Working with constraints: A practical guide for leaders

When a persistent organisational problem refuses to move, it is tempting to look for the person, process or barrier responsible. This guide offers a different starting point: what is shaping what is possible here?

From “What is stopping us?” to “What is shaping what is possible?”

When leaders encounter a persistent problem, the instinct is often to look for a cause. Who is blocking progress? Why are people resisting? Which process is broken? What barrier needs removing? What do we need to fix? That way of thinking works reasonably well when the relationship between cause and effect is clear. If a machine has a faulty component, replace it. If people cannot access a system because they lack the correct permissions, change the permissions. Complex organisational situations are different. Poor collaboration between functions, slow decision making, repeated transformation failures, defensive behaviour, lack of innovation or difficulties working across a matrix rarely have one identifiable cause. What we see is usually emerging from multiple conditions interacting over time. Constraint theory offers another way of looking at these situations. Instead of beginning with: What is causing the problem? Start with: What is shaping what is possible here? That shift sounds small. In practice, it changes the conversation considerably.

What is a constraint?

In everyday language, we tend to think of a constraint as something negative: a restriction, barrier or limitation that gets in our way. In complexity thinking, the idea is broader. A constraint is something that shapes the possibilities available within a situation. Constraints make some things impossible, some difficult, some easy and others much more likely. They can be obvious:

• laws and regulations;
• budgets;
• reporting structures;
• contractual obligations;
• technology;
• processes;
• decision rights;
• physical capacity.

But they can also be less visible:

• relationships;
• expectations;
• professional identities;
• habits;
• informal power;
• previous decisions;
• organisational history;
• cultural norms;
• assumptions about what is acceptable.

Imagine a leadership team that repeatedly struggles to collaborate across functions. One explanation might be: “These leaders need to collaborate better.”

Constraint thinking asks different questions. How are they measured? What are they rewarded for? Who controls resources? What information do they receive? Which decisions can they make? What happens when functional and enterprise priorities conflict? What behaviour has historically led to promotion? What do their bosses expect of them? The behaviour we observe may make considerably more sense once we understand the conditions within which it occurs. This does not mean that individuals have no agency or responsibility. It means that behaviour cannot always be understood by looking at individuals alone.

Constraints restrict and enable

This is perhaps the most important idea to understand. Constraints do not simply stop things happening. They also make things possible. Consider the rules of a game. The rules constrain what players can do. Remove all the rules and players gain enormous freedom, but the game itself disappears. The constraint helps create the possibility. The same is true in organisations. A spending limit restricts a manager’s discretion but enables financial control. A standard operating procedure limits local variation but enables hundreds of people to coordinate their work. A professional qualification restricts who can perform certain activities but helps create confidence in professional standards. A meeting agenda restricts what can be discussed but may enable a group to reach decisions. A strong professional identity may make cross-functional collaboration more difficult while simultaneously protecting important expertise and standards.

This means that when we encounter a frustrating constraint, asking “How do we remove it?” may be the wrong starting point. First ask: What does this constraint restrict? and What does this constraint enable?

Removing a constraint can destroy useful possibilities as easily as it creates new ones.

Constraints shape likelihood, not just possibility

There is another important distinction. Something does not need to make behaviour impossible to be constraining. Imagine two organisations where employees are technically allowed to challenge senior leaders. In the first, senior leaders regularly invite challenge, publicly change their minds, thank people who raise difficult issues and promote people known for constructive dissent. In the second, challenge is formally encouraged but people who question senior decisions tend to find themselves excluded from important conversations. The formal possibility is identical. You may challenge senior leaders. The likelihood of people actually doing so differs greatly.

Constraints therefore shape not only what can happen, but what becomes easier, harder and more or less likely. This gives leaders a particularly useful question: What is making the behaviour we currently see the easiest or most likely thing to happen?

Behaviour makes more sense in context

This changes how we interpret difficult behaviour.

Instead of: Why won’t they collaborate? we might ask: What makes protecting their own function a sensible thing to do?

Instead of: Why are people resisting the transformation? ask: What conditions make their current behaviour understandable?

Instead of: Why won’t managers delegate? ask: What makes holding onto decisions safer or easier than giving them away?

This is not about excusing behaviour. It is about improving the quality of diagnosis. Trying to change behaviour while leaving intact the conditions continually producing it can require enormous amounts of leadership energy. Training, communication, encouragement, targets and exhortation may temporarily push people towards different behaviour, only for the old pattern to reappear. Sometimes we are effectively pushing people uphill. Constraint thinking asks whether changing something about the landscape might make another direction easier.

Constraints rarely operate alone

Another danger is identifying one constraint and deciding that we have found the explanation. Organisations rarely work like that. Imagine sales teams refusing to share opportunities across geographical boundaries. You discover that their bonus scheme rewards individual market performance. That matters. But the incentive may interact with:

• historical competition between markets;
• scarce resources;
• status associated with revenue ownership;
• reporting structures;
• previous disputes;
• customer ownership rules;
• promotion decisions;
• relationships between country leaders.

Changing the bonus scheme might help. It might also change surprisingly little. The more useful question is: What else is interacting with this constraint? You do not need a complete model of the organisation. In a complex situation, such a model may not even be possible. You simply want to avoid mistaking the most visible constraint for the whole explanation.

History matters

Constraints also accumulate. A process introduced ten years ago may originally have solved a sensible problem. Since then, technology has been built around it, responsibilities allocated around it, budgets designed around it and careers developed within it. What began as one decision becomes embedded in many other things. Eventually people say: “That’s just how we work.” History can therefore continue shaping present possibilities long after the original circumstances have disappeared. This makes another question particularly useful: What was once a sensible solution but may now be helping to sustain the problem? Understanding where a constraint came from can also prevent leaders from casually removing something whose original purpose they have forgotten.

Some constraints are real. Others have simply stopped being questioned.

“We can’t change that.” Sometimes this is true. There are laws, physical limits, contractual commitments, scarce resources and other boundaries that may genuinely be beyond your ability to change. But organisations also contain remembered boundaries. “Head Office won’t allow it.” “Finance requires this.” “Our customers expect it.” “We tried that before.” “The CEO would never agree.” These statements may describe genuine constraints. Or they may describe something nobody has tested recently. A useful question is: Is that a real boundary or a remembered boundary? The distinction matters because people often restrict their behaviour before they actually reach the boundary.

How constraints behave

Once you have identified an important constraint, there is another useful question: How does this constraint behave?

In Estuarine Mapping, Dave Snowden uses six constraint types as lenses for examining this. The purpose is not to classify every organisational constraint correctly. The categories encourage us to notice different behaviours and therefore ask different questions.

Snowden groups the first three as robust constraints and the latter three as resilient constraints. Robust constraints can be highly effective but can fail catastrophically when their limits are exceeded. Resilient constraints change over time and their failure is less likely to be catastrophic.

Rigid: Holds until it breaks

A rigid constraint creates a hard boundary. Snowden uses the example of a sea wall or dyke. It holds back what is on the other side without significantly yielding. If the forces become greater than it can withstand, failure can be sudden. Organisational examples might include legal prohibitions, mandatory safety requirements or genuine physical limits. The leadership question is not simply whether the constraint is inconvenient. Ask:

• Is this genuinely fixed?
• What pressure is being placed upon it?
• What happens if its limit is exceeded?
• Would our energy be better spent working within it?

Think: This holds firm, but what happens if we exceed its limit?

Elastic: Stretches and returns

An elastic constraint can accommodate pressure without immediately breaking. When the pressure disappears, however, it tends to return towards its previous state. Snowden places elastic or flexible constraints within his robust group. This is particularly interesting organisationally. During a crisis, functions suddenly collaborate. Processes become flexible. Decisions happen quickly. People take on additional responsibilities. Leaders may conclude: “We’ve changed how we work.” Then the crisis passes and the organisation returns to its previous pattern. The system stretched. It did not necessarily change. Ask:

• What is causing the stretch?
• What happens when that pressure disappears?
• What keeps pulling behaviour back?
• Are we seeing change or temporary accommodation?

Think: We can stretch this, but what keeps pulling it back?

Tether: Freedom until the line tightens

A tether permits movement within a range but prevents movement beyond a limit. Snowden uses a climbing rope: it allows movement while there is slack, then becomes consequential when the limit is reached. Delegated authority often behaves like this. A country leader may have considerable freedom until investment exceeds a particular threshold. A team may experiment freely until a particular level of risk is reached. A subsidiary may operate independently until the parent organisation exercises a reserved right. Ask:

• How much freedom actually exists?
• Where does the tether tighten?
• What activates it?
• Who or what is at the other end?
• Are people constraining themselves before they actually reach the limit?

Think: We have freedom, but where does the line tighten?

Permeable: Some things pass through

A permeable constraint allows some things through while restricting others. Snowden’s concise description is simply that “some things can get through”. This is particularly useful when thinking about organisational boundaries. Information may move between functions while people cannot. Ideas may travel upwards while decision authority does not. Some customer information may cross geographical boundaries while commercial ownership remains local. The question is not necessarily whether the boundary should disappear. Ask:

• What can currently cross this boundary?
• What cannot?
• What gets slowed or filtered?
• What would usefully happen if this became slightly more or less permeable?

Think: The boundary matters, but what should be able to cross it?

Phase shift: Crossing the threshold changes the situation

Some constraints involve a threshold beyond which the nature of the situation changes significantly. Snowden describes phase shift as a process within a system capable of producing sudden, significant change. This matters because leaders often assume tomorrow will be approximately like today. But gradual pressure can eventually reach a threshold where relationships, rules or possibilities change quickly. Ask:

• Is there a threshold here?
• How close might we be to it?
• What changes if we cross it?
• Could we trigger it accidentally?
• Could a relatively small intervention near the threshold have a disproportionately large effect?

Think: At what point does more of the same become something different?

Dark: We see the effect but not what is producing it

Dark constraints are particularly interesting. Snowden borrows the metaphor from dark matter: we can observe an effect without directly observing what is creating it. In an organisation, decisions repeatedly stall. Particular subjects are avoided. Initiatives continually lose momentum. Someone who appears formally powerful repeatedly fails to make something happen. Something may be shaping the pattern, but we do not yet understand what.

The important discipline is not to invent an explanation too quickly. “This is our culture.” “They’re resistant.” “The board doesn’t want it.” Those are hypotheses. Ask:

• What effect can we actually observe?
• Where is it stronger or weaker?
• What would have to be true for this pattern to make sense?
• What could we observe or test to learn more?

Think: Something is shaping this, but we don’t yet know what.

A simple way to remember the six

1. Rigid: It holds until it breaks.
2. Elastic: It stretches and returns.
3. Tether: It allows freedom until the line tightens.
4. Permeable: It lets some things through.
5. Phase shift: Cross a threshold and the situation changes.
6. Dark: You can see the effect but not what is creating it.

These are lenses rather than boxes. Instead of worrying about whether you have classified something correctly, use them to generate questions: Does this really hold firm? Does it stretch? Where does the tether tighten? What can pass through? Is there a threshold nearby? Or can we see an effect without understanding what is creating it?

Choosing where to intervene

Identifying a constraint does not mean you should change it. This is where another important part of Estuarine thinking becomes useful. Consider: How much energy would changing this require? and: How long would it take before the change mattered?

Energy might include money, leadership attention, political capital, negotiation, disruption, expertise or sustained effort. Something may be changeable in principle but require three years and enormous organisational effort. Something else may be changed tomorrow. The most visible or frustrating constraint is therefore not necessarily the best place to intervene.

Accept some things, at least for now

Some constraints require so much time or energy to change that, for the challenge you currently face, they are effectively part of the landscape. Instead of repeatedly fighting them, ask:

• What if we accepted this for now?
• What possibilities remain?
• Where else could we act?

This is not resignation. It is choosing where to spend limited energy.

Protect what is vulnerable

Other important things may be surprisingly easy to disrupt. A key relationship, informal agreement, critical person, small supplier or fragile working practice may have considerable impact but little protection. Ask:

• What matters here that could disappear very quickly?
• What are we taking for granted?
• What might need protecting or monitoring?

Easy to change does not automatically mean desirable to change.

Look for where movement is possible

Much useful leadership action lies between those extremes. Look for constraints where the effort required to influence them is proportionate to the difference doing so might make. Ask:

• Where do we genuinely have room to move?
• Where might a relatively small change create additional possibilities?
• What is already moving that we could support?
• Where is something useful already happening?

This moves us away from trying to design the perfect future and towards creating movement from where we actually are.

Working with rather than against constraints

Once you find somewhere worth intervening, you still have choices. You might:

• Maintain a constraint because it is doing useful work.
• Amend it so that it shapes possibilities differently.
• Remove it if its usefulness has disappeared.
• Introduce something new that changes the landscape.

Or you may deliberately leave it alone and intervene elsewhere. The crucial question remains: What does this constraint restrict, and what does it enable?

Start small enough to learn

In a genuinely complex situation, changing a constraint does not allow you to predict exactly what will happen. So ask: What is the smallest useful change we could make that would help us learn? Then observe. What changed? What did not? What appeared that you did not expect? What would you like to see more of? What would you like to see less of? If something useful starts emerging, you can give it more attention, resources or opportunity. If something undesirable appears, you can reduce its influence or stop before the consequences become too large. The intervention is therefore not simply an attempt to produce an outcome. It is also a way of learning more about what is possible.

Practical self-coaching exerciseOpen the guided questions and reflection spaces

Using this on your own challenge

Now take a situation you are currently facing. Don’t try to answer every question. Use the questions that make you look at the situation differently.

1. Start with the pattern

Describe what you can actually observe rather than immediately explaining it.

• What keeps happening?
• What would probably continue happening if I did nothing?
• Where is the pattern strongest?
• Where does it happen differently?
• Where does this problem not occur?
• What is different there?

My key observation:

2. Look for what is shaping it

Ask what makes the current behaviour relatively easy or likely.

• What structures, rules or processes matter?
• What targets, incentives or measures matter?
• What relationships or dependencies matter?
• What expectations or norms matter?
• What decisions from the past still shape the present?
• What formal or informal power matters?

The constraints I notice:

3. Look at restriction and enablement

Choose one important constraint.

• What does this make harder or impossible?
• What does it make easier or more likely?
• What useful behaviour does it support?
• Who benefits from it?
• What stability, coordination or capability does it create?
• What might we lose if it disappeared?

What this restricts:

What this enables:

4. Look for interactions

Constraints rarely operate independently.

• What else interacts with this?
• Which constraints reinforce one another?
• Which constraints counterbalance one another?
• Does this operate differently elsewhere?
• What would remain even if we changed this?
• What other conditions would also need to shift?

The interactions that matter:

5. Take history seriously

Today’s constraints often contain yesterday’s decisions.

• Why was this originally created?
• What problem did it once solve?
• What has grown around it?
• What now depends upon it?
• What previous experience reinforces the current behaviour?
• Is it still useful in today’s context?

What was once a sensible solution but may now be helping to sustain the problem?

6. Question apparent boundaries

• What actually prevents this changing?
• Who says it cannot change?
• When was that last tested?
• Where are the exceptions?
• What would happen if someone crossed the boundary?
• Are we restricting ourselves more than the situation requires?

Is this a real boundary or a remembered boundary?

7. Consider energy and time

For the constraints you are considering changing, ask:

• How much energy would it take to shift this?
• How long would it take before that shift made a meaningful difference?
• Given the energy and time involved, is this where I should intervene?
• What might need protecting or monitoring?
• Where do I genuinely have room to move?

The most promising place to work:

8. Change something and learn

Consider whether to maintain, amend, remove or introduce a constraint, or leave it alone and intervene somewhere else.

• What is the smallest useful change I could make that might shift the pattern?
• What would I watch?
• What would suggest movement in a useful direction?
• What unintended consequences might appear?
• What would I amplify if I saw more of it?
• What would I dampen or stop?

My small intervention:

What I will watch:

Twelve questions for working with constraints

1. What keeps happening, despite our attempts to change it?
2. Where does this pattern not happen, and what is different there?
3. What is making the current behaviour easy or likely?
4. What is shaping what people can and cannot do?
5. What does this constraint restrict, and what does it enable?
6. What else is interacting with it?
7. What history has helped create the situation we have now?
8. What genuinely cannot change, and what have we simply stopped questioning?
9. How much energy and time would it take to shift this?
10. Where do we actually have room to move?
11. What is the smallest useful intervention we could try?
12. What would we watch, amplify or dampen as the situation responds?

A final shift in language

Instead of “Who is causing the problem?” ask “What is shaping this pattern?”

Instead of “Why are they resisting?” ask “What makes their current behaviour make sense?”

Instead of “What barriers should we remove?” ask “What does this constraint restrict and enable?”

Instead of “How do we make people change?” ask “What might make different behaviour easier?”

Instead of “What’s the solution?” ask “Where could we intervene and learn?”

Instead of “How do we roll this out?” ask “Where could we start small and see what happens?”

The central question remains: What is shaping what is possible here, and where might changing those conditions create useful movement?

A bridge to Actors and Constructors

Constraints tell us something about the landscape of possibilities, but they do not tell us everything about how change happens. We also need to look at who or what can act within that landscape, and what can repeatedly produce transformation. Those take us to Actors and Constructors. Back to Estuarine mapping overview.