Constraints for Growth (even during the COVID-19 stay at home order)
Up until a few weeks ago it was business as usual for most of us. The world worked a certain way under certain conditions that have been reliable for many years. At least until they weren’t. COVID-19 has changed much of that with people working from home, moving online and canceling travel. The rules of engagement have changed.
I’ve spent a career in innovation in some shape or form — as an entrepreneur, investor and most recently, teaching people and companies how to innovate. We define innovation as a significant positive change. It can of course be with technology, but it could also be in team performance, financials or even a personal relationship. Any significant positive change qualifies.
What we’ve learned from studying business, philosophy, brain science, religion, presentation skills, human performance and countless past clients is: innovation requires certain conditions. No matter how much you’re spending on innovation consultants, business planning, innovation departments or anything else, without these conditions in place significant positive change will not happen -- Unless it’s luck, but that’s just a poor business strategy. (Although the case can be made that the constraints in place were what led to “luck”. Along the lines of Thomas Jefferson: I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. But that’s an article for another time.)
And the most important condition to realizing innovation (not just a good idea) is constraints. Without constraints, there are limitless possibilities, and whereas anything is possible, nothing is realized.
As humans, we hate to commit to constraints, yet every limit or choice is a constraint. I remember as a kid reading choose-your-own-adventure books and keeping a page turned down wherever I made a choice. That way if I didn’t like a particular direction I could always go back. Perhaps you might see this sort of behavior in yourself when making a business decision. Even if you know the decision you want to make, you might wait until the very last moment to actually make the decision, or not make a decision at all.
Even though we might not like them, constraints are a necessity of growth of any kind. We must sacrifice limitless potential to realize actual results.
We work with clients to choose and enforce constraints to drive significant positive change in their business. It’s reliably the greatest factor in driving meaningful results. But constraints don’t just come from the inside. COVID-19 and our communities’ response to it have created external constraints. Most notably for most of us right now, the closing of many businesses and working from home. These constraints probably do not feel good to any of us and we may not like them but we are forced to deal with the situation never-the-less, even if they may even be upending our business. Even so, we can use the constraints imposed on us by the COVID19 crisis as a means to innovate, driving innovation and positive change.
Eric Rivera runs the Seattle restaurant Addo, which was asked to close their doors during this pandemic, like many others. He could have gone home, asked for a government grant, or been left feeling bad about the loss of sales (all of which would be completely reasonable), but instead, because Eric is an innovator, he started with Instagram and social media to share what he was going through, talking about his people, and even posting pictures of dishes they had available. He worked with his technology providers and in a matter of days Eric was able to have customers click to buy food online from those social media accounts. He didn’t stop there. Instead of letting his wait-staff go, he worked with those same people to deliver the orders. He did all this while finding space to donate food to those most impacted by the crisis. Today, Addo is doing better than when the outbreak began.
Look around. Dyson designed and built a brand new ventilator in 10 days. Woodchuck USA pivoted from making custom wood products as corporate gifts to making 105,000 medical standard face shield units per day. We have to also acknowledge the herculean effort around the world to create a vaccine, cure or treatment for the virus itself that will undoubtedly come, although not soon enough for those suffering now. All of these things and many others would have taken years under normal circumstances and without such tight constraints.
Working within new constraints gives new results. Always. What’s true today has been true throughout history. Edward Jenner created the first vaccine during the crush of smallpox. Alan Turing invented the Turing Machine (precursor to the modern computer) amidst the pressures of codebreaking in WWII. Some of the most iconic companies were founded during the housing collapse and the last recession: Uber, Airbnb, Slack, WhatsApp, Square and Venmo.
Exactly because of constraints imposed on us by COVID-19, we’ll see more innovation come out of this time period than the 10 years prior combined. And from where we sit, we’re all left with a choice. Will we let these constraints crush our creativity and our businesses? Or, will we use and embrace these constraints to innovate?