What does ATM mean? Many of us would answer "Automatic Teller Machine". My friend too answered the same when he was asked this question in a job interview. He thought it was the obvious answer like most of us. But the interviewer was expecting him to explain "Asynchronous Transfer Mode" for his question. Then, the interviewer offered him the job and said to him "I liked your out of box thinking about ATM. Though you are from electronics background you could quickly relate ATM to our day to day activities".
That was the time when ATM was not as common as today. Our college got its first ATM few months before this incident. And probably the interviewer has not been used up with Automatic Teller Machine as he has used Asynchronous Transfer Mode.
The interviewer said "You need to think out of box for solving complex problems". Is it so?
What seamed to be more obvious for one person was looking out of box thinking for the other. As everything, out of box thinking also depends on person's perception. So we cannot clearly distinguish out of box thinking.
For a given problem, thinking of all possible ways to solve is the best way. This includes approaches which you might think as a silly approach.
We would have solved 2d maze puzzle in magazines where we need to move from one corner to the other through the maze. Mostly the solution path would go exactly opposite to the destination initially. We might not be required to come closer to the solution for the approach which we take. Just moving away from current position of the problem helps. If the approach doesn't solve the problem, you can restart from the beginning.
One day I saw ATM board over a medical shop. When I went closer it read - "Any Time Medicine"! Do you have any other phrase or have come across any other phrase which has ATM as acronym?
