Embracing constraints

From Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler:

In starting our outbound sales team, we didn’t get a budget for my project beyond my own compensation. In fact, looking back, if I had had a big budget or a bunch of people to tell what to do, I wouldn’t have been forced to get so creative in solving the problem of how to predictably generate new pipeline for the sales organization.

Notes:
(1) In other words: We often think constraints restrict our opportunities. But in fact constraints drive creativity.
(2) Other examples:
– In  team meetings he runs, HP manager Simon Lewis restricts the time allotted for each person’s update to one minute.
– Our managers have to write a monthly report which is capped at one page, forcing them to focus on what’s most important.
– Like Aaron Ross’s experience above, when we’ve adopted a tighter budget, we’ve often been more successful.
– There are extreme constraints in mobile app design which have likely produced better user experiences than on the web.