Hack #6: Combatting Constraints
Don’t play the victim. Shift your mindset from “can’t” to “can, if”.
Welcome to the 6th post in our #Hacks series where we provide you with all the tools you need to solve your most stubborn challenges in 2 hours (or less).
Humans are creatures of habit. Left to our own devices, most of us would be happy just doing the same **** over and over again. We hate anything that gets in the way of “business as usual”. Remember the last time somebody reduced your budget or timeline unexpectedly, how did you feel? Pissed, right? Don’t worry, that’s how most people feel when constraints force us from our predictable path. But, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Don’t Play the Victim….Think “Can, If”
The impact of constraints depends on our reaction. It’s all too easy to throw our hands up and accept defeat. It’s all too easy to scale back ambition. However, I guarantee that if you try and do something 10% less, it will be 10% worse. The next time you’re faced with a constraint, don’t play the victim. Don’t focus on what you can no longer do. Respond to your constraint and maintain your ambition, by shifting your mindset from “can’t” to “can, if”.
Focus On the Essentials
You can certainly combat constraints if you focus on what’s truly essential. Take the clean birth kits developed by Zubaida Bai and her Ayzh initiative (check out my interview with Zubaida here). Zubaida was troubled by the dangers of childbirth in her native India. She knew people in her native India couldn’t afford the $15,000 cost of births in the developed world. She responded by focusing on the bare essentials. So far, she’s distributed 400,000 of her $3 clean birth kits and saved countless lives. Such frugal innovation or Jugaad is the perfect response to constraints.
I guarantee that if you try and do something 10% less, it will be 10% worse.
Redefine Resources
We can also combat constraints if we redefine “resources”. To do so, we need to shift our mindset from “owned” to “available” resources. Ikea can sell discounted furniture, because they use their customers to assemble their products. The leading microfinance institution Grameen Bank reduce default costs through an accountability system where customers incentivize each other to perform. Startups across the world have responded to their own financial constraints by securing vendor financing by pre-selling products through crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter — offering creative “sponsor” benefits to offset risk concerns of the buyer. By taking a broader definition of resources, we can more than offset the impact of constraints.
They Don’t Even Have to Be Real
Constraints don’t even have to be real. Some of the most successful companies in the world have imposed artificial constraints to force themselves to think differently. Check out these guerrilla marketing campaigns run by Nike, Coca Cola, Ikea and Oreo. Do you think these were the result of real budget constraints? Of course not. They knew that by constraining their budgets, they could break free from predictable thinking and discover creative new ways to advertise their products.
It Started With A Constraint
Our innovation agency Lateral Labs itself is built around a fundamental constraint. We help people solve their most stubborn challenges in 2 hours (or less). Notice I didn’t say, “We help people solve their easiest challenges”, which would be very tempting given our time constraints. No, we ramped up our ambition by focusing on stubborn challenges while still abiding by our 2 hour constraint. How do we do it? We get resourceful, check out below.
As you can see from the template, there are many things from the old way of doing things (the traditional consulting model) that we could no longer do. How did we respond? Here are our 5 favorite responses to our time constraint.
1. “Exploit” Frustration
When people spend so much time trying to solve a stubborn challenge, fatigue and lethargy inevitably sets in. We only have 2 hours — we don’t have time for that. We start our sessions by creating a sense of urgency. We outline the gravity of the situation and the consequences of failure. Sure, it takes 5 of the 120 minutes, but that pent up frustration sure lights a fire under people.
2. “Add” People
If we only have 2 hours, there’s no use relying on the same few people. Why would you want to rely on the same tired minds that have failed anyway? Instead, we widen participation. In our Hackathon events, it’s not unusual for us to have more than 100 people working in teams to solve a real challenge real-time. It’s simple math. Increase participants, decrease time per idea.
3. “Mix” Diverse Minds
Humans love to hire clones. Simply “adding” these clones to the mix would not get us anywhere. We need to increase quality AND quantity. We need a “mix” of diverse minds. We carefully curate participants to ensure we have the diversity of thought necessary to think differently about our challenges. And don’t think we just mean internally — when we say diversity, we mean it!
4. “Swap” Analysis for Instinct
Consultants focus on what you don’t know rather than what you do know. Design-thinking firms encourage you to spend days observing customer behavior, strategy firms want you to study the competition ad nauseam. We don’t have time. We go with what we know. We’ll take instinct over analysis any day (and trust me, I’m sure you’ve done way too much analyzing already).
5. “Borrow” Ideas from Other Domains
Stealing in fast. There’s no need for us to reinvent the wheel, we simply copy, adapt and paste solutions from other domains. Dyson took inspiration from centrifugal forces in mills to solve dust capture in vacuum cleaners. We used sales strategies from florists to increase revenue for a baker. We use our peripheral vision to steal ideas from other domains and solve problems fast.
Wrapping Up
If you think constraints will crush your ambition, they undoubtedly will. Don’t play the victim. Embrace constraints and discover creative solutions to your most stubborn challenges.
