Think like David Bowie

I can fall down a rabbit hole from time to time watching videos about music production.I love hearing about how a certain song uses a sample from a James Bond movie, but they reversed it and chopped it up and turned it into a hook that most people would never know wasn’t wholly original.And it’s wild to me to think that every song I’ve ever loved was built on a foundational palette of 12 tones.The piano sitting next to me has 88 keys, but it’s just 12 notes repeating in ascending scales. The Rolling Stones used the same 12 tones as Metallica and James Brown and Norah Jones and Mozart and Alice in Chains.So, the next time you feel constrained by resources and wish you had more options at your fingertips, just remember that David Bowie turned those 12 tones into “Space Oddity” while Toto turned them into “Rosanna.”Constraints – like the 12-tone scale in music – can leave you feeling under-resourced and frustrated, or they can be a catalyst for creative output that can truly separate your team from the pack.Leadership is about helping your team make the most of what you have.OPPORTUNITY FOR ACTION: The next time you need to brainstorm solutions ask yourself how the constraints that exist could be an advantage. Introduce additional constraints – like, how would we do this if our budget was slashed in half or what if we had 6 days instead of 6 months – when you brainstorm with your team to help stir up ideas you would never have uncovered from a singular perspective.