Even dietitians know it’s healthy to have a beer or a donut once in a while. Without wiggle room, a strict diet can harm health in other ways, like creating stress or limiting social interaction.

Until a client prescribed otherwise, our company struggled to take a break from something that was supposed to keep us strong: our process. This client loved our work, but he felt that we’d become too married to our own way of doing things.

A look back at our client data showed that we had, indeed, taken our healthy habits too far. We did our best work when we eliminated VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), empathized with our clients as well as their users, and pushed toward consistent shipping.

So we broke our mold.

We starte...