Necessity: the Mother of Experimentation?
They say necessity is the mother of invention. Maybe so, but I think it’s really the mother of experimentation. There is much talk right now of the “new normal” we are all working in. WFH, Zoom, virtual coffee breaks and after work quarantinis feel like they have always been part of our routine.
From healthcare leaders to banking execs, our team hear from leaders around the world that they have made changes in the last couple of months that would previously have taken years. Barriers and objections to change have simply melted away as pragmatism replaces caution and we have all had to “just make it work”.
We have heard wonderful examples of teams working together to create new processes, keep existing operations going, customers served and staff engaged, despite their day-to-day working arrangements being turned upside down. it is truly inspiring stuff.
I urge you to embrace the spirit that has helped you make these changes and to keep experimenting. After all, Option B may be working, but how do you know Option C, D, E or F wouldn’t work even better?
We are working with leaders and their teams as they carry out huge numbers of business and leadership experiments. We are helping them to create, conduct and monitor these experiments in order to measure the impact, reflect and capture insight and learning. We challenge them, encourage them to do more and offer expert advice and support to help them embed changes that will last.
Experimentation is a truly powerful (and often fun!) way to work. It engages the seeking system in our brains and done well it is a speedy, low risk and low cost approach that can lead to huge amounts of innovation and insight. In our view it is the best way to make sure that if and when this is all over, you hold onto the learning and make sure that the next normal isn’t as flawed as the old normal was.
What experiments are you and your team doing? What are you doing to capture the learning and insight from them? Where could you experiment to find out more?
