6. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
1
Victim
Neutralizer
Transformer
2
Break Path
Dependence
3
Ask
Propelling
Questions
4
Can-If
5
Creating
Abundance
6
Activating
Emotions
7. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
Imagine . . .
You are 17
You’re an awesome guitarist
9. EXPERTS IN CHALLENGER BRANDSEXPERTS IN CHALLENGER BRANDS
Industrial factory setting
How do you feel now?
10. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
Victim TransformerNeutralizer
What do you need now?
12. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
“We are the stories
we tell ourselves”
Timothy Wilson
13. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
Victim TransformerNeutralizer
You need a new story
14. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
Victim TransformerNeutralizer
You need to begin looking for
solutions
15. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
Abandon conventional thinking
• None of the usual methods of guitar playing can help you now
• This requires a set of truly novel solutions
16. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
1
Victim
Neutralizer
Transformer
2
Break Path
Dependence
3
Ask
Propelling
Questions
4
Can-If
5
Creating
Abundance
6
Activating
Emotions
17. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
The Propelling Question
18. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
The Propelling Question
PLAY
INCREDIBLE
GUITAR
WITH
DAMAGED
FINGERS
19. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
We can if we…
• We can play incredible guitar with damaged fingers, if we…
22. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
We can if we…
• Introduce thimbles to extend fingers
• Substitute guitar strings with banjo strings
• Remove some tension on the strings to make them easy to bend
• We think of it as “heavy metal”
• Required a creative approach to how he saw “assets” (creating
abundance)
23. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
Difficult
challenges
require Can If
thinking…
24. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
How can I write a book 1st graders can’t
put down…using only 225 CVC words?
How can we win the race…when our
car is no faster than anyone elses?
25. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
I can if I introduce rhyming absurdity We can if we substitute a TDI
engine for a conventional one
41. An Airbnb Propelling Question
Great
photos
of every
room
W/o huge
personnel
& travel
costs
42. We can if we resource it with…
…photographers in our community
43. A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT:
How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business
1
Victim
Neutralizer
Transformer
2
Break Path
Dependence
3
Ask
Propelling
Questions
4
Can-If
5
Creating
Abundance
6
Activating
Emotions
44. “If you don’t have resources
you have to be resourceful”
K.R. Bloom
Create Abundance
45.
46. ASSETS
What do we have in abundance?
What can we Trade?
REFRAME
How can we reframe these assets to give
them more relevance and value to others?
47. ASSETS
What do we have in abundance?
What can we Trade?
REFRAME
How can we reframe these assets to give
them more relevance and value to others?
Planes
San Francisco Bay Area
Sir Richard
48. ASSETS
What do we have in abundance?
What can we Trade?
REFRAME
How can we reframe these assets to give
them more relevance and value to others?
Planes Audience/eyeballs
San Francisco Bay Area
Twitterati / sharers
Google, method
Sir Richard Glamor, celebrity
54. Try to write a couple of different Propelling Questions
• Experiment with different combinations of ambition and constraint
• Try different levels of specificity
55. Propelling Question #1
How can we
provide
fresh
produce for
all
When there
is less water
to irrigate
our farms?
60. Can if instructions
• 5 mins on your own getting some can if ideas on paper
• Use the prompts to get you started — doesn’t matter where you start
• You don’t have time to try them all!
• Share out with your team members
• Build on each others’ ideas
• Choose your best one to share out and present it like this:
• How can we [ambition] when we [constraint]?
• We can if we ….
61. The Rise of the Unreasonable Challenger
“…brands able to unite
attributes that have
previously been perceived
as disparate are showing
considerably more
momentum and energy than
the ones stuck in their old
one-dimensional territory.”
62. The historic foundations of strategy in marketing and comms
• Categories historically structured around trade-offs — poles of values, which stood in
opposite dimension to each other:
• Fast vs Fuel Efficient
• Quality vs Inexpensive
• Healthy food vs Fast Food
• Trade-offs any reasonable person would accept
• Brand strategy: choosing a pole, and linking oneself strongly and creatively to it
• Structure the marketing mix around the most potent delivery of that offer
• Task for comms: romancing why this pole was the most important criterion for choice
“Companies that will be successful—not in 2015 but in 2020 and beyond —are those who will be smaller but can have bigger impact” Rei Inamoto CCO of AKQA
“Everyone needs to be faster, smarter, more agile, more acutely attuned to culture and context and more adept and facile with new capabilities” Susan Gianinno, North America chair of Publicis
“We need to continue to invest in having the best ideas for our clients and their brands no matter the forum.” Lou Aversano NY CEO of Ogilvy
WHITE CIRCLES And TEXT BOXES editable
Do t, n, v riff with Beirut – stages
Nothing in our recent experience has prepared us to take on our toughest constraints
Our habits – even good ones— eventually blind us to the opportunities
Lock in
You’re in a band. You’re going to be big, you just know it.
It’s the last day of your stinking job at the stinking sheet metal factory in Birmingham
And in a twist of fate you slice off the tips of your middle and ring finger
2 guitarists, 2 accidents that should have seriously diminished their chances of greatness ended up propelling them to even greater heights inventing entire new genres of music
WHITE CIRCLES And TEXT BOXES editable
Do t, n, v riff with Beirut – stages
Nothing in our recent experience has prepared us to take on our toughest constraints
Our habits – even good ones— eventually blind us to the opportunities
Lock in
Increase your ambition in the face of a constraint — it propels you into very different solutions paths than those you’d habitually follow
Increase your ambition in the face of a constraint — it propels you into very different solutions paths than those you’d habitually follow
Colin Kelly bans “Can’t because”
Have to put “Can If” into the conversations. Change the dialog from whether it is possible to how it is possible. Inject optimism and keep the flow of ideas going
WHITE CIRCLES And TEXT BOXES editable
Do t, n, v riff with Beirut – stages
Nothing in our recent experience has prepared us to take on our toughest constraints
Our habits – even good ones— eventually blind us to the opportunities
Lock in
The most productive way to deal with change, even “impossible” challenges of the day, is to harness their power for change AND TO INCREASE OUR LEVEL OF AMBITION
PQs form Impossible Briefs because they harness our ambitions directly to our constraints. And that’s not intuitive, is it. Doesn’t one thwart the other?
they are questions that set up what the psychologists call a “paradoxical frame” — two things that don’t belong naturally
The tension and confusion is a trigger to creativity. It cannot be answered by anything we know today, so we can’t default to old habits.
so if we’re open to it, and we believe it might be possible to answer it, then it PROPELS us down new solution paths.
The most effective kind of question even increases the ambition to make the answering even harder than we’d imagine. Listen to Michael Hay of IKEA…
Alternative image
Early nike story of change — in the form of some of the first anti-sweatshop rallies — and their response as a victim first. Then neutralizer. But it leading to a better outcome in terms of product as well as relationships with the NGOs
Your mindset toward change and the constraints on your current model that it inevitably brings are vital to success on this journey over the next few years.
It’s easy to get stuck in the victim mindset bemoaning how events have overtaken you and your product and preparing to reduce your ambitions.
Some of us might figure out how to deal with this and neutralize the effects the best we can.
But some of us will relish the opportunity for transformation, both of ourselves and our business by all the change and the constraints it brings
Tell Michael Beirut story from ABC about the journey all of us go on, even the brilliant creative minds used to solving problems
We need to believe that all of us are capable of moving from the left to the right, repeatedly
The most productive way to deal with change, even “impossible” challenges of the day, is to harness their power for change AND TO INCREASE OUR LEVEL OF AMBITION
PQs form Impossible Briefs because they harness our ambitions directly to our constraints. And that’s not intuitive, is it. Doesn’t one thwart the other?
they are questions that set up what the psychologists call a “paradoxical frame” — two things that don’t belong naturally
The tension and confusion is a trigger to creativity. It cannot be answered by anything we know today, so we can’t default to old habits.
so if we’re open to it, and we believe it might be possible to answer it, then it PROPELS us down new solution paths.
The most effective kind of question even increases the ambition to make the answering even harder than we’d imagine. Listen to Michael Hay of IKEA…
“We don’t have habits, our habits have us” — we’re not aware half the time of the biases that exist inside our own heads and inside the practices of our organization
Then the regulators told Nike they were banning the air in Nike Air and that they would need to find an alternative. At first shrunk from the task and then eventually embraced it and found a better solution that allowed for the first full foot air bag which become the bestselling Nike Air Max shoe of all time.
The most productive way to deal with change, even “impossible” challenges of the day, is to harness their power for change AND TO INCREASE OUR LEVEL OF AMBITION
PQs form Impossible Briefs because they harness our ambitions directly to our constraints. And that’s not intuitive, is it. Doesn’t one thwart the other?
they are questions that set up what the psychologists call a “paradoxical frame” — two things that don’t belong naturally
The tension and confusion is a trigger to creativity. It cannot be answered by anything we know today, so we can’t default to old habits.
so if we’re open to it, and we believe it might be possible to answer it, then it PROPELS us down new solution paths.
The most effective kind of question even increases the ambition to make the answering even harder than we’d imagine. Listen to Michael Hay of IKEA…
Nike as a culture has made the journey from Victim to transformer so fully that they now look for constraints and challenges to their core business practices and heap change on themselves before others do it.
After years of taking weight and material out of the running shoe Mark Parker asked for an order of magnitude shift in waste in response to sustainability issues Nike Flyknit
And same with water use waterless dying in partnership with DyeCoo, which they and IKEA formed a JV around
Nike has such confidence now in its ability to win that it releases its knowledge base to the rest of the industry in the Making app – they need to encourage a massive shift not just in their business but it the industry.
And they recognize that they don’t know everything. No one knows everything, everyone knows something, knowledge resides in networks
One way to move faster and better is to connect the nodes of the network – networks not hierarchies = user generating ideas, designing alongside clients etc
What makes the constraint particularly beautiful is it helps further build community – not only did they get good photos, but happier community members getting work, meeting locals
The most productive way to deal with change, even “impossible” challenges of the day, is to harness their power for change AND TO INCREASE OUR LEVEL OF AMBITION
PQs form Impossible Briefs because they harness our ambitions directly to our constraints. And that’s not intuitive, is it. Doesn’t one thwart the other?
they are questions that set up what the psychologists call a “paradoxical frame” — two things that don’t belong naturally
The tension and confusion is a trigger to creativity. It cannot be answered by anything we know today, so we can’t default to old habits.
so if we’re open to it, and we believe it might be possible to answer it, then it PROPELS us down new solution paths.
The most effective kind of question even increases the ambition to make the answering even harder than we’d imagine. Listen to Michael Hay of IKEA…
WHITE CIRCLES And TEXT BOXES editable
Do t, n, v riff with Beirut – stages
Nothing in our recent experience has prepared us to take on our toughest constraints
Our habits – even good ones— eventually blind us to the opportunities
Lock in
Virgin had no $$ at launch – porter gale had to partner with people to create buzz and get people to share photos cabin interior
What Assets do you have, or what things do we have that we can redefine as assets
What Assets do you have, or what things do we have that we can redefine as assets
Citizen M hotel lobbies are really Vitra showrooms — the hotel chain couldn’t afford to make them look this great, but Vitra couldn’t afford showrooms in major metros in the US… a deal was done
Colin Kelly bans “Can’t because”
Have to put “Can If” into the conversations. Change the dialog from whether it is possible to how it is possible. Inject optimism and keep the flow of ideas going
Accompanied by in increase in brand energy…
Depositioning of the rest of the category
And Meredith’s point
But now we’ve started to see a new generation of brands that don’t observe these tradeoffs
In fact break through precisely because they don’t observe these trade-offs
They take apparently irreconcilable poles, and satisfy both of them at the same time
Adam - a basic correlation of the data is attached: looks good. I have inflation weighted the $ data using the US CPI index.
The correlation between real prod budget and Rotten tomatoes is a very strong negative correlation: -0.88 (-1 would be a perfect negative correlation). And the confidence test is good too: just short of 98%, meaning that you can be pretty damn certain that they are negatively correlated even though the number of data points is small (but you should get a real statistician to give you their point of view, as the tests one uses are to a degree a matter of philosophy and sophistication)
The correlation between real prod budget and real box office is less good but still strongish: -0.71. With a confidence level of 88% that they are genuinely negatively correlated (most researchers look for 90% confidence as a start point)