Before You Invest in Your Next Idea, Do This! The Lean Canvas: Part 2 of 3

In the first article of this three-part series, you learned about Lean Canvas – a simple, yet powerful tool for vetting ideas.

I hinted at sharing important lessons Martina Goss taught me about vetting my idea for an online course on business infrastructure. The intent is for you to join me on this journey so that you can also leverage the Lean Canvas to stress test your ideas before investing valuable time and money in building a solution.

While there are many lessons learned so far, I’ll share three of them in this article with more to come in the final installment.?

Lesson #1: Identify the Problem?

This may seem cliché, but don’t underestimate the importance of really understanding, identifying, and articulating a problem you intend to solve with your idea.

In fact, problem identification is so important that it’s the very first section to complete on the Lean Canvas. As Martina often stresses to me, “It’s important to get the problem right, otherwise everything else will fall apart.”

Our work together started by analyzing my company, Equilibria, Inc. as a whole – what problems did we identify in the market? Specifically, what are the triggering events that get customers into our sales funnel??

Answering this question required a combination of considering the following factors in addition to using the 5 Whys exercise (a Lean Six Sigma tool for understanding the root causes of problems):

• Bad Experience
• Change in Circumstance
• Awareness

One major problem we identified at the company or macro-level, is the fact that there are limited back-office operations resources for owners and leaders of non-manufacturing businesses. With that in mind, we now had a basis for the problem that an online course could solve.

But before delving into the solution, Martina recommended a deeper or micro-level analysis of this problem which led to the second lesson.

Lesson #2: Fall in Love with the Problem

It's so tempting to start building a solution for a problem you've identified. However, we must be careful to not build solutions that nobody or very few people want. In the case of my company, a major hurdle is the lack of awareness about the topics of operations and business infrastructure. How can people search for our solution if they don't know how to articulate their operational problems?

This is known as the Innovators Bias. It’s a phenomenon that occurs when we begin building solutions before understanding the customer's problem or doing any validation work with the target market.

Martina suggested we work on a “Leaner Canvas.” Doing so requires focusing on doing the research and analysis required to complete the outer sections of the traditional Lean Canvas first.?

Further problem identification along with customer interviews led us here at Equilibria to the following top 3 problems for owners and leaders of fast-growing small businesses:

1. They want education that's low on theoretical concepts and high on practical application.
2. They can (and will) choose cost over value especially if they don't understand the impact that education will have on their business's ability to scale.
3. They want education that isn't so short that they don't retain the information and not so long that they lose interest.

Lesson #3: Your Business Model is Your Product

We've all heard the expression, "People do business with those they know, like, and trust." Fundamentally, customers buy because of your organization's business model. That is, they buy into your core mission, values, and purpose for existing. It's when your customers' wants and needs align with your business model, that you can build your solutions to fit or solve their problems.

Results?

So far, Martina and I have spent several sessions on problem identification. The results have already led to some radical mindset shifts for me. I'll share those shifts and the results of my Leaner Canvas in the final article of this series.

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About the Author

Alicia Butler Pierre is the Founder & CEO of Equilibria, Inc. – an operations management firm specializing in business infrastructure for fast-growing small businesses. She’s a software inventor, author of the two-time Amazon bestseller Behind the Fa?ade: How to Structure Company Operations for Sustainable Success, and host of the top 2% Business Infrastructure podcast.

Alicia’s also an adjunct instructor of Lean Principles at Purdue University and the newly appointed USA Chair of the G100’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises. A chemical engineer turned entrepreneur, she’s advised, designed, and optimized processes for companies including Shell Oil, Coca-Cola, and The Home Depot.