Naturally, lots of people ask us where the name 7dots came from and what it means. Well, here’s the story…

The inspiration

I’m sure many of you have been lucky enough to attend a management training session. One of the exercises they often roll out is where they ask you to draw nine dots in a grid. You’re then asked to try and connect the dots using four connected straight lines. Usually only a handful of people manage, because the only way to complete the task is by the lines going beyond the grid and back in again:

The lesson the trainers are trying to convey is that you need to think outside of the box to complete the task.

It’s quite a predictable lesson, and although useful, it doesn’t really tell you very much. In fact, in our opinion, it misses something very important – that you need the ability to think inside of the box, to be able to think outside of the box.

What do we mean by “inside of the box”?

For a project to run successfully, you’ve got to get the fundamentals right – the bits inside of the box. In other words, the correct balance that ensures the project comes in, on time, to budget and to the requirements. We’ve written lots about this on The 7dots approach page if you’d like to read further! Once you’ve got this balance right, it will actually allow everyone working on the project more time, flexibility and space to complete their tasks – and therefore more time to think outside of the box.

So let’s go back to the puzzle. If you draw the first seven dots of that grid, leaving the last two out, you can now join all of the dots without going outside of the box:

And there you go, that’s how the name 7dots was born!

Let us know what you think below..