Please Reduce My Budget
Sloan Management Review has a nice article about the positive impact of resource constraints. It reminded me of a story that Frans Johansson (author of the Medici Effect) told at the Great Ideas conference a few years ago. He compared Apple’s unsuccessful attempt at a PDA with the Newton (on which they spent millions) compared to then 3Com’s incredibly successful Palm Pilot (budget: $400,000). Why did they only spend $400,000, Johansson asks? Because that’s all they had.
From the Sloan article:
The heightened innovativeness of such “constraints-driven” solutions comes from team members’ tendencies, under the circumstances, to look for alternatives beyond “how things are normally done,” write C. Page Moreau and Darren W. Dahl in a 2005 Journal of Consumer Research article.
So remember, if you budget gets cut, it doesn’t mean you have to do LESS than what you used to do”â€you just have to do something differently than you used to do it.
I just don’t get it. What ever happened to making do with what you’ve got. Maybe this an “old fashioned” idea but I always thought that the mark of a true manager or leader was the ability to use ideas and limited resources well. Anyone can get things done with lots of resources.
I believe that the transformation of managers away from this idea began about twenty years ago and continues today. I’ve written several stories about such so-called leaders on my blog.
I hope the we are starting to trend back. In the meantime, my own experiences will continue to reinforce my opinions as expressed through “The Corporate Cynic.”
[...] Thanks to Rosetta Thurman for including us in her “Friday Four” links on Friday. Rosetta has a blog called “Perspectives From the Pipeline: Observations on the Nonprofit Sector from the Next Generation.” She liked the post that I did about constraints-driven solutions. How about this quote from Rosetta: [...]