Seen Those Cooking Shows?
Contestants lift the lid on a mystery box to find a strange mix of ingredients—tinned peaches, lamb mince, and one artichoke—and have to make it work. There are no substitutions, no extra budget, only constraints.
And here’s the twist:
They often produce their most creative work because the rules are tight.
That’s what happened with DeepSeek—China’s answer to ChatGPT-4.
When U.S. sanctions blocked access to the most advanced AI chips, the team wasn’t just inconvenienced—they were boxed in on every front.
They couldn’t access Nvidia’s H100 chips, the gold standard for training large language models, or rely on U.S.-based cloud platforms. Even the downgraded, export-approved hardware they could use, like the Nvidia H800, came with major performance limitations.
So what did they do?
They pivoted from brute-force computing to smarter design:
- Built massive GPU clusters to make up for lower chip performance
- Adopted a Mixture-of-Experts design—activating only part of the model for each input, delivering performance at a fraction of the computational cost.
- Engineered novel mechanisms and techniques to work around hardware constraints and bandwidth limitations.
They didn’t break out of the box.
They rebuilt the inside of it.
And in doing so, they created a globally competitive AI model—underpowered on paper, but brilliantly optimised in practice.
Why It Matters for Leaders
In the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, analytical thinking ranks as the most in-demand skill across industries. Close behind it? Creative thinking, resilience and agility, and leadership and social influence—a mix that speaks to the need for sharp minds and flexible frames.
But what connects them?
Intellectual flexibility.
Ignore that, and here’s the cost:
Stuck teams. Rigid decisions. Strategies that lag behind emerging realities.
When problems evolve but thinking stays static, performance isn’t just impacted—relevance erodes.
We’re often told to “think outside the box”—as if creativity only lives somewhere far from our current constraints. But in his TED Talk, Great leaders transform organizations by thinking inside the box, Lars Sudmann flips that idea on its head:
“We always say, ‘Think outside the box.’ But what if the real power of transformation lies inside the box?”
— Lars Sudmann
Sudmann argues that the most effective leaders don’t try to escape constraints—they mine them for value. They look at what’s already in their hands, and they ask better, sharper questions.
Leading Through Uncertainty
✅ So This Week, Try This:
1. Reframe a constraint.
What’s one limitation you’re facing right now—budget, time, resourcing—that could become a creative catalyst instead of a blocker?
2. Find the hidden tool in your toolbox.
What existing skill, system, or relationship are you underutilising because it’s not “ideal”? How could you repurpose it to meet a current challenge?
3. Run a ‘what if we couldn’t’ exercise.
Pick a process, habit, or assumption your team relies on—and imagine it’s suddenly unavailable. What new solutions emerge when the default isn’t an option?
Final Thought
Constraints aren’t the enemy. They’re invitations.
To refocus. Reframe. Reinvent.
Here’s to working with what you’ve got—and discovering it’s more than enough.
P.S. Feeling boxed in? Sometimes, all it takes is a shift in frame. You can book a conversation with me here.
