How to transform limitations into advantages

Editor's Notes

• #3: The limitation drove a better outcome
• #4: Lattitude within limitations
• #5: “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
• #7: 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
• #8: 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
• #12: 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
• #17: 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
• #18: Increase your ambition in the face of a constraint — it propels you into very different solutions paths than those you’d habitually follow
• #19: Increase your ambition in the face of a constraint — it propels you into very different solutions paths than those you’d habitually follow
• #24: 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
• #28: 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
• #30: 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…
• #31: Alternative image
• #32: 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
• #33: 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
• #34: 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…
• #35: “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
• #36: 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.
• #38: 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…
• #39: 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
• #40: 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
• #41: 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
• #42: 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…
• #44: 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
• #46: Virgin had no $$ at launch – porter gale had to partner with people to create buzz and get people to share photos cabin interior
• #48: What Assets do you have, or what things do we have that we can redefine as assets
• #49: What Assets do you have, or what things do we have that we can redefine as assets
• #51: 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
• #60: 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
• #62: Accompanied by in increase in brand energy… Depositioning of the rest of the category And Meredith’s point
• #63: 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
• #74: 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)