Stop throwing shit at the wall!
First published on Medium.com on 21st October 2016.
“Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.” A common phrase heard around offices up and down the country all day. People love hearing it, makes you sound cool and open to new ideas, fail fast, wooooo!
See what sticks
What people love to do though, is just the first half, throwing stuff at the wall. Just keep throwing like crazy, that’s a great strategy. In the end you can report “we covered the wall!”
Great but how much stuff is on the floor? “Shhhhhh!”
See what sticks…
What sticks…
Sticks…
That’s the key word here, sticks. To make this phrase work you have to stop throwing at some point. Walk up to the wall, take a note of what stuck, go back and start throwing again. But, stop throwing the stuff that doesn’t stick and throw more of the stuff that does stick. Stop. Observe the wall, see what sticks best, go back, and throw the stickier stuff.
Rinse and repeat
Keep going to the wall, come back and throw more of the good stuff and less of the rubbish. Eventually you end up only throwing stuff that sticks. Sounds simple right? Yet people don’t look at the wall, they just keep throwing.
Quantity over quality
They have a genius idea instead, “what if I had more people throwing stuff? I’ll have more stuff stuck to the wall!” That’s true to an extent but you’ll also have a floor covered in stuff. Probably cost you to clean that up, or maybe you're happy being surrounded by muck.
If you can’t learn from what you’re doing then you’re wasting your time. If just throwing more stuff is your strategy then at least save some money and just hire some monkeys to throw stuff. Or even better just build a shit slinging machine and sit back.
If you’re smart though, combine both. Throw, observe, repeat, then when you know what sticks, build a lean machine to just throw the good stuff.