Redesigning Roadblocks

The team is called into the conference room to pitch ideas on how to solve the company’s latest problem. There’s some silence, a few questions, and finally, someone tosses out a bold idea. Everyone perks up like a card shark just went all-in at the poker table. Then a colleague mentions the budget won’t cover it. Someone else adds that the team is already stretched thin. Within a minute, objections are flying like heavy artillery fire, and the idea is tabled in favor of “safe” options.

Most of us hit roadblocks like these and succumb to them. But the best leaders realize they’re just new design challenges.

Instead of concluding “it can’t be done,” they ask, “what conditions need to change so it can be done?”

When a creative idea meets a constraint, the typical approach is to shave the idea down until it fits. We trim the budget line, then sand down the ambition, and before long we’ve lopped off the very feature that made the idea exciting in the first place. We call it being practical. In reality, we’ve diluted the potency of the idea until it has about as much kick as decaf.

The alternative is changing the constraints instead of the idea. Protect the thing you envision in its purest form and go to work on the conditions around it. What could you design into the system, the product, or the approach to bring it to life exactly as you imagined it? The missing piece might be money, a partner nobody has called yet, a process that doesn’t exist and needs to be built, or a rule that turns out to be far more flexible than everyone assumed.

A big chunk of my time these days goes into Mudita Venture Partners, our early-stage venture fund that invests in groundbreaking AI tech startups. Coaching the founders, I encourage them to view constraints as solvable design challenges instead of impenetrable barriers.

The initial thought is often, “What can we do with the money we’ve raised?” which is a reasonable question. But I challenge them to ask, “What might we do to create the best company and provide the absolute best solution for customers?” If that takes more capital, then let’s focus on the challenge of raising more capital instead of launching watered-down innovation.

This works in any meeting or project where a good idea is about to get compromised into oblivion. Instead of “it can’t be done with what I have,” the focus becomes “what design changes need to occur so I can do this right?”

You’ll be amazed how many of those imposing roadblocks turn out to be made of cardboard.

To your creative success…