A Beautiful Constraint (ePub)

An inspiring yet practical guide for transforming limitations
into opportunities

A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations
Into Advantages And Why It's Everyone's Business Now is a book
about everyday, practical inventiveness, designed for the
constrained times in which we live. It describes how to take the
kinds of issues that all of us face today--lack of time,
money, resources, attention, know-how--and see in them the
opportunity for transformation of oneself and one's organization's
fortunes. The ideas in the book are based on the authors' extensive
work as business consultants, and are brought to life in 35
personal interviews from such varied sources as Nike, IKEA,
Unilever, the U.S. Navy, Formula One racecar engineers, public
school teachers in California, and barley farmers in South Africa.
Underpinned by scientific research into the psychology of
breakthrough, the book is a practical handbook full of tools and
tips for how to make more from less. Beautifully designed and
accessible, A Beautiful Constraint will appeal beyond its
core business audience to anyone who needs to find the opportunity
in constraint.

The book takes the reader on a journey through the mindset,
method and motivation required to move from the initial "victim"
stage into the transformation stage. It challenges us to:

* Examine how we've become path dependent--stuck with
routines that blind us from seeing opportunity along new paths

* Ask Propelling Questions to help us break free of those paths
and put the most pressing and valuable constraints at the heart of
our process

* Adopt a Can If mentality to answer these
questions--focused on "how," not "if"

* Access the abundance to be found all around us to help
transform constraints

* Activate the high-octane mix of emotions necessary to fuel the
tenacity required for success

We live in a world of seemingly ever-increasing constraints,
driven as much by an overabundance of choices and connections as by
a scarcity of time and resources. How we respond to these
constraints is one of the most important issues of our time and
will be a large determinant of our progress as people, businesses
and planet, in the future. A Beautiful Constraint calls for
a more widespread capability for constraint-driven problem solving
and provides the framework to achieve that.