We Value Experimentation over Executing Change Tasks

We're three days into the new year, which means most of us have already abandoned our new year's resolutions!

Habits are hard to change, but don't worry, it's not all bad!

This month's theme is Experimentation over Executing Change Tasks, one of the 5 Universals of Change designed to help us flip your thinking away from traditional approaches to change and towards modern ones.

The year was 2011, and my introduction to Lean Startup was inspired by how our company had spent 18 months and 1.5 million dollars building a product we couldn't sell. I had heard about the Lean Startup Machine, and it was making a stop in Toronto.?

I attended, pitched an idea, assembled a team and after a weekend of validation, our team won.

The idea behind The Lean Startup wasn't new, but the packaging was different. I quit my job shortly after attending that weekend and started helping organizations change how they approach product development and change by using a co-creative and validation approach.

Let's get right to 7 ideas that can help us shift our thinking towards an experimentation approach to change.

If you'd prefer, watch the latest episode of LCM TV about Experimentation here .

Visualization:?We visualize our change work using big visible walls to be transparent about what we're working on.

If we can't see the work, we can't manage it, and change work is almost always invisible. People think agile people are anti-tool. Well, I suppose that's true in some cases; however, the intent is to create a single source of truth (thanks to Jon Stahl for the language on that!) we can use to make better decisions. Having people stand around a big visible wall helps us focus on the most important things to do now.

Feedback-Driven:?We use feedback from experiments as input into how we adjust our change plans.

Agile teams don't?not?plan. They plan more frequently, in shorter time horizons and in smaller chunks. In change, we do the same; we focus on using feedback from the system we're changing into our planning. If the experiments we planned to do are no longer relevant, we toss them.

Diagnostics:?We have the right leading indicators that help shape our future experiments and direction.

I remember almost being tossed out of an agile open space in the mid-2000s, suggesting it was crazy to focus on measuring 'how agile you were'. No business person cares about that; it's the outcomes that matter.

The desire for metrics will never go away, but combining them with diagnostics is a good idea. Diagnostics help us know if we're at least facing the right direction.

Celebrate Success:?We celebrate the good things, no matter how small they are

Duh, thanks, captain obvious!

This is not only about cheerleading, although I'm not sure we're allowed to use that term anymore, it's also about having meaningful conversations about the evidence we're seeing that the change is working.?

Pro-tip: don't create measurements to measure other people. Find a common cause or purpose and let people create their measurements.

Measurements:?The people affected by the change have created their own measurements that align to the purpose of the change

I mentioned diagnostic earlier; those are leading indicators; "how can we know we're headed in the right direction?"

Measurements are more tangible, but they're lagging indicators and help us see if we arrived at the place we intended to.

A balance of both is necessary.

Accept Failure:?We accept failure, take learnings, and wipe the slate clean so we can move on without blame.

Loki said it best when he told Thanos he had experience on earth. Thanos said: "if you consider failure experience..." to which Loki retorted, "I consider experience, experience."

Accepting failure isn't about the cute "thou-shalt fail to learn" nonsense you see plastered everywhere. It's about accepting that some of the time the change will go the way you think, sometimes it won't - and you can't figure out why.

Wipe the slate clean and try again.

Facilitate:?We design experiments to reduce barriers that are preventing people from adopting the change

If we simply execute the tasks we created and then blame people for resisting, we fail to understand what barriers might exist for people.?

If we switch our stance away from managing tasks, or worse, separating project management from change management - egads...it's 2022...do we REALLY need to keep having that conversation? - and towards experimenting, we will inspire people to do the same.

We'll be featuring stories, ideas, and articles all month long about shifting our thinking away from executing tasks and towards experimentation.

Experimentation over Executing Change Tasks is one of the 5 Universals of Change. Five universals and 52 philosophies are designed to help you change how you think about change.

You can find out more at modernchangemanagement.com