When I started writing this newsletter, I set out to share a series of instantly useful exercises that anyone could deploy to get smarter about the problems they are trying to solve. However, as I’ve shared these exercises with more people, I have also gotten some requests to say a bit about the system behind them. That’s what inspired this new series of posts. Here goes…
All of the exercises I share here are based on one of six innovation dynamics. These are six ways of looking at a social problem to understand human behavior, recognize the social norms behind it, and develop ideas to change it.
The second dynamic is LIMITS. Limits are any objective rules that shape behavior around the problem you are trying to solve.
The most obvious limits are governmental laws and regulations. For some social problems, there are so many of these that entire legal subspecialties exist to navigate them. For other problems, the absence of government intervention is conspicuous, with advocates tirelessly working to pass laws to address the issue. Both these situations lead many people to focus all of their problem-solving efforts on policy change.
But policy change and social change are not the same thing. While I acknowledge that policy is important and sometimes the only way to solve a problem, in my method we are always looking at the whole fabric of human behavior, with social norms as the stitches that hold it all together. Though laws can certainly influence social norms, in general we assume that norms are more fundamental. Changing a law or other limit on behavior is just one way to change the norms holding a problem in place.
That being said, if we set aside our eagerness to solve for a moment, limits can provide us insight into the human behavior and social norms around almost any problem.
When it comes to governmental laws and regulations, we can start by looking at why the limit was created in the first place. What social norms was it meant to enforce, or perhaps to counteract?
Second, we can look at the way people respond to the limit. Do they treat it as sacred or resent it? Do they follow it scrupulously or look for ways to get around it?
And of course, there are some laws that have been on the books for decades that everyone has decided to ignore entirely. That suggests those laws are totally out of touch with social norms.
If you want to try this out, you can easily get started on this work by starting a quick chat with colleagues about how they feel about some of the most important laws tied to your problem. As long as you’re doing it with an open mind, you’ll learn a lot fast! But there are also two other kinds of limits to consider.
First, remember that there are bodies of “policy” outside those made by the government. These include the internal rules of our organizations, companies, and professional societies. As long as it’s an objective rule that shapes behavior, it counts.
This even extends to things like the rules of games. If you ask baseball players to explain their feelings about when it’s okay to bunt, you’ll learn a lot about the social norms of their community.
Second, we also count as limits the laws of the natural world. This might seem counterintuitive because no one could ever change these limits. However, because they produce different behaviors in different people, they can also be used to better understand the social norms around a problem.
For example, most people in the society where I live don’t interfere with the behavior of each other’s children, but most of us would intervene if we saw kids playing with fire. That behavior results from how dangerous fire is, not just the social forces of our culture.
You could spend your whole life investigating how people respond to limits, but you can also get started in just a few minutes. Here are a few questions to get you going right now:
What are the most important rules or laws that affect the way people approach your social problem?
How do people respond to these rules and laws? What behaviors comply with the rules and what behaviors go against them?
Are there any important rules shaping this problem that are tied to specific organizations or groups? What is the particular role these rules play?
What about natural laws? Are efforts to address the problem seriously impacted by technical challenges or resource constraints? How do people respond to these problems?
Finally, imagine you could snap your fingers and change one limit around your problem. Which one would you change? What new possibilities for solving the problem might that unlock?
Here are some of the previous exercises I’ve shared that are based on the limits dynamic:
Amateur mistake: What rules show group members they belong?
Lightning round: What would happen if you solved for speed and nothing else?
Physical challenge: What can the limits of the natural world teach you about your problem?
Indoor recess: What can you learn from how people act under a different set of rules?