How to Perfectly Pilot Any Project: 5 Lessons from the Renaissance

The best way to create something that’s never been done before is to pilot it — test your ideas quickly on a small scale. But so many of us get caught up with corporate politics and other distractions, we lose sight of the best ways to pilot a project to produce killer results.

So, to learn how to do it right, let's go back almost 600 years to the Italian Renaissance.

INNOVATION CHALLENGE: The largest dome ever built at that time: The Duomo of Florence. (Built: 1446-1461) No one knew how to do it — how to make it structurally sound! The cathedral was designed in the previous century, but the dome was left as a "somebody will figure it out" hole in the roof.

Lesson 1: If your pilot doesn’t scare you and take you way outside of your comfort zone, you’re thinking way too small.

Go big (personally) or don’t bother. In the pilot's first days: Every team member should begin feeling “I have no fricking idea how we’ll do this!” 

Lesson 2. Your pilot project is rarely a clean slate. 

Often, you're stuck with bad code, or an outdated factory, or without the proper resources. Piloting often begins with "Somebody stuck us with wildly undesirable restrictions and challenges...How can we leverage that?"

THE COMPETITION: To win the commission, competing architects were asked to stand an egg upright on a piece of marble. (Note: Google did not invent unique problem-solving new-hire tests!) Only Filippo Brunelleschi could do it. He blew on the egg to counter-balance the force of gravity. His competitors complained that they could have done that too. But they didn't rethink the problem. They lost. Brunelleschi got the commission.

Lesson 3. Everything about piloting a project requires you to think differently.

THE DESIGN: The challenge was to design a massive dome, without buttresses or support columns, that would not collapse under its own weight. Eventually Brunelleschi figured out a herringbone design for the brick structure. By zig-zagging the bricks, each change in direction worked with gravity instead of against it. While that was the key design element, Brunelleschi didn't stop there. He invented a new hoisting machine to haul the bricks up to the top of the dome. He was issued a patent for a river transport vessel to bring supplies in. And more.

Lesson 4. There is always one main challenge to be solved... And then lots and lots of other challenges to be be overcome, to make your make main idea work.

BUILD SMALL, CHEAP, FAST WORKING PROTOTYPES: Everybody knows that this is commonplace in today's architectural, industrial, and digital designs. But is that idea time-tested? Is that how it's always been done? Yup! Just six years ago, in 2012, under a construction site, Brunelleschi's mini-dome (prototype) was discovered. As tech VCs now call it, he built a "proof of concept" to sell his idea — not just to all who had to approve it, but to the workers who would build it. They needed to know his dome design would not collapse on them!

Lesson 4A. Piloting has forever included a Proof of Concept.

It's what everybody involved needs in order to buy in.

Lesson 5. While piloting, food and drink will always be strategically used as both a motivator and a tool to keep the troops working harder.

PRODUCTIVITY DRIVERS: Think a continuous supply of pizza and Red Bull was thought up in Silicon Valley as a way to keep the troops chained to their desks? Think again. Brunelleschi didn't want his workers wasting time running up and down the stairs to eat. He brought food and wine to them. (Diluted just enough to keep them focused.) 

Overall Lesson

The past has many lessons to teach us about how to create the future!

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Bill Jensen Site, Twitter, FB. Bill’s latest book, Future Strong, is about the five deeply personal choices each of us must make to be ready for all the disruptive tomorrows heading our way.