410: The Power of Limitations and Constraints: Breeding Creativity

Over the past several months, the coronavirus pandemic has caused a lot of changes and, as a result, we have experienced a lot of constraints, both personally and corporately. 

I have witnessed many times where these constraints have led to various creative solutions.

Schools have done parades instead of traditional graduation ceremonies. While this isn’t an ideal solution for the graduates, it was at least a way to celebrate the accomplishments. I live out in the country and a nearby small town had the whole town involved, where there may normally have been less community involvement.

While many small businesses have had to close for a period of time and suffered a lot, other businesses have had to rethink how they can operate while under the legal limitations. My wife and I recently went to a restaurant, and found out we could pay the bill through our phone - no need for a paper check or using the Ziosk machine.

Churches have worked to come up with alternative ways to gather. While many churches utilized streaming services online more - and adapting better ways of doing this - some churches started having parking lot services where everyone stayed in their vehicles. My church is one that did this - we had only online services for a few weeks, and then we started meeting in the parking lot. A few weeks ago, we started having indoor services, but increased sanitation practices and sat in every other pew.

I think about the movie Apollo 13. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I’m sorry for any spoilers here. When the shuttle experienced an electric malfunction and the CO2 filter stopped working, an extreme situation was created. There was an option to make some modifications, but they were faced with having to connect the proverbial round peg in a square hole. It may have been the other way around, but close enough. The scientists back on earth were gathered and a box of miscellaneous parts were thrown on a table. The leader said, “We have to make this fit into this, using only these parts.” And they only had a very short amount of time before the toxicity level got too high. Spoiler alert - they were able figure it out and save the astronauts.

So, as I’ve been thinking about this idea of constraints breeding creativity, I found 2 articles, from Inc Magazine and the Harvard Business Review.

The Harvard Business Review article, they conducted a survey and found that individuals, teams, and organizations benefited from a healthy dose of constraints.

The Inc Magazine article said that we actually need constraints to get good at creating something remarkable.

Both articles go on to explain how constraints can help by forcing you to work with less so you can actually begin to see the world differently. They even talk about how new inventions and business practices have been inspired through various constraints.

Both articles do mention that too much constraint can dampen creativity. In other words, there’s a point of diminishing return.

So...