Constraints as Possibility
Inspired by Ian’s Ride: A Long-Distance Journey to Joy by Karen Polinsky
I recently picked up the book Ian’s Ride. I was curious about Ian Mackay’s experience and how he adapted to profound physical constraints. Because his story takes place here in the Pacific Northwest, on the same trails and mountains I’ve spent decades running and exploring, the felt close to home.
For those unfamiliar with his story, Ian was paralyzed from the neck down following a mountain biking accident. Years later, he completed a 335-mile journey across Washington State in a power wheelchair. That feat eventually grew into a mission of advocacy for outdoor accessibility and the foundation of his organization, Ian’s Ride.
Ian’s ability to overcome his physical constraints is both inspirational and incredible. And I have been thinking a lot about is the example of how Ian didn’t use his physical constraints as limits to his impact.
Constraints as Landscape
Constraints are real. In endurance running, they are always there. The terrain or the weather or the mileage or the cut-off time. You have zero influence over these things. To me, that’s one of the things that makes these events so interesting. You don’t eliminate those constraints; you adapt within them.
What’s important is not the presence of a constraint, but whether we lead our teams and ourselves to thrive in spite of it.
Leadership has its own set of constraints. Funding may be limited. Market needs change. Delivery timelines are too long. Customers back out at the last minute. These are not imagined obstacles, they are simply part of the landscape that we have to manage as leaders.
Reason or Excuse
In leadership, we often confuse our "reasons" with our "excuses."
A reason acknowledges real constraints.
An excuse uses these constraints as limitations.
When we face a setback, we have a choice. We can treat it as a reason to increase our focus and creativity, or we can let it become a ceiling that limits our ambition.
“It’s a tough setback” can increase our focus and creativity, or it can become a limitation that limits our capacity ambition.
"What Else is Possible?"
What inspires me about Ian’s story is not that he denied his limitations. His constraints were significant and permanent. But he didn’t use those constraints as a ceiling. His capacity expanded in other directions, endurance, community, advocacy, influence. His injury did not go away, yet it did not define the scale of his impact either.
Instead of asking “What is no longer possible?” the question became “What else is possible?”.
In trail running, when a path is washed out, you don't go home, you find a detour. You look at the map and find a new way to the same destination. That subtle shift in perspective, from staring at the washout to looking for a detour, changes the entire outcome.
Leadership is no different. Every leader faces "washouts", a key hire quits, a product launch fails, or a strategic partnership gets cancelled. Our natural instinct may be to stop and complain that the path is no longer there. But the most effective leaders recognize that while the path may be gone, the goal is still the same. They don’t waste energy wishing the trail hadn't washed out; they immediately begin the work of finding a new route. Resilience in leadership isn't just about enduring the storm; it's about the creative agility to find a new line through the debris.
Expanding Capacity
Most leadership moments are less dramatic but can still be formative. All leaders experience failed initiatives, missed targets. mistakes with team members. Over time, it can become easy to internalize these experiences and let them limit our potential. We can become afraid to push ourselves or our team or we start "running scared," setting easier targets or avoiding new opportunities because playing it safe feels better than risking another fall.
Resilience isn’t about ignoring constraints. It’s about refusing to let them limit ourselves. It is the hard work of increasing capacity and capability in spite of or even because of the constraints that we’ve been given. Constraints may remain permanant, but that doesn’t mean our capacity needs to be.
At any given moment, we are operating from one of two mindsets. We are either increasing our impact within the constraints we’ve been given, or we are letting the constraint define the limits of our impact.
The terrain may be fixed, but how we deal with it is is entirely up to us.