Have you ever felt overwhelmed with a project or situation at work? You are unsure where to begin and the stakes feel really high, so you are afraid to make a mistake.
For many, this is a regular occurrence. You spend so much time looking for the perfect solution that you end up taking no action. The problem persists and frustration grows.
If you are tired of this cycle, there is a way out of it.
Incorporating an experimentation mindset shifts you into action – some action – to move through your challenge and unlock your leadership and career potential.
What is an experimentation mindset?
Those who work closely with me often hear me say “it’s a pilot!”. This signals that we are about to try a good but imperfect concept with a goal of learning.
A pilot is an experiment or a hypothesis that you want to test so that you can evaluate its effectiveness. From there, you adjust the pilot concept based on your learning and try again.
An experimentation mindset asks questions like:
- Was this iteration more or less effective towards what I am trying to achieve?
- What did I learn from this experiment?
- What adjustments would make the idea even better?
Pro Tip: An experimentation mindset doesn’t mean to act recklessly or not manage risk. Instead, it is breaking down the bigger risks into smaller experiments so that you can learn and adjust quickly to get to your desired outcome.
Case Study: Designing a New Program or Offering
When developing the initial launch of a peer coaching program, there were endless decisions to make about how to best design it for the organization and its employees. Instead of taking months to carefully consider all of the options, a colleague and I sat down to outline the following:
- What is the compelling reason or need we see for this program?
- Based on the available data, what do we know about what participants will need to succeed in the program?
- What is the simplest version of the program we could launch to test the concept?
Together, we identified several questions we wanted to address through a pilot of the program.
- Do the needs we identified exist?
- Does peer coaching address the needs we identified?
- Do supervisors/ managers and individual contributors have different needs in a peer coaching model?
- Is 6-8 participants or 4-6 participants more effective?
We did our diligence on designing the content, but most of the pilot was focused on understanding the need, the intended audience, and whether the program design was meeting the need. Based on what we learned from the pilot, we adapted the group size and created identical but separate paths for individual contributors and supervisors/managers.
Future iterations of the program focused on strengthening the content and participant selection process. Each time, we evaluated the key elements of the program we were testing and incorporated learning from our experiments.
Result: We went from concept to launch in under 6 months, which included the application and selection process for participants. Five years later we continue to receive high net promoter scores and program evaluations while also expanding the reach of the program.
How to Use an Experimentation Mindset to Unlock Your Potential
If you’re ready to incorporate an experimentation mindset into your work, here are X ways to get started!
1 | Encourage innovation and creative problem solving.
Essential to an experimentation mindset is viewing challenges as opportunities – opportunities to learn and try new approaches. If you find yourself or those you work closely with stuck in “the way we’ve always done it” or “we’ve tried that before and it didn’t work”, a mindset of experimentation can breakthrough to more innovative and creative solutions.
Keys to overcoming resistance:
- Even the most resistant employees can get on board with a short-term test or experiment – a trial period.
- Ask for their input on how to design the trial, how success will be measured and agree on a specific date when you will meet to discuss how it is going and whether the trial will continue.
- Follow-through by meeting with them on the agreed upon date to discuss the success of the trial period – and remain objective in reviewing the success of the trial.
2 | Foster resilience and a learning culture.
Sometimes experiments don’t work out the way you might have expected. That does not mean the experiment was a failure.
Building capability for yourself and others to focus on what was learned instead of what didn’t go well fosters a learning culture. This creates a ripple effect of resilience that helps you and others navigate whatever challenges that come up in the workplace.
A learning culture doesn’t mean there is no accountability for performance.
Take action. Come to agreement upfront about what the experiment is testing, how success will be determined, what you aim to learn and what level of risk is acceptable for this experiment.
Pro Tip: Reframe how you think about success. Instead of asking if the experiment or pilot “went well”, ask “what did you learn?”
3 | Shift towards being more data-informed.
You can’t decide if an experiment was successful if you haven’t determined what success is and how to measure it. Data also helps you remain objective when evaluating the success of your experiment. “Vibes” or “gut feelings” are not reliable measures as they introduce all kinds of bias.
If numbers aren’t your thing, that’s ok! This isn’t always a numbers game.
Being data-informed includes all kinds of data. Think about both quantitative and qualitative data that you can use. Qualitative data can include things like observations, changes in mindset, and more.
Examples:
- If you are testing how effective a virtual facilitation technique is, you may “measure” how many participants demonstrate certain predetermined behaviors related to multi-tasking during the workshop with a goal of <15%.
- If you are testing how effective your communication has been on an important project, you may identify the key points and have a follow-up conversation with people in the target audience to gauge whether they were aware of the key points within a certain period after the communication.
If you don’t hit your target, that’s ok! (See building a learning culture above.) That is a cue that you need to adjust your approach and try again.
The aim is not to perfectly measure the success of your work. It is about building a practice of defining success and measuring whether you achieve it.
4 | Accelerate learning and growth.
An experimentation mindset involves performing small experiments (relatively) quickly, so that you can learn, adjust and try again. This moves you into action – some action – because you are focused on learning over perfection.
This mindset also helps you get away from the idea that there is “one right way” to approach a situation. While there may be “one right way” for really high stakes things like brain surgery or a mission to the moon, most people don’t operate in that world. There is time and space to find your own approach that works within any constraints you need to manage.
Example:
A coaching client recent shared with me that they really value connecting with and hearing directly from frontline employees in their organization. But, it is so challenging to coordinate an all-staff meeting. They were stuck in the all-staff meeting being the “one right way.”
Through our conversation, they realized there were many alternatives that are much easier to coordinate. They chose one option to further pursue and experiment with! In one coaching session, they moved from being stuck to taking action on something that is deeply aligned with who they are as a leader.
5 | Build confidence through iteration.
An experimentation mindset builds confidence. When you can let go of the sense that there is “one right way” which means you have to get it perfect, you can breathe easier and move more confidently.
Using an iterative approach to your work, lowers the temperature and risk level by taking bite-sized experiments and creating learning opportunities. With each iteration, your sense of accomplishment and confidence will grow.
Example:
You have a tense relationship with a peer and you want the relationship to improve. What is a small adjustment you can try the next time you interact with that peer? Maybe you try a different tone, present information in a different way, or meet at a different location. This breaks your cycle by introducing something new. Even if the first experiment doesn’t have the intended outcome, that is helpful information for you to then design your next experiment.
You don’t need to design the “perfect conversation”, you just need to design the next one.
Ready to Strengthen Your Experimentation Mindset?
An experimentation mindset is just that, a mindset. It is a philosophy to guide how you lead and interact with others that focuses on learning through bite-sized experiments and iterating the concept rapidly.
Need help strengthening your experimentation mindset? Unearth Coaching & Consulting offers leadership coaching packages to support you in reaching your leadership potential. Contact me today to learn more and get started!
