holds the official record for the “longest career in the same company” after verifying in January that he’d been with the same textile firm for more than eight decades.
The centenarian began working as a shipping assistant at Industrias Renaux SA, now named RenauxView, a year before the outbreak of World War Two, when he was just 15 years old. He was quickly promoted to a position in sales, an area where he remains to this day.
For a little context, the median number of years that U.S. workers had been with their current employer in 2020 stood at 4.1, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So what’s the secret of Orthmann’s exceptional career?
“I don’t do much planning, nor care much about tomorrow. All I care about is that tomorrow will be another day in which I will wake up, get up, exercise and go to work,” Guinness quoted him as saying.
“You need to get busy with the present, not the past or the future.”
"This Manager Sets Record by Working for Same Company for 84 Years," Bloomberg. May 4, 2022
