Pod Insights Change Wired What's slowing your progress down? And one question to figure it out. About this episode You're stuck. You've been working hard, putting in the hours, reading the books, and yet... there's no meaningful progress toward your goals. What's going on? The answer lies in a powerful concept from systems thinking that could completely transform how you approach any challenge. Every system, whether it's your business, health journey, or relationship, has one critical bottleneck that's holding everything else back. This is your "number one constraint," and until you identify and address it specifically, all your other efforts might be wasted energy. SO, how do you figure it out? The episode introduces a powerful diagnostic question that cuts through confusion. The answer often points directly to your primary constraint. This simple framework works whether you're building a business, improving your fitness, or enhancing your relationships. Most importantly, you'll understand why putting tremendous effort into solving the wrong problems leads nowhere, even when those efforts seem productive. By getting crystal clear about your destination and systematically identifying what's truly holding you back, you can finally make the progress that's eluded you. Ready to break through what's really blocking your potential? Listen now, and discover how to focus your limited resources on what actually matters for your unique journey forward. Text Me Your Thoughts and IdeasSupport the showBrought to you by Angela Shurina Behavior-First Change Leadership & Culture Transformation ConsultantEXECUTIVE & OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE COACH
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast, where we're learning together how to apply the best, well-researched, science-backed and life-applicable tools, strategies, use cases, all with the purpose to figure out how to change our psychology, how to change our mindset, how to change our body, how to change and design our systems and thinking and doing, so we could grow and change and adapt and get closer to living that life experience that we'll have in our heads.
0:40 Speaker 00 And in order to somehow, that's kind of like life design. We have these visions, the dream, and something inside of us knows what we need to grow into. And that vision, it's changing. It's always in transition, on this journey. It's not like you achieve it and you're done. No, all of us have this next level and we always feel what that next level is and that next level is moving. And every day when we wake up, we have the opportunity to move closer to that next level. You know something that I've been also thinking about
1:25 Speaker 00 for the past couple of days, also because of the conversations on podcasts and with people that I've been having. This is the slowest moment of change in time. So guys, if you are feeling overwhelmed with all the things changing and shifting and you want to take it easy, how it's slower. Bad news, I don't think that ever gonna happen. I think we are living in the slowest time right now and it's only gonna accelerate. But... As we grow to their occasion, as we develop ourselves, as we develop
2:07 Speaker 00 systems and the way of functioning and being and succeeding and working with this moment and moving into the future, we'll get better at it if we decide that it's something that we want to embrace and get better at versus resisting and hoping that it all going to get back to quote unquote "normal". There's going to be no "normal" anymore. It's just always going to be in transition and change. And just like future is, we're telling us for probably a few decades, we're going to get into this singularity almost moment where things are just going to be in the constant shift and change. And you either play with it and adapt and embrace
2:51 Speaker 00 it, or you're going to be suffering a lot and feeling like life is just, you know, unmanageable for you. But it's also a choice. And I believe that we have the capacity to embrace and adapt and succeed in our amazing time that we are living in. But besides that, today I want to chat about achieving our goals, even in this fast-paced environment that again, from everything that we are seeing right now is just going to accelerate. Achieving our goals is often about just one thing, believe it or not, guys. And that thing is going to be
3:31 Speaker 00 shifting. And that thing is often called in "system thinking as a discipline" constraint, number one constraint. There is usually, again, coming from the books on system thinking, on turnarounds, on solving problems, on decision-making. There is usually one biggest constraint that's holding us back from moving closer towards our next level or our goal. And once we figure that out, what that number one constraint is, and we actually become intentional about putting our resources to solving for this problem
4:13 Speaker 00 or to improving this state on this number one constraint. Once we do that, things start moving, things start shifting, things start progressing. But very often, because we don't really know how to approach it, because we have never done it before, because we've never solved for it before, we kind of start avoiding this exact thing that's holding us back. And it feels like a lot of suffering because we want to move forward, but we also kind of don't want to be solving this thing that is in front of us because we don't really know how to solve it. So yesterday I attended online a power pot
4:53 Speaker 00 that is sort of business support group where we share our challenges and we try doing our best to help each other to overcome this challenge. And what I noticed is most of the advice given still is still meaning like we should know better by now, but somehow we just don't. We fall into this advice giving mode and we don't notice how we start taking people into our story and looking at their problem from our perspective, where we should try to do our best to get into their shoes as well as possible
5:37 Speaker 00 before we start giving advice. What it means is, what I mean here is often we start giving advice from like, this is my story, this is what I did, this is what worked for me. And now I'm convinced that this thing is going to solve your problem as well. Because I believe somehow internally that you're probably in the same shoes that I'm in. And we We all know that that someone else is never in your shoes. And so when you look at someone's success or how someone solved their problem. Uh, there are many factors that come into play. And they have their story, they have their strengths, they have their weaknesses, they have their uh specific environment, they have their specific goal.
6:21 Speaker 00 Uh, we often start giving advice like the person says, well, this is my challenge, but we often forget to ask. Like, what is your goal? What are you trying to achieve here? Like, ultimately, where are you going in the future? Because that will define what your number one constraint is. Because probably because of your goal, you're trying to go about solving that problem. Through filtering everything through the filter of your goal. Uh, reading this book, um, rereading this book, Reset, How to Change What's Not Working by Dan Heath. And it's all about system thinking.
7:02 Speaker 00 And it's all about finding leverage points to uh solve for number one constraint. So we could move forward and and forward and forward and make progress. But I think it's, guys, that number one constraint depends on the goal that we have. Even uh in the book, Dan says, number one constraint only makes sense in the context of your goal. Let's say if uh your goal is to build your business and get more clients. And but ultimately, what's your goal? What kind of clients? What kind of business are you trying to build? Are you trying to build, uh, let's say, multimillion dollar business?
7:46 Speaker 00 And uh you wanna work with, you wanna serve a lot of people? Or you uh satisfied with maybe less income or maybe working with less people? You're like, you know, I actually wanna work with just maybe ten people. But delivering this very high touch service and uh because of that charging premium for that. And I wanna work one on one, not a. Deliver solution at scale. And these are very different goals. So before figuring out what's the main constraint, we need to make sure that we have very clear definition of the goal and what the future when we achieve this goal looks like.
8:28 Speaker 00 Because depending on that, we'll need different solutions and we'll have different obstacles and we'll have different constraints and we'll need different solutions to solve that. And so what I found attending this business power pot, this business support group is that we didn't spend enough time asking the person, now, what are you trying to achieve? What is the ultimate goal? What is your vision? How do you know that you arrived there? And what are your strengths? What are your resources? And what do you believe your number one constraint is?
9:10 Speaker 00 And only after that, maybe sharing our experience and saying things like, uh, this is how I would approach solving for this problem. And this is why where I'm coming from. This is why I think so.
9:25 Speaker 00 But in the book, there is also this question that I also absolutely loved about how to figure out what your number one constraint is to start prioritizing your resources and your time and your energy towards solving for that one constraint versus, uh, as the book also mentions, when you put your energy, your resources into solving for the wrong constraint, eh, it's a total waste because you actually not going to solve the problems that holding you back. And so you're not going to be making progress, even though you might feel like you're doing all this hard work and you're solving problems. But if it's not the problem that's holding you back, then the solution will not move you forward.
10:12 Speaker 00 In the book, then brings up this example of fast food joints, uh, McDonald's or Chick-fil-A or Ben's. And they have a lot of data actually available on how they achieve like this record numbers of serving, our record number of customers. And so in this example, then talks about how each. Those establishments do their best to figure out what their number one constraint is to serve more customers. And their goal, they are prioritizing for solving the most amount of customers the fastest.
10:54 Speaker 00 And so then they walk the system and they figure out again, what's holding us back? Is it that we don't flip enough burgers? Is it that we don't have a drive-through figured out? And people are just stuck in traffic, even though we could be serving more people? Like, what is our number one constraint? And in those establishments, they would have different constraints at different points. And they would have to figure out one by one what the number one constraint is towards that goal of serving the most amount of customers per unit of time. So what's the number one constraint is now?
11:37 Speaker 00 Maybe it's not having enough people or workstations. And maybe somebody is doing really great job at flipping those burgers, burger meat. But maybe someone's not doing great enough job or the system is not optimized for putting those burger meats into the buns. Like, where is the sticking point? And once they figure that out, they start figuring out a way how to brainstorm for that, how to solve for that. And once they do that, there is another constraint coming up. And they reiterate, reiterate, reiterate. And also with different locations, their constraint point might be moving.
12:17 Speaker 00 And all for the goal of serving the most number of customers per unit of time. And the very strict definition of the goal allows them to then figure out that number one constraint faster. So then they can solve for that and move forward towards their goal. But then, let's say again, if somebody's not flipping those burgers fast enough and you're trying to increase the traffic. Well, it doesn't matter how much speed you add to the traffic through. Your drive through if somebody is just not making burgers fast enough. And that same thing applies to our businesses, our health, our relationship. They could say someone has the best nutrition and exercise program. They know it's the best.
13:03 Speaker 00 And it works for their body and their goals and it's like cutting edge, et cetera. But if they don't have the capacity to regulate their stress and emotions and they end up quite often overeating or whatever that food is, you know, late at night. It doesn't matter what kind of perfect diet system they have. If they don't solve for that overeating at night problem, then the whole system not going to move towards its goal. So the same thing applies everywhere. At some point in my nutrition journey, I had to figure out how to manage stress as well. Because no matter what kind of again of nutrition or health protocol I had, I would self sabotage myself with, I don't know, eating pizza.
13:47 Speaker 00 Cookies and all these sweets. I would at least once a week go to the store and buy all this food just to balance out my emotions. And so once I solved for that, that was super easy. And I'm in the best shape I can be for the past, I don't know, five, seven years. How long it's been, maybe more. So once you solve the main constraint, guys, that's when things start moving. A really great question to help you figure out what that number one constraint is in your business. Like, for example, today I woke up and I was thinking, I want to work in the next couple of months. I want to start working on this project of applying behavioral science to help
14:32 Speaker 00 the companies close the gap between strategy and execution, specifically in Saudi Arabia. So that is my goal to figure out for the next. Um, months and a half till the end of August, that's my goal. And I ask myself, so what's my number one constraint here? And I I still realizing, you know, it's still the conversations that I'm not having because in order to find the right audience and even the articulation, the right articulation of the problem of my ideal customer, even to figure out that ideal customer, I need to talk to a lot of people. And it's still a struggle to schedule enough of those meaningful conversations.
15:14 Speaker 00 And the question in the book is, which helped me to, uh, again, just dial in my focus on conversations. The question in the book is, if you were allowed to hire one person to help you achieve your goal, what would that person's role be? And I'm going to repeat the question and then we're going to brainstorm through my situation and a couple of examples to make it clear how you can use this powerful question to help you figure out your number one constraint. So you could optimize your resources, so you could start making progress where you're feeling stuck. So before we jump into that, please, guys, if you find usefulness
16:00 Speaker 00 and in this podcast and it's helping you out, even if it's helping you to think better, think about the right things like shifting your focus is huge. Uh, if it's helping you out, please do share, please rate, please review. It's, it's super, super helpful. And I know you don't have time, I don't have time. But if we don't put any energy into the things that we say we believe in, guess what? Those things will have harder time changing our world. And we're going to be in a world with which we like less, where we could be in the world, improving it every day towards the things that we want, like having more of people who understand these principles and live these principles in their life, like couldn't.
16:45 Speaker 00 Could that be such an amazing thing when you have more people listening to the podcast like this podcast and then helping you out to figure things out real life? Like, that's the purpose of this podcast, so please do share, review. And now, back to the episode. And back to the question. The question that I got from Dan Heath book Reset: How to Change What's Not Working. It's all about leverage in the system and finding those leverage points. And one of the biggest thing in the whole book is finding that number one constraint that's holding your progress back. And while you're trying to figure out all the smaller things that might be contributing to something else, might not be.
17:31 Speaker 00 But until we figure out this number one constraint and solve for that, nothing is moving to the next stage, next level. And the question that might help you to figure out that number one constraint is, if you were allowed to hire one person, maybe a whole team, to help you achieve your goal, what would that person's role be? What would that team do for you? For me, the team would start scheduling conversations with potentially buyers, like digital transformation leaders, like HR people, like cybersecurity and compliance officers. All these people potentially might be great allies, might be the people who need my help
18:15 Speaker 00 to do their job better, so their organization and goals move better. So that is...
18:23 Speaker 00 So that is the job, the role. That is what the person, the team I would hire for would do. They would search for those people, specifically in Saudi Arabia, specifically in companies, in telecommunications, in technology, in AI, in innovation, those fast-paced changing industries, or financial institutions who need to implement a lot of...
18:49 Speaker 00 Digital solutions and create more convenience than ever for evolving needs of their customers. Right. I would hire a team, I would hire people to help me have more of these conversations. So then together we figure out who the right person is and what the right problem is and how to articulate our value and our offer and structure our work so we could help our ideal customer to solve for this problem. So that's my answer to this question. And the same applies to relationships that you might be working on, to your health and fitness that you might be working on. If you were allowed to hire the person to help you with that.
19:32 Speaker 00 But like back in the day, I would hire a person again back to health and fitness who would help me to figure out how to start that overeating. Like I know a coach or some sort of therapist or probably I would think of a coach to help me to figure out that problem. Of in terms of relationships, like who do you need to hire to help you figure out your relationships? Who would you hire to help you with that? And sometimes it's not going to point you right away to the exact problem, like exact thing that you need to solve, the exact constraint, maybe in your own psychology, in your own mindset.
20:11 Speaker 00 But it will point you to a place where it's most likely located that number one constraint. Like, let's say if in your relationships you end up having maybe fights or certain other issues, I don't know, maybe people leaving or you connect with people who train you. You don't know exactly where this problem coming from. But you probably know, like, you know, if I were to hire someone, I would hire, I don't know, a therapist, a coach, an ex kind of
20:52 Speaker 00 help. To help me figure that out. And that's where your number one constraint is. And that's where you need to start digging and applying resources that you have, the wisdom, maybe learning more, maybe connecting with people who might have the answer. Maybe chat G P T asking, you know, I have this problem. What can be helpful? What can be my number one constraint? And just start digging, because as then Heath figured out in all of these business cases that he worked at, in all the research that he did, and he did quite a lot of research, if you go through any of his books. Uh, if anything you will learn from his books is, is that. Figure out that number one constraint and start working on that.
21:35 Speaker 00 And then proposes again this question, if you were allowed to hire one person to help you achieve your goal, what would that person or whole team do? And then also, always, always remember, constraints only make sense in the context of your goals. Where are you heading? Because if I'm heading again to serve millions of people, it's not the same as trying to solve ten, fifteen people with high touch service. Completely different goals. And that's why I'm shifting my offerings and how I position my company and my branding because of understanding where I wanna go.
22:17 Speaker 00 And I wanna change environments to help us unlock more human potential at scale, not one on one. And that's why I'm heading into workplaces. And that's why I'm having my number one constraint of having more conversations. You see how it all connects? Like unless you're very specific about the future and about your goal, any advice might sound like a great idea and will help you to do absolutely nothing. And that's the sad part about it, whether you go to business support group or try to get advice from mentors. Try to do your best to give them the context, the goal where you're trying to create,
23:00 Speaker 00 to build, because if they don't have that, and they will give you advice, and even worse, you're gonna listen to that advice, and you're gonna put a lot of hard work and actually solve a lot of problems, and then you're actually not gonna be moving in a meaningful way toward what was your ultimate goal. That's an ultimate failure, putting all this hard work and making progress, but then realizing you were heading the wrong way all the way through. So, if you were allowed to hire one person to help you achieve your goal, what would that person's role be? And remember, your constraints only make sense in the context of your goal. So,
23:44 Speaker 00 where are you heading? Because if you don't know where you're going, any road will lead you there. Hope this podcast was useful and a great prompt for your weekend reflection, analyze what's working, what's not working, and what you need to do more or less of to move you closer to where you're trying to go in any area of your life. And till next time, guys, do some reflection, stay tuned, and keep growing.
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