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Below are four simple questions. Try to answer all of them before looking at the answers.

1. How do you put a giraffe into a fridge?
2. How do you put an elephant into a fridge?
3. The King of the Jungle is holding a meeting for all of the animals. One of them is not there. Which one?
4. You are standing on the bank of an alligator infested river and have to get to the other side. What do you do?

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A survey by Accenture found that approximately 90% of managers are likely to incorrectly answer all of the questions. Many school children under the age of six will actually get these questions right. What does this say about management thinking?

And now for the answers to the four questions above:

1. Open the fridge, put the giraffe inside, and then close the fridge.
2. Open the fridge, remove the giraffe, put the elephant inside, and close the fridge.
3. The elephant. The elephant is in the fridge.
4. You swim across the river because all the alligators are attending the meeting.

This is what the questions are trying to find out:

1. Checks to see if you try to make simple things complicated and make assumptions about problem boundaries. Nobody actually said that the fridge was not big enough to put a giraffe inside!
2. Tests your ability to consider previous actions. Who says that they are four separate questions?
3. Simply tests your memory.
4. Checks to see how quickly you learn. After all, you must have answered question 4 correctly if you are a successful Senior Manager.

Michael Michalko is a highly-acclaimed creativity expert and author of the best-seller Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), ThinkPak (A Brainstorming Card Deck), Cracking Creativity (The Secrets of Creative Genius), and Creative Thinkering (Putting your Imagination to Work). CEO-READ cited Thinkertoys as one of the best business books of all time.