Risks can be named and described, consequently, it seems to be easy to prevent them by establishing rules.

However, the more people focus on risks the more rules they’ll establish. When the set of rules grows too far, it becomes limiting by focusing on exact processes and things people should not do. This limits creativity to find ways to go around the rules, thus making rules the limiting factor. It also adds an emphasis on responsibility which becomes the obligation to comply with the rules.

And if an idea still appears, verifying its implementation invites into a binary approach in which every rule is checked to see if the idea is allowed or not.

Naturally, the presence of a rule requires attention. The more rules are present, the more attention they grab until they consume almost all the attention span available.

Opportunities are different in the sense, that they need the availability of attention to interrupt the automatic systems. Once something appeared as an opportunity it needs to be processed to transform it into possible action. In dealing with opportunities, attention thus has to be engaged in the creation process.

Using constraints, it becomes possible to delimit an area of activity within which everything is possible. Aligning these constraints with the available attention thus contributes to optimizing the creation process.

In a way, constraints are rules too.

The differentiating factor is if they serve risks or opportunities if they prevent risks or delimit action.

That is, on what they focus the attention.

It’s possible to choose to make change happen.