Holy bat-shit Batman, I hate the excuses! - Bandit, on the rant…
If you want to avoid doing something, invent an excuse. If you need an excuse, pick something outside of your control and call it an impediment. Extra points if you cite financial reasons. Double your score if you mention “regulations” or “compliance”. I love people who kill progress in the name of compliance.
Impediments are a fact of life, but very few impediments actually kill an entire project dead, in spite of how it may appear at first.
Most impediments only impede some small part of the plan. In fact, they’re not really impediments, they’re constraints.
Impediments block. Constraints transform.
Good designers recognize and work with constraints. Great designers allow constraints to push the design in directions they didn’t originally anticipate. In fact, they’re part of the solution!
Constraints are a designer’s best friend. They’re signposts, not shackles. In a sense, constraints amount to the solution half-built. It is merely up to us to then realize the other half according to what these signposts indicate is appropriate. - A List Apart, On Creativity
One of our goals here at Not an MBA is to create innovative thinkers, by encouraging business people to think like designers. And, in equal measure, to encourage artists, designers, and developers to think about business.
For what it’s worth, my parting thought for both groups when confronted by an “impediment”… find another vantage point. What looks like a gorge might be a gully down the road.
Previous posts:
- Bandit (on the run)
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