Embracing the Beauty of Constraints

By Mark Barden

Constraints get a bad rap. People see them as wholly negative: they impede progress and diminish potential. Entrepreneurs, in particular, seem locked in a perpetual grim struggle against scarce resources and abundant obstacles.

But constraints can also be fertile, enabling—even desirable. They can make people and businesses more than they were rather than less than they could be. Constraints force people to reframe problems and get creative, and from that fresh perspective and creativity emerge new opportunities: superior alternatives at which smooth, open roads would never have arrived.

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In these “interesting times” when our lives seem chock full of constraints thanks to the pandemic, it can be liberating to think about the possibilities in the constraints.

Examples are everywhere:

• The clean, almost Zen look of the Google homepage is the result of a knowledge constraint. Co-founder Larry Page had limited HTML skills when the business was founded.
• Zappos’s enormously popular one-year return policy with free two-way shipping is the result of a market constraint. Customers are reluctant to buy shoes without trying them on.
• The NBA’s adrenalin-pumping run-and-gun game is the result of a time constraint. Players have 24 seconds to attempt to score before the shot clock runs out.
• Jerry Seinfeld’s remarkable career is the result of a content constraint. The comedian denies himself obvious sources of humor such as sex, politics, or just about anything else people are actually interested in.

Google and Zappos were responding to external constraints, which is the typical scenario for startups, but the NBA and Seinfeld created their own constraints. Can you imagine becoming so confident in your ability to transform your limitations into gold that you might impose them on yourself?

As advisors to the plucky challengers of the modern world, we’ve been wrestling with this subject for 20 years. Our research spans four continents and numerous industries and we’ve reached some simple, but powerful conclusions about the mindset, method, and motivation required to make constraints beautiful, including:

• How existing behaviors and practices lead to “path dependence” that makes you blind to the opportunity in constraints. It can be important to “clean house” of those before you start
• How harnessing ambitions to constraints creates “propelling questions” that can reveal entirely new paths to growth. Incremental ambition leads to incremental change, big ambition drives big change
• Why taking a “Can If” approach to answering these kinds of questions is a prerequisite to success. Beginning every sentence with “we can meet our ambition if we…” keeps positivity in the conversation and prevents ideas getting shut down too soon
• Why resourcefulness today is less about getting things done and more about being able to identify and access the abundant resources hidden all around us. Your own budget is just a starting point. Ask who else has resources and what we can help them with to get what we want. This is the mutually beneficial hustle we see in places without a lot of resource

With the right mindset, method and motivation, the thing that binds you may just be the thing that liberates you to achieve greater success. Good luck!

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Making Educational Constraints Beautiful
with Mark Barden | 3.16.2021
Barden shares a wealth of information on how to leverage the constraints in education to create more than if no constraints existed at all.  

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Mark Barden has worked with a wide variety of companies, such as Sony Playstation, Audi, and Charles Schwab; has frequently spoken at the Hult International School of Business and at Presidio Business School; and co-authored the book A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transfor Your Limitations into Advantages and Why It's Everyon'e Business.

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