The Gift of Constraints: Part Two

Constraints are your friend.

It seems counter intuitive, doesn’t it? But, as we discussed last week, if you are really serious about climbing the S Curve of Learning ?, you need to embrace constraints as some of your finest friends. Constraints paint the outline of the playing field, without which we would not have boundaries to play the game.

Last week we talked about how there are three specific ways in which constraints help you grow. Constraints 1) provide necessary feedback; 2) force you to focus on what is truly important, and; 3) decrease your sense of overwhelm or being overwhelmed. 

We know why they are helpful, but what do they look like and how should we approach them? Let’s talk about the first three of seven specific constraints and identify strategies to deal with each.

The seven major constraints are:

1. Time.
2. Rules.
3. Money.
4. Space.
5. Expertise.
6. Buy-in.
7. Emotional, or what we’ll call invisible constraints.

Time: Too little time usually isn’t the problem. Too much time is what causes trouble. Meaning, if you have a deadline for a week from today, you take the full week. If it’s a day, you take a day. If it’s an hour, you take an hour. If you want to get something done, you need the constraint of a deadline. Imposing a deadline can galvanize you and move you to action.

Once the deadline is set, tell everyone you possibly can. Share it with friends and family — even announce it on social media. Publicly announce “by such and such a date, I am going to submit a book proposal”, or “buy a house,” or “have a new job,” etc. Sharing both your goals and your deadlines provides accountability and unlocks feelings of fear and excitement. These feelings are proven to be activating emotions, which motivate us to get things done.

If you really want to move up your s curve quickly, impose a deadline that feels slightly ambitious. This will lead you to innovate, because the way you would have done it before may not work with the new time constraints.

Rules: Set by a boss or teacher, rules just are what they are. If you don’t like the rules, you usually have two options: you can leave the game, or you can negotiate new ones. Sometimes there are ethical loopholes in the rules that you can also use in your favor, but that often requires a mastery of the game.

Those are your options when rules are handed to you, but when is it helpful to create rules for yourself? A great example is writing. Staring at a blank piece of paper is torturous, but if you know you have to write a certain number of words about a specific topic, you have a place to start.

Money: This another common constraint. Nearly all of us have felt the tension of financial constraints. To harness the power of financial constraints, consider these questions.

• If you are inside of a large organization, if your business unit had to be profitable as a stand-alone entity, what would your business model be?
• If you had to assemble an A-team with only 80% of your current budget, what would you do?
• If you are on your own, and you have an idea, how can you test that idea with $1,000? Maybe even $100? Before you start borrowing and drawing down savings, start with a minimum viable product––a product that allows you to collect the maximum amount of information with the least cost.
• Finally, even if money is no object for you, how could you benefit from imposing a limit on your spending?

A life without constraints may sound idyllic. But the reality is that constraints are ever present in one way or another, and I genuinely believe that they are actually a gift. They force us innovate, focus, and grow to meet the challenges in front of us.

In next week’s column we will look at how space, expertise, buy-in, and emotional constraints can be leveraged and managed effectively.

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How can you begin to build in self-constraints around time? With whom could you share those constraints to create accountability? What rules do you need to embrace or negotiate? How can you look at money in new ways? If you have an idea, how can you produce a minimum viable product in order to get feedback before moving forward?

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Whitney Johnson is the CEO of human capital consultancy WLJ Advisors, an Inc. 5000 2020 fastest-growing private company in America. One of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world as named by Thinkers50, Whitney and her team are experts at helping high-growth organizations develop high-growth individuals. Whitney is the author of the bestselling Build an A Team and critically-acclaimed Disrupt Yourself, both published by Harvard Business Press. She is a world-class keynote speaker, frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School's Corporate Learning and an advisor to CEOs. She is a member of the original cohort of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith's 100 Coaches, and was selected as MG100 / Thinkers50 #1 Coach on Talent. Whitney has 1.8 million followers on LinkedIn, where she was selected as a Top Voice in 2018, and her course on Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship has been viewed more than 1 million times.?