Creative Constraints: How Limitations Can Fuel Creativity

When we think about creativity, or more specifically the process of “being creative”, there’s a tendency to envision it as something that happens with reckless abandon. Whether it’s a group of people sitting in a room full of whiteboards, furiously generating ideas, or an artist creating a masterpiece from a blank canvas, we can’t help but imagine creativity as something that thrives without structure or limitation. But the reality of what generally fuels creative thinking for most people is actually much different.

Take the story of Keith Jarret — a renowned American jazz pianist — and his 1975 performance at the Cologne opera house. For the people fortunate enough to be in attendance that evening, it was a magical experience that is widely regarded as one his most memorable concerts. The recording of that evening’s performance was released as a double-album later that year, and went on to become what is still the best-selling piano album of all time. Amazingly though, the concert almost never happened.

Jarret was well known for being a perfectionist, who had particularly stringent demands when it came to his pianos. When he showed up for the concert that day however, he discovered that there had been a mistake — instead of the concert grand piano he had arranged for, the venue had provided a much smaller baby grand. On top of that, the piano — which was generally used for rehearsals — was in poor condition and badly out of tune. On the verge of cancelling the show, Jarret was persuaded to continue on by the concert promoter, under the condition that they do what they could to get the piano up to his standards by showtime, since there wasn’t enough time to have a replacement brought in. They did what they could to tune it, but the end result was far from ideal, and they couldn’t do much to improve it’s tone and timbre, which led to jangly high notes and poor bass. And to add insult to injury, the piano’s pedals were malfunctioning.

When Jarret took the stage that evening for his solo improvisation, he knew that he would be confined by the limitations of the piano. Yet somehow, faced with those constraints, he went on to deliver an iconic performance for the ages. Because of the piano’s poor quality, he was forced to play in a way he wouldn’t normally have, creating a sound that could only have come from that particular set of circumstances, and on that particular night.

Asked later about the performance, the album’s producer attributed the uncharacteristic sound to the piano’s shortcomings, saying:

“[Jarrett] played it the way he did because it was not a good piano. Because he could not fall in love with the sound of it, he found another way to get the most out of it.”

It seems counterintuitive to think that creativity can be fueled by constraints, but that was the case for Keith Jarret, and has been my experience as well. While I don’t generally work with concert pianists, I do work with a variety of professionals who are looking to generate new, innovative ideas, and the deliberate use of constraints is one of the most effective ways to help them do that.

Constraints are often viewed negatively — as something that handicaps a process — but if you’ve ever participated in a typical “brainstorm” session, where everyone sits around the table, blindly shouting ideas over one another before discussing them ad nauseum, you’ve seen how ineffective a totally open-ended ideation session can be. Applied the right way, and at the right time, constraints can actually be incredibly helpful and can enable teams to unlock ideas that would have otherwise gone unrealized. As a result, we deliberately incorporate constraints into our workshops — sometimes a specific limitation is built into a particular exercise ahead of time, and other times we’ll make an in-the-moment decision to apply a constraint, based on the dynamics of the particular group.

Here’s a list of some of the most common types we use to help fuel creativity in the teams we work with:

Time

Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Whether you have an hour or a week to work on a particular task, it’s likely that the work will grow to fill that span. And while in some cases, more time to work on something is unquestionably better, ideation isn’t something that has to take very long. If a team is well primed — meaning they’ve spent the time to really understand the problem they’re trying to solve for — they can generally come up with ideas in a comparatively short period of time. In the course of a 2–3 day workshop, we generally only have 10–15 minutes of time allocated specifically to ideating. The teams come into that section of the day confident in their knowledge of the problem, and the strict time limit forces them to quickly get ideas out of their heads without discussion or evaluation. Time limits also play a critical role in forcing teams to make quick decisions throughout the course of a workshop, since there’s no opportunity to deliberate. Without a finite time limit, an ideation session can quickly spiral out of control into a meandering discussion, so this constraint can help you create a sense of urgency to keep things moving.

Discussion

One of the most effective meeting formats we’ve used to help teams come up with new ideas is something we call a Silent Storm. It takes place over the course of 45–60 minutes, and aside from some prompting from the facilitator along the way, is done largely in silence. By eliminating discussion, we minimize unhelpful tangents and sidebar conversations, remove unnecessary debate over the validity of any particular idea, and strip away any opportunity for a strong personality to take over the conversation — all of which are potential downsides to a traditional “brainstorm” session. As a result, each participant can ideate freely and without judgement. It’s often uncomfortable at first, but teams are continually amazed at the effectiveness of the format, allowing them to efficiently generate new and innovative ideas — all without talking!

Space

Similar to Parkinson’s Law, we’ve often seen ideas expand to fill the physical space they’re given as well. Give someone a blank whiteboard, and they’ll either fill it with an overly complex idea or two, or will be so intimidated by the thought of filling all that blank space that they’ll effectively be paralyzed. That’s one of the many reasons we rely heavily on Post-it notes (and Sharpies!) in our sessions. The small space encourages brevity and the ephemeral nature of the paper itself allows participants to quickly jot down ideas without feeling as though they must first be fully baked.

Decisions

A productive ideation session can spawn tons of great ideas. So many in fact, that there can often be a tendency for a team to want to keep them all, instead of trying to decide on the one with the most potential upside. By trying to take all of their ideas forward however, a team won’t be successful in the implementation of any single one of them. On the flip side of that same coin, allowing teams the opportunity to decide on a single, top idea via an open discussion is an exercise in futility — people will quickly get bogged down in a lengthy discussion around the viability of each and every one of the ideas, and will usually still be unable to collectively decide on a single one. Instead, we use a voting system to ensure quick decision making. By giving every participant a finite amount of votes — and setting a strict time limit in which they must cast them! — we force efficient decisions, and ensure that the strongest ideas are taken forward in a democratic fashion.

Language/Wording

Sometimes, placing a constraint on the types of words people are able to use can help bring about unexpected ideas. Anyone familiar with the improv concept of “Yes, and” can attest the power of a simple reframe. At certain points in a session, we may have participants take top-voted ideas and quickly expand upon them by using the generative “Yes, and” technique. Rather than being able to evaluate or discuss potential issues with the ideas, they’re asked to only use the words “Yes, and…” prior to their statement — “Yes, and we could build it in virtual reality.” By constraining the use of certain language this way, we ensure that teams are quickly able to push the limits of their thinking around a given idea, and collectively generate something that a single person would not have been able to.

Artificial Constraints (“Powers of 10”)

There are times when a team may ‘hit the wall’ in their ideation, and seemingly run out of ideas. By imposing an artificial constraint however, we often see that it unlocks their ability to generate additional concepts, by pushing them to think of options they wouldn’t have otherwise. An example might be “What might this look like if we only had a budget of $10?”. Conversely, it could be something along the lines of “What if we had $10 million to build it?”. By picking a particular “lever” as a constraint (e.g. time, budget, technology, etc) and scaling it up or down exponentially, you can push teams to think outside of the box they may have gotten stuck within.

Constraints can be an especially useful tool, when properly applied. The next time you’re leading, or participating in, an ideation session, resist the tendency to follow the usual “group brainstorm” format and think about how you might leverage the power of constraints to help supercharge the team’s creativity.