the joshschuler experiment

Here’s something I’ve figured out which has revolutionized my perspective and my work…

Constraint and innovation cannot be separated.

They must exist together.

If you remove constraint, than you lose the ability to innovate. Innovation happens within constraint. Innovation is change, for the better, in something already established.

If you are working for an organization and you find yourself believing that the only answer to organizational problems is to replace whomever is in charge, than I do not believe you can ever call yourself an innovator.

Instead, you should identify yourself as a whiner. (I have too often been the whiner).

An innovator (that which I am aspiring to be) is someone who looks at the constraints and figures out ways to move the organization forward even if the establishment doesn’t change.

An example:

My brother played football at a large university. When the team was struggling, I remember listening to talk radio and suffering through all of the arm chair quarterbacks calling in with the suggestion that what the team needed was a “big name head coach.” They believed a change in the coach would fix everything wrong with the program.

There is a word for this perspective. Stupidity.

The team needed to figure out how to use the talent, resources, and abilities it already possessed to win football games. It had all of this in spades, and my hypothesis is that most of the organizations we work in do as well. The problem is that we look at what we can’t do, or what we aren’t doing, and we give up. Or, we hold out hope for some messiah to come in and change everything from the top down, which is not going to happen.

Another example:

There is a great story in the scriptures of a people being faced with a constraint. God had promised these refugees a great land to live in, but when they got there they found out the land was inhabited by giants. Most of the people looked at the constraint and caved. The exception was this one guy named Caleb:

Num. 13:30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”

I wish I could tell you that they listened to Caleb, but they didn’t. They listened to a bunch of whiners, and then spent the next 40 years wandering around in the desert…..bad decision.

I constantly have conversations with people who tell me what they can’t do because of this constraint or that constraint. Their hope is in removing the constraint, and that is why they will always be frustrated. The answer is found inside the constraint.

The people I see who are doing great work have figured out how to use the tools already in place to bring about great outcomes.

These people don’t look at constraints and give up. Instead, they embrace them as a challenge to overcome.

So, what constraints are you facing? Have they boxed you in to the point that you have given up? What resources do you have access to which you can leverage to move the organization forward? What responsibilities can you take on? What problems could you beat if you stopped whining, and started using resources you already have to do something great?

Go be a Caleb.

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