Turn obsta­cles into strate­gic advan­tage with constraints

If life gives you lemons 🍋

In Feb­ru­ary 1963, four noobs gath­ered to record their debut stu­dio album. The pro­duc­tion bud­get was bare­ly four hun­dred pounds. They had one day – thir­teen hours, to be more pre­cise– to work through four­teen songs, sev­en on each side of a shiny new vinyl LP.

Short­ly after 10pm, the pro­duc­ers told them they had only fif­teen min­utes left to do the last song. They were exhaust­ed. The singer was sick and with a sore throat, on the edge of los­ing his voice. One take was all he had left in him.

The band was The Bea­t­les, the song was ​“Twist & Shout”, and it took the world by storm.

We’ll nev­er know what kind of record would have result­ed from a more expen­sive and lengthy record­ing process. But we know for sure that the con­straints improved the out­come. Lennon’s voice sounds par­tic­u­lar­ly grit­ty in that track. Play it, you’ll hear him giv­ing it all. It makes you want to jump off your chair, shake your head and sing it at the top of your voice. The chal­leng­ing time and con­di­tions turned out to be pro­pellers for suc­cess. Twist & Shout was an instant hit across the ocean and kick­start­ed Beat­le­ma­nia. Six­ty years lat­er, it’s still going strong, with near­ly 400M streams on Spo­ti­fy. It’s not the only exam­ple of hap­py acci­dents, spon­ta­neous cre­ation and unex­pect­ed suc­cess in rock & roll history.

Con­straints are tack­led bet­ter under pres­sure.

In July 1981, David Bowie found out that Queen were jam­ming next to him at the stu­dio, so he inter­rupt­ed their ses­sion and dared them to write a song togeth­er. The unlike­ly com­bi­na­tion of Bowie and Mercury’s larg­er than life per­son­al­i­ties result­ed in a quirky, bril­liant song, record­ed on the fly, that makes you fear it won’t work, but then it does, and that remains pow­er­ful, poignant and unique decades lat­er. Sab­bath owes their sound to Tony Iommi’s acci­dent. Los­ing his fin­gers forced him to play with loos­er strings, result­ing in a dark­er, mood­i­er and low­er gui­tar tone that nobody else had. In the 80s, New Order changed the music scene, forced to inno­vate after the trag­ic loss of their irre­place­able frontman.

There are plen­ty of inspir­ing sto­ries about peo­ple thriv­ing in spite of their con­straints. The ones that are tru­ly spec­tac­u­lar are those that thrived because of their constraints.

I chose this dad rock intro because music, and par­tic­u­lar­ly (and his­tor­i­cal­ly) rock music chal­lenges the sta­tus quo. It rebels against the odds and expec­ta­tions. It seeks unique­ness. There’s a les­son for busi­ness strat­e­gy there: Find­ing the way around your company’s lim­i­ta­tions – real, imag­i­nary, eco­nom­ic, time-based, mar­ket-based, social or oth­er­wise – helps a com­pa­ny evolve. This rein­forces focus, dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, orig­i­nal­i­ty, lat­er­al think­ing, and pragmatism.

Devel­op­ing a habit to ana­lyze, reverse and face these bound­aries can help you move from stag­na­tion to motion, and from motion to success.

— San­ti

Why you care

Lever­ag­ing con­straints is a key strat­e­gy – pos­si­bly the key strate­gic ele­ment – for grow­ing small and mid-mar­ket com­pa­nies. When you’re big enough, you are some­what more able to cre­ate your real­i­ty, which only clash­es against the real­i­ties of oth­ers as big as you. But when you’re fight­ing to grow and posi­tion, con­straints are every­where. You have to adapt, and use the company’s lim­i­ta­tions in cre­ative and unex­pect­ed ways that work in your favor.

This is a poten­tial­ly end­less sub­ject, so let’s nar­row it down to a few com­mon con­straints you can cir­cum­vent for some oper­a­tional and com­pet­i­tive edge.

1. Time constraints.

Parkinson’s Law states that work will expand itself until it fits all the time avail­able. Lim­it­ing the max­i­mum time devot­ed to some­thing – and being strict about it – can work won­ders. It’s eas­i­er to be prag­mat­ic, pri­or­i­tize, decide, and ship good stuff when you’re run­ning out of time and don’t have time to sec­ond-guess anything.

Any­time you face a new project or chal­lenge, con­sid­er a ​“min­i­mum viable every­thing” approach. What are the absolute essen­tials I need to keep? How can I get rid of all the noise, bells, whis­tles and what­not so I can reach my very tight deadline?

Cut­ting time in half

Back in 2013, when Mailchimp start­ed devel­op­ing a name for their quirky and unique cre­ative mar­ket­ing, for­mer CEO Ben Chest­nut con­fessed the key ingre­di­ents were ​“per­mis­sion to be cre­ative” and ​“tak­ing away time”:

“The one vari­able you can tweak where it real­ly does­n’t mat­ter what indus­try you’re in — it’s the most effec­tive vari­able in my opin­ion — is time. Take away time.”

Essen­tial­ly he agreed to devel­op any idea if it was done in half the ini­tial­ly esti­mat­ed time. In turn, this accel­er­at­ed the process, removed bureau­cra­cy and helped the team achieve val­ue and focus faster. Fun fact: They did this to us too, when they hired us to build 60 Mailchimp tem­plates, in 60 days. It went well.

Tools & Tips

Focus­ing can be tough. Prag­ma­tism does­n’t come nat­u­ral­ly to most of us. Here are some tips and resources we’ve found helpful:

• Cher­ish order. Find the time to choose your favorite time man­age­ment sys­tem or frame­work. There are tons of options out there. From Pomodoro to GTD, Dot Jour­nal or Sun­sama, you’ll find plen­ty of tools, both dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal. We’re all dif­fer­ent and some tech­niques will feel like a bet­ter fit. Try them until one feels natural.
• Check out Seth Godin’s Ship It jour­nal. There’s a love­ly print­ed edi­tion, too. Think of it as a way to write a project plan by can­did­ly answer­ing a list of tough (and thought­ful) questions.
• Smart choic­es beat suc­cess­ful choic­es. Some are lucky, oth­ers have a sys­tem. Find your way to make deci­sions faster. Far­nam St. is a great resource we lean on, a lot, when we need brain food to make the right calls.
• And fight pro­cras­ti­na­tion. We stand against this mod­ern obses­sion with per­for­mance. Doing noth­ing is good. Recharg­ing is good. Not being super effi­cient some­times is nec­es­sary for cre­ative out­put. But pro­cras­ti­na­tion (or ​“the forces of resis­tance” as Press­field called them) is the oppo­site of rest­ing, cre­ativ­i­ty, and ener­gy. It’s draining.

If you want to do your job and do it fast, get rid of all those things you’ve been drag­ging on for months, focus on what mat­ters, and set a restric­tive time­line for it.

2. Mon­ey con­straints in a don’t call it reces­sion world.

If we had a dol­lar for every time some­one said ​“we don’t have the bud­get for it”, well, we’d have the bud­get for it.

Mon­ey (the lack there­of) is a quick, sim­ple to under­stand, very real and pret­ty com­fort­able excuse to shut down inno­va­tion and ideas. Let’s fig­ure out how to work around these:

Can-If Solu­tions: Train­ing ways to think dif­fer­ent­ly about problems

We talked a lot about the pow­er of fram­ing in past issues. ​“Can-If” sequences work great to run opti­mism-dri­ven group meet­ings that reward think­ing about solu­tions instead of the bar­ri­ers. It’s reverse-engi­neer­ing the suc­cess­ful out­come you don’t have yet, mov­ing back­ward from your ide­al sce­nario to your cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Take the fol­low­ing claim:

“We can’t beat the com­pe­ti­tion. They have more resources, a bet­ter prod­uct, and bet­ter positioning.”

A solu­tion explo­ration tree would look like this:

1. We can beat them if we improve our prod­uct and keep the prices
2. We can improve the prod­uct if we hire bet­ter talent
3. We can hire bet­ter tal­ent and keep the prices if we reduce our costs
4. We can reduce our costs if we hire a nearshoring kick­ass agency (wink wink)
5. We can also reduce our costs if we go ful­ly remote and sell our office

It’s a very reduced exam­ple but you get it. By rephras­ing a seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble sce­nario and shift­ing the dis­cus­sion to pos­si­ble futures we dri­ve the con­ver­sa­tion. Now we know we can stand up to the com­pe­ti­tion if cer­tain con­di­tions are met, and each of those con­di­tions has a spe­cif­ic and known set of require­ments and mea­sur­able, attain­able goals.

A group exer­cise like this one was what prompt­ed us to switch to a #four­day­work­week sched­ule. Becom­ing aware of our own lim­i­ta­tions pushed us to try an inno­v­a­tive struc­ture, which in turn enriched our cul­ture, attract­ed tal­ent, and grew employ­ee reten­tion, thus mak­ing us a bet­ter and more com­pet­i­tive agency.

Turn­ing scarci­ty into an advantage

The scarci­ty heuris­tic is a very inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non. We’re wired to per­ceive scarce assets as more valu­able. A lega­cy irra­tional deci­sion dri­ver from the ear­ly days of our species. In sales, this is linked direct­ly to the fear of miss­ing out (FOMO) effect.

There are sce­nar­ios where scarci­ty is forced and faked just to increase demand and add a pre­mi­um to the price. Dia­monds, Bit­coin and NFTs are well-known exam­ples. Don’t get us start­ed on those.

Unique and irre­place­able pieces in art or fash­ion are expen­sive for the same rea­son. Lux­u­ry col­lec­tions like Apple + Her­mès fall in a sim­i­lar category.

When it comes to our con­straints, we can lever­age real scarce resources – such as inven­to­ry short­age, expen­sive oper­a­tional costs, slow pro­duc­tion – and flip the nar­ra­tive. You’ve seen the ​“Only x items avail­able” UX pat­tern many times. Tak­ing a pur­pose­ly small inven­to­ry and turn­ing it into email flash sales cam­paigns or sub­scrip­tion-based e‑commerce can be a great way to turn a con­straint into a sales oppor­tu­ni­ty and cus­tomer deci­sion driver.

3. Con­strained by Weaknesses

The entre­pre­neur’s triple night­mare: What you don’t know you don’t know, what lies beneath fear, and what you can­not control.

In essence, weak­ness­es. These are con­straints too. Some might be self-induced, but that’s rarely the point. They’re there to freeze you.

Inven­to­ry time: Assets, Bound­aries and Narrative

Aware­ness about a com­pa­ny’s weak­ness­es often requires more than a stan­dard SWOT analy­sis. Both your strong points and your blind spots go way beyond fig­ures or posi­tion­ing. The ABN analy­sis is a team exer­cise that helps you eval­u­ate shared assump­tions and understand:

• Your assets. The things you have that are valu­able for your busi­ness. Assets include your prod­uct, team, knowl­edge, posi­tion­ing, cus­tomer or brand, as well as your actu­al assets such as prop­er­ties, IP or cashflow.
• Your bound­aries. What are the things you’d nev­er do? Or that you won’t stop doing? How far can you push a strate­gic deci­sion in any vec­tor? This includes your pur­pose and ethics, as well as your will to trans­form or adapt your busi­ness in any pos­si­ble way.
• Your nar­ra­tive. What’s your busi­ness sto­ry? How do you present it to your cus­tomers (mar­ket­ing and sto­ry­telling, mis­sion, vision) and to your team (cul­ture and val­ues)? Thor­ough­ly ana­lyze and ques­tion your sto­ry in order to con­sol­i­date it.

As a result of this group work, your team will align their vision of the stuff you can count on to build (or rebuild, or reset) your busi­ness strat­e­gy. It removes wrong assump­tions and replaces them with new ones built by con­sen­sus. You might find some weak­ness­es are only strengths or virtues in disguise.

Kill the company

Lisa Bodel­l’s book pro­pos­es an excit­ing and slight­ly ter­ri­fy­ing exer­cise. Gath­er a group of your team mem­bers and give them a chal­lenge: If you were a com­peti­tor look­ing to take us out of busi­ness, how would you do it?

The brain­storm­ing ses­sion soon becomes a cre­ative weak­ness trea­sure hunt. Once you have a good set of ideas, you can start tack­ling them one by one.

• How can you take the steps to pre­vent such scenarios?
• What pat­terns are sur­fac­ing that might indi­cate the need for a big­ger inter­nal change?
• What are the strengths you did­n’t real­ize you had?

Throw in a quick Miro board and you can run this remote­ly from your favorite mis­chie­vous loca­tion or com­pa­ny-killer lair.

E‑Commerce sto­ries: Turn­ing weak­ness­es into superpowers

You know this one. Zap­pos pret­ty much set the gold­en stan­dard for e‑commerce cus­tomer care and fric­tion­less shop­ping. Sell­ing shoes in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent and dig­i­tal chan­nel wasn’t easy. Peo­ple were used to try them before buy­ing. Zap­pos embraced this phys­i­cal con­straint and worked around it:

They paid for all ship­ping, made return­ing shoes crazy easy, craft­ed an inno­v­a­tive nar­ra­tive, expe­ri­ence and cus­tomer edu­ca­tion set of con­tent, and increased the qual­i­ty of their cus­tomer sup­port team.

The result was a ground­break­ing busi­ness mod­el, one of the first mas­sive­ly suc­cess­ful e‑commerce stores, and the dis­rup­tion of an indus­try nobody thought could go digital.

Hard mode ON: Forc­ing con­straints ftw

Even if you have all the resources you need, con­straints are good for devel­op­ing skills and styles. It’s like exer­cis­ing your resilience and prob­lem-solv­ing muscle.

Green Eggs and Ham is bril­liant because Dr. Seuss accept­ed the chal­lenge of writ­ing it using fifty words. Son­nets, déci­mas or Kishōten­ket­su set the rules and bound­aries of poet­ry and sto­ry­telling because it just works. Argen­tinean folk singer Leon Gieco released a uni­vo­cal­ic song called ​“Ojo con los Oroz­co” (“Watch out for the Oroz­cos”) with pop cul­ture ref­er­ences to char­ac­ters like Don John­son, Los Lobos, John and Yoko, and The Doors. Dan­ish Dogme95 films are unique because the film­mak­ers have to get the most out of a very strict and aus­tere set of rules.

In writ­ing, con­straints are blank page killers that help you get start­ed when you have no idea where or how to begin. Try using only 50 words, only 140 char­ac­ters, only one vow­el. The pos­si­bil­i­ties (offered by lim­it­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties) are end­less.

Learn­ing the habit of choos­ing our own con­straints is a great way to get rid of every­thing unim­por­tant, shift­ing the focus to what mat­ters. Our minds thrive when they’re challenged.

Cre­ativ­i­ty loves constraints.

From our mar­ket­ing sprints to our growth-based flex­i­ble devel­op­ment plans, we’re quite good at rework­ing con­straints for oth­ers too. Con­tact us and let’s chat.

Coda: Bal­anc­ing tension

We tend to believe that it’s the best con­di­tions that enable the best per­for­mance. If only we could have unlim­it­ed time, unlim­it­ed mon­ey, unlim­it­ed options… It doesn’t real­ly work that way. Far from hin­der­ing cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion and reduc­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties, lim­i­ta­tions, and ten­sion ignite cre­ative expres­sion and growth.

Think tightrope walk­ing. Release the ten­sion, and the tightrope becomes a soft­rope, you freefall help­less­ly like Wile E. Coy­ote and it’s a spec­ta­cle, sure, but hard­ly an exer­cise in cre­ative mastery.

The tightrope forces the firm bound­aries that shape the act. It is the intense lim­i­ta­tion of that tight line beneath that chan­nels the walker’s dri­ve to move for­ward into pre­ci­sion and bal­ance and stay­ing the right course. The rope defines the direc­tion and prompts for­ward. Con­straints simul­ta­ne­ous­ly lim­it options and spur solu­tions. The rigid con­straints don’t deter the tightrope artist’s per­for­mance — they make it pos­si­ble. For the tightrope artist, restric­tions become not an obsta­cle to over­come, but the very heart of the per­for­mance. It’s the con­straint that brings out the dancer with­in. The tightrope makes the artist.

Cre­ativ­i­ty thrives on the ten­sion between vision and limitations.

Think­ing inside a care­ful­ly select­ed very small box unlocks out-of-the-box think­ing and oper­at­ing. Like when a painter decides to use only pri­ma­ry col­ors or a musi­cian writes in a fixed poet­ic form, bound­aries shape and breed creativity.

Rock n’ roll, exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing, chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, paint­ing; regard­less of the dis­ci­pline, the most icon­ic cre­ations often emerge from cre­ative minds chal­leng­ing them­selves and defy­ing con­ven­tions under constraints.

Art imi­tates life, and bound­aries breed orig­i­nal­i­ty in every area. This rene­gade spir­it of art applies to busi­ness strat­e­gy too. Con­straints can spark inno­va­tion, focus efforts, and ignite lat­er­al think­ing. And rea­son­able pres­sure and obsta­cles can help pro­mote evo­lu­tion and growth. With grit, vision, and cre­ative defi­ance, con­straints become the moth­ers of invention.

— Pat

Num­bers (most of them are not fake)

• The usu­al run­ning time for Doc­tor Who episodes is 50 min­utes. ​“42” is an episode set in real-time, as The Doc­tor has 42 min­utes to save Martha and the crew from doom.
• In 2002, the team work­ing on what lat­er became Google Books cal­cu­lat­ed there were 129,864,880 book titles pub­lished in the world.
• 25 – 5 is the tra­di­tion­al Pomodoro time man­age­ment rule. 25 min­utes of focused work, fol­lowed by 5‑minute breaks.
• These 20 songs you prob­a­bly know were writ­ten in 20 min­utes or less.
• Today we’re cel­e­brat­ing our 13^th anniver­sary as Big­Com­merce part­ners.