The Playground Study, Visualized

“Don’t Tell Me What I Can’t Do!”
—John Locke, Lost (TV Series)

In my experience, most people live like John Locke. We hate feeling constrained or restricted, especially when someone else imposes it. But what if constraints were not only not bad… but sometimes… good?

This is where the Playground Study illustration comes in. Let me try to explain it verbally, then share a visual to help it land stronger.

• Imagine two identical parks.
• They are both FULL of young children.
• The children are all running around playing games.
• Both parks are right next to a busy highway.
• The first park has NO fence between the grass and the highway.
• The second park has an impenetrable wall.

Socratic Questions

Now take an educated guess on these three questions:

1. Which park will have kids playing in the grass next to the highway?
2. Why?
3. What are the broader implications of this?

Unless the kids have a death wish OR negligent parents, the kids in park 1 will stay far from the highway, lest a car accidentally veer off OR they run too far into the road.

But this is never a problem in park #2, because the cars AND kids can never cross. A car hitting the wall would bounce off. A kid running to catch a fly ball would bump into the fence. In either situation, the harm to the kid is either eliminated or significantly reduced.

So What Are The Implications

A hard boundary (the fence) provides the safety kids need to explore the entire park.

So what’s the implication for your business?

Where are there situations where adding a hard rule actually resulted in MORE exploration, innovation, and testing of efficiency? Where did constraints lead to MORE overall freedom, play, and flow… and not less?

Juxtaposed, Visualized

Here’s the visual I created.

I hope it helps.

And if you’d like to know more about this study, there’s an excellent LinkedIn article by Andrew Horn that goes into more detail. I originally heard about this in a book (I wish I could remember which one), and if you know it, please let me know so I can cite it properly.