The Beauty of Constraints

So Many Rules, 2020

At the moment, many of us are encountering more constraints than we have ever experienced in our lifetimes. Options and freedoms of all kinds are limited. Your summer vacation plans? Canceled. Back to school in the fall? Not so sure. Even a simple trip to the grocery store has become a somewhat complicated maneuver.

But there may yet be reason to rejoice. We might just be entering the most energized and accelerated period of innovation in recent history.

It may seem counter-intuitive that constraints spark innovation. It flies in the face of the traditional approach to strategy. With the classic SWOT analysis, for example, you identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats an organization faces in order to exploit the strengths and opportunities and mitigate the weaknesses and threats.

But those weaknesses and threats may, paradoxically, be what activate your imagination and unearth opportunity. Constraints encourage idea generation by applying focus and urgency to the task at hand. Through the lens of constraints, you can think about how your limitations can be turned to your advantage.

Artists do this when they choose to work exclusively within a particular structure or medium. Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) famously wrote Green Eggs and Ham after Random House founder Bennett Cerf bet him that he couldn’t write a children’s book with just 50 different words. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she found herself trapped indoors during an unusually cold and stormy summer near Lake Geneva with nothing else to do. 

Desperate times have historically unleashed ingenuity. During the Great Depression, flour and cow feed were sold in printed cotton bags so women could repurpose the bags as dresses. Today, we’re turning our old t-shirts into face masks and repurposing canned goods as dumbbells for our home workouts. 

A visit to any shop or restaurant in your neighborhood quickly reveals how bricks and mortar businesses have gotten creative. Open your screen of choice, and you’ll see the handiwork of tech innovators hustling to meet your every need.

Video conferencing apps saw a record 62 million downloads during one week in March. Zoom’s revenues are up 200% and profits are up 300% this year. Beyond backdrops and breakout rooms, the category is rapidly innovating ways for people to connect.

Healthcare has been transformed. Telemedicine, long idling in the land of "maybe someday" has gone mainstream. Doximity, the professional medical network, met the surge in demand by rapidly ramping up their telemedicine tool, Dialer Video, enabling physicians to securely video call patients directly from their smartphones. 

While the challenges of COVID-19 are obvious, they are far from the only constraints your business will face. Now and in the future, asking how you can turn limitations into innovations is a powerful strategy. 

Instead of assessing your organization’s competencies, take a look at your “incompetencies.” Where can a weakness be turned into a strength? Where might a threat actually be an opportunity? How will you find a solution that satisfies the conditions you're presented with?

I’d love to hear about what you find.