The freedom of creative constraints

The Freedom of Constraints.

On the face of it, one would not think that constraints are liberating.  Handcuffs do not set you free.  But in leadership, they can be.   Here are a few examples

Time:  When a meeting is limited to 15 minutes, we seem to get it all done and the normal 1-hour time slot is liberated to do other things that matter.  There is something magic about saying, let’s be direct enough to accomplish this fully in constrained time. 

Cost:  When we ask our development team to build a new system for 10% less cost, they work on it.  But if we ask for 50% cost out, they completely rethink what they have to do and new opportunities in design emerge.  What is exciting is how many new ideas beyond the cost out have emerged as a part of the experience.

Manual:  In a recent meeting, I asked our team to think about what we’d have to do to make our next system user manual only 50 pages (the current one is 1400).  The ideas that emerged about user interaction and context-sensitive help are stunning.

Service: We have been working on how to reduce our variable costs by making the devices easier to serve.  But when we set the constraint such that the end-user with no tools and no special training had to be able to service the system, the whole design got simpler in almost every dimension.

10 words: The marketing guys are tired of my insistence that we rephrase key benefits in 10 words.  But the magic of this marketing haiku is that it drives clarity of thought and helps us to focus on what is truly important.  We are now much more clear because – in part – we are constrained to a short expression of the idea.

I am not the first to think about this.  Barry Schwartz has written about the paralysis of choice (link here).  His thesis is that when we have too many choices we are more paralyzed, less happy, and less satisfied.  If you read the commentary on the web site, you will see lots of debate about Schwartz’s approach.  Most of the comments focus on what makes a good constraint and who gets to choose.  Since I’m the leader, I get to choose, but I have noticed that some constraints are helpful and some are just painful.  I have been trying to sort out what the difference between good and bad constraints might be. 

Though this is still an emerging set of ideas, here is a set of guidelines I’m finding to be helpful:

Helpful, liberating constraints vs Unhelpful dominating constraints:

·      Helpful constraints are purpose-driven,
Unhelpful constraints are fear-driven

·      Helpful constraints are about what,
Unhelpful constraints are about how

·      Helpful constraints encourage complete rethinking,
Unhelpful constraints are incremental.

·      Helpful constraints are derived from possibility or opportunity,
Unhelpful constraints are derived from compliance or obligation

·      Helpful constraints require domain experience,
Unhelpful constraints are arbitrary or out of context

·      Helpful constraints are expressed as “What would we have to do in order to…?” 
Unhelpful constraints are expressed as “We need to…”

These all have one thing in common:  They give our teams permission to explore without the precondition that they commit.  The phrasing of the last item in the chart above states this most clearly.  “What would it take,” releases the team from the anxiety of their history and experience.  Instead of discounting potential solutions based on the last attempt or tribal wisdom, it allows them to explore what could be.  It turns cautious managers into possibility thinkers.

“What would it take to reduce approval time for a major program from five weeks to five days?”  I asked that question recently and I learned that we had to settle a few key vision questions, get a global team in the same place to debate remaining issues, and ensure some facilitation.  Then it was my choice about whether to allocate the resources.   We did it.  We unlocked the “it takes five weeks” mentality by setting a creative constraint of five days.  As the team explored what it would take, they were not committing to five days, but they provided the solution nevertheless.

 

Not a magic wand:  This concept of constraints is not a magic wand.  My team is currently struggling with a battery quality and supply chain issue.  I cannot just ask, “What would it take to solve this problem in 3 days?”  Though I have to admit that it is tempting!  Some problems take real technical expertise in the traditional sense.

I have also found that this is not a “just do it” magic wand.  The problem with just do it is that it forces a commitment more than it opens the opportunity to explore.  Recently we had a small team struggling between two Product Management options we really didn’t like.  In one case we would have a better long-term solution and in the other we would meet a short-term market need, but the two options were mutually exclusive.  In this case, the magic words were “We need another idea, let’s take the weekend to think about it.”  Sure enough, this opened up the freedom to rephrase the problem outside of the pressure of a just-do-it meeting.   This is an example of removing a constraint rather than imposing one.

So far, this is still more art than science, but I’m finding that there is great freedom in carefully crafted constraints.