A Beautiful Constraint: How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It's Everyone's Business

2 BREAK PATH DEPENDENCE

The behaviors and practices that prevent us seeing opportunity in constraint

THIS CHAPTER FOCUSES ON:

1. How does success today blind us to what could create success tomorrow?
2. How does the language we use lock us into ways of thinking and behaving that will limit our ability to see new possibilities?
3. What can we do to surface and move away from unhelpful paths on which we have become dependent, in order to reveal newer, more productive paths?

Writer William Gibson once famously said that the ‘The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed.’ I worry more that the past is here—it's just so evenly distributed that we can't get to the future.

—Paul Kedrosky¹

A few years ago, we facilitated an event with a group of luxury car dealers in a Four Seasons hotel. They were all the owners or General Managers of the dealerships: wealthy, shrewd businesspeople with a track record of success going back a decade or more.

They had come to the event to learn from other luxury and service businesses. They were exposed to world-class stimuli over the two days: leading-edge technology retailing, high-end customer service, the latest and greatest in travel and hospitality. And yet one of the most illuminating conversations came after a visit to the laundry.

The trip was a part of a tour through the departments of the hotel: Room Service, Front Desk, Gardening, and so on. We met and spoke with Four Seasons’ staff in each area.

And then we came to the laundry. ...