Expectations are rising.

There are ways to keep up with rising expectations on lower budgets.

I just got off a project that was told to do more with less. The realization didn’t come at first. The leader delivered the news well. There was no spin, no jargon, no softening the blow.

She said the number. Immediately, everyone was thinking: We're going to have to do more with less. She then said she knew it was hard and that it was unexpected. She said she had faith in the team and that they would figure it out.

But a 40 percent cut? That’s rough. Even for the best teams.

And then, over the next three weeks, that team worked silently to rebuild the exact same plan they'd run the year before, just smaller.

Nobody invented anything. Nobody got creative. Everyone played it safe. I've seen this happen enough times that I stopped thinking of it as a fluke.

Yet something very interesting happens from time to time. Some teams get cut and come back with the best work they've ever done. They use the challenge to deliver some of the best work they have ever done because it forces a clarity that only a cut can introduce.

So what separates the teams that thrive under budget pressure from the ones that succumb to the weight? Here are three battle-tested real-world creative tools you can use the next time you are faced with a budget cut.

Unless we are willing to accept that the........

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