One of the ideas that scares businesses and business people most it seems is the notion of constraint.  Constraint means borders and boundaries, boxes and envelopes.  Day after day staff are challenged to think outside the box, to push the envelope (whatever that means), to break through the boundaries that surround the way that they work.  Constraint is definitely a bad thing.  Freedom and innovation are the watch-words.

And yet at the same time, the same businesses ask that people conduct their work either in little cubicles or in grand open-plan offices.  They insist that people are available, preferably in their cube or office, between the hours of 9 and 5:30.  Staff are asked to stick to the company line, to present only the standard slide-decks that they are given, to use only 'corporate messaging' when talking to customers and prospects.  As soon as we sit at our desks, freedom and innovation seem to become ideas to be left at reception where they can be collected again at the end of the day.

This shouldn't be at all surprising?  (If it is surprising please let us know.)  Better minds that ours have grappled with notions of freedom and all their thinking seems to point to the fact that we can only be free within certain constraints - our desires are normally tempered by the cold water of knowing what effects our actions will have on other people, for example.  So constraint must be a good thing, right?  We believe that it is vital.

Constraint, you see, leads directly to invention.  If that sounds counter-intuitive, think for a second about something as mundane as the wheel.  Why was the wheel invented in the first place?  Okay, we don't know the answer to that question because the invention of the wheel pre-dates any reliable written history - who knows what the first wheelwright was thinking?  Why was it necessary to invent the wheel?  Well at least we can have a stab at that one.  The wheel overcomes the physical constraint governing how much weight a human (or a suitably domesticated animal for that matter) can carry.  The average person cannot carry much weight, especially over more that a short distance.  However, it is possible to push more that we can carry.  Furthermore, it is possible to pull more than we can push.  Inventing the wheel therefore lets us break free of the constraints and achieve much more.  Going back a step, it is obvious that unless we fully understand the constraints surrounding the load-bearing abilities of the human body it is impossible to come up with something that will help us.  Is constraint a good thing?  Absolutely.

So, if we want to be more effective at work we need to understand how and when constraint can be useful.  Also, it is important to realise that certain kinds of constraint are more useful than others.  For instance, if we are asked to 'think outside the box', without realising it we are actually being asked to constrain our thinking.  What is effectively being said is that only completely original ideas are welcome - anything else is likely to be subjected to scorn and derision.  Is this useful?  It is certainly commonplace.  The best answer is to try it for yourself.  The next time you find yourself in a meeting, ask everyone in the room to think of something they have never thought of before and then sit back and listen to the silence.  The plain facts are the we do not normally think in a highly original way.  Why would we when our lives are governed so much by the effects of our actions on other people?  Original thought tends to lead to problems that we are not conditioned to cope with or that we are conditioned to reject outright.  Asking people only to think of original things is as useful as asking someone to say something that is funny.  It doesn't work.

What does work is applying constraints in a more sensible way.  If you want innovative ideas simply ask, "Where are we now?", "Where do we want to be?" and "How do we get there?".  People are used to thinking in this way - we do it all the time.  The ideas will come flooding in if you ask people to constrain their thoughts to particular areas.  In other words, if you are looking for 'outside-the-box-thinking', you can only get it if you define what the box actually is.  This is the step that most people miss.  It is easy to overlook.

Similarly, giving your staff a whole load of standard slides to present to customers is not useful.  It may seem sensible and desirable to have all of your sales teams using the same message, but it isn't.  Why?  Well the biggest failing of this approach is that it doesn't take into account what the salesman actually wants to say.  Countless presentations start off with the salesman saying something like "now this slide is pretty self-evident but I have to cover it anyway - we have offices in 300 countries around the world with Technical Excellence Centres in Madrid, New York and Delhi...".  How does forcing someone to say things that they feel are irrelevant actually help anybody?  If the customer really cares about getting global support from you for their project then great - tell them that you are able to provide that.  If they are considering visiting one of your Technical Excellence Centres then don't just tell them that they exist, tell them what they can expect on their visit.  How often does this actually come up though?  If most people don't want to hear it then don't make people say it. Simple.  At its most basic, this becomes a trust issue.  If you trust your salesman enough to allow him to visit a customer on his own then it follows that you should trust him enough to let him use his own words.  "But what about our precious messaging?" I hear you cry.  Well, an interesting phenomenon related to ideas of freedom and constraint was summed up by Eric Hoffer - "When people are free to do as they please they usually imitate each other".  In other words, if your messaging is as good as you believe then you don't have to make it mandatory - people will use it anyway.  In fact, they will relish using the constraints of your messages to frame their own thoughts.  Is constraint a good thing?  Do you see how this is working now?

The long and the short of it is this; Constraint has a close relative - Focus.  Unless you understand how to use constraint effectively you will lose focus.  If as a business you try to address too many different areas, your customers will not understand what you do and they will walk away in favour of a more constrained and focussed alternative.  Look on the High Street.  See how Boots, Woolworths and W.H. Smith are losing market share to just about anybody and everybody.  When customers feel that they have no time, they are more likely to go to a specialist store rather than take a chance that they might find what they need tucked away in a small corner of a shop that tries to do too much.  When you talk to your customers, are you focused and disciplined enough to constrain what you say such that they can instantly understand what you do?  If not, embrace constraint.  Squeeze it really tight.  Don't let it out of your sight.