All business is a giant experiment... so why are we so uncomfortable doing it?
Ever been in a conversation or a meeting where someone mentions "running an experiment" or "being a little experimental"... only to hear someone else respond with something along the lines of "the trouble with experimental... is it sounds new, risky, unproven..."
As humans we all crave certainty, or at least our brains do, but this alone doesn't explain our obsession with the need for "guaranteed outcomes" that most of us encounter regularly in the workplace... and what happens to most of us when faced with this kind of reaction to our ideas is we do nothing... it's safer.
Just think about the number of times you'll have read the line "70% of change initiatives fail" (which, by the way, has been soundly debunked), and you'll see how easy it is for us to get into the mindset where anything less than perfect is failure... that makes everything binary.
The effect is simple - it slows growth, it slows innovation and ultimately it results in a kind of paralysis inside our organisations where nobody is willing to try anything new for fear of it being regarded as a failure or at very least, we wait for others to try things instead of feeling able to try them ourselves.
When we really think about it, all business is a giant experiment, nobody knows for sure what's going to happen when we launch a new product, enter a new market, even what's likely to happen in our own market... we try to predict the likeliest outcomes but let's face it, there are countless examples of companies that have fallen from grace because of things they either couldn't predict or react to quickly enough to stay in the game (Kodak, Blockbuster, Woolworths... the list goes on and on).
In almost every business context, leaders use their experience, knowledge and insights to determine which levers to pull and then see what happens, adjusting and iterating as they go.
When it comes to cultural change or "engaging employees" (possibly my least favourite expression) we regularly see companies where everyone is waiting for management to fix the problems and not only does this place an unhelpful burden on managers, it means that the changes when they are implemented are never owned by the people... they're done to them.
Consider instead a scenario where we encourage people to come up with their own short experiments, to identify things they think they can change for themselves with their teammates.
They design and test their hypotheses, track the results and adjust accordingly... not only does this result in a different level of ownership, but it starts to build a belief and joy in the process of continuous change. Furthermore, it builds an appreciation of curiosity and learning.
"The most resilient companies foster a pervasive culture of innovation at all levels of the organization - one that values risk-taking, embraces experimentation and considers failure an inevitable part of thinking boldly." - Lynne Doughtie, US Chairman and CEO KPMG
This mindset is actually where the "Lab" part of our name "Happiness Lab" comes from. The idea that we don't really know what makes people happier - none of us do - but what we can do is learn about people in the workplace, experiment with change and monitor the impact on people's subjective wellbeing (their happiness).
Fostering a culture of experimentation doesn't require transformation, just the creation of time and space for people to experiment, and a change of mindset.
Little changes that make today better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today... that's the focus... and the aggregation of those changes... that'll be transformational!