Evolving through Experimentation
Innovation is the word on everyone’s tongue these days. Organizations of all sizes and stripes invest in “innovation labs”, hack-a-thons, and other initiatives and programs designed to solicit new ideas and ways of working.
But implicit in the idea of innovation is a word that’s less likely to be bandied around as a desired goal – failure.
Above all, effective experiments require experimental mindsets; that is to say, a willingness a fail, the humility to not need absolute certainty, and an attitude that can find the silver lining when reality doesn’t meet expectations.
Thomas Edison famously bristled at that word, saying “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” But that is indeed the natural result of many experiments– a dead end, an idea that didn’t pan out, a collective agreement to return to the drawing board.
So when an enterprise develops a fear of what can happen in the course of experimentation, it can lead to a long-term stagnation. Some organizations, particularly those with a long-standing service or product offering, have a hard time evolving. They tend to focus on leadership transition, and make small changes at the edges.
Enabling Reflection and Change
Let’s be clear: not every organization needs to be undergoing massive change all the time. That can be more than a little unsettling and ultimately unproductive over time. However, organizations do need to be primed to enable change – that’s no longer an option.
They need to undergo periods of reflection - long-term horizon planning - so they have even a fighting chance to survive a major shock, “Black Swan” event like COVID-19, or to take advantage of opportunities to improve their services to better support their communities.
Complacency kills. The status quo might feel safe, but it’s anything but, as the likes of Kodak, Blockbuster, and Myspace could tell you. We should always be asking, why are we doing *this*? Is there something we could do that would better serve our constituents and drive our mission success?
We can’t be scared to engage in those conversations. Virtually every organization today must make them a priority.
The Hypothetical
Often, we focus overmuch on products and services at the expense of the change we seek. We get caught up in sustaining a service offering, a product line, or a business model when it just is not serving the change process any more.
Why? Because change is unsettling.
However, if we look at the world around us, it is changing every day. There are daily cycles of the sun, seasonal changes in foliage, annual orbits around the sun, and longer-cycle evolutionary processes at work. Change is part of the natural order of things.
As social entrepreneurs, it is our calling and our specialty to identify opportunities for positive social change. We bring together communities and stakeholders to map system components and develop a shared understanding of contexts and drivers. We help to develop interventions - often in the form of products and services - to help nudge along change and reconfigure system interactions.
We are essentially developing hypotheses - theories of change - and designing experiments to test evolutionary pathways within human-observable timeframes.
Embracing an Experimental Mindset
I know – easier said than done. So how can we succeed in building cultures of continual experimentation? We need to listen carefully, take small iterative steps, and then observe and learn over and over.
An experiment doesn’t need to be a “bet the farm” experience in which the cost of failure is catastrophic. You can find game-changing results through iterating on experiments that are small and low-risk, but also enable high impact.
Sometimes, things simply don’t work the way we thought - and that is an opportunity to try to figure out why – and ask the important questions:
What piece of the context was missing?
What do we change and try again?
When do we scrap the idea and try something else?
What partners can we bring in to help?
How do we measure change?
Is the change desirable?
How do we reduce risk?
Above all, do we have consent to innovate?
Let’s not gloss over the reality: change can be uncomfortable. But by investing in smart and strategic experiments, you can reduce your organization’s risk – if you have aligned your experiments with your organization’s mission. A scattershot trial that isn’t tied to your long-term goals won’t pay the dividends of experiments rooted in very intentional thinking about the long-term future of your organization – and what needs to happen in the meantime to fulfill your vision of the future.
Above all, effective experiments require experimental mindsets; that is to say, a willingness a fail, the humility to not need absolute certainty, and an attitude that can find the silver lining when reality doesn’t meet expectations.
