Free download learning experiment

Once the startup starts growing and transitions to expansion, it’s natural to fall into operational goals, leaving time or energy barely focused. This can be a mistake in today’s rapidly changing world and popular customers.

Unfortunately, for young companies, our outside world is not very tolerant. Up and down trends in the global threat to global news in the macro global market. Social and environmental problems continue to develop at a faster pace than we have solved for them. Customer trends and emotions change the rise of influencers and tighten budgets every week. Competitors seem to have no geographical boundaries. Technology is developing faster than the royalty-free AI images we render (see above built in 30 seconds craiyon.com! ).

Management theory says that organizations face these uncertainties and the only sure way to fires in a time of change and are still competitive for long distance competition. Dynamic functions (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). Lead author Teece is a New Zealand-born organizational economist, top business intellectual and professor. According to theory, it is important that the organization has Ability to learn quickly and Build new strategic assets (or change existing ones) to keep up with the pace of change. They become Rock stars who absorb new knowledge and apply it to their situations and resources and take action. So seize the opportunity.

As we expand, our focus narrows down operations. It’s really important! Especially if you are expanding your digital business. We absolutely need to focus on our niche to expand. At the same time, we should not become too complacent.

Here are my regular brainstorming exercises with the leadership team to determine what is “known unknown” and turn it into “known known” by setting learning goals.

It is best to be part of a regular strategy forum, such as annual or quarterly reviews, but you can also do it regularly at monthly team meetings. First, ask everyone to write down things they don’t know about their business or environment, or know that they have less confidence in themselves. It could be something outside the business, such as changes in new regulations, or what key customers say about us. Or it could be internal to the business, such as how our new CRM investment changes customer support or acquisition unit costs.

One way to determine unknowns is to provide customer feedback and competitor information truly religion. Allocate time or periodic sections in meetings and collaborative meetings to review these contents. Some companies even incentivize (carrots or sticks) to gain customer insights from frontline salespeople (such as salespeople) and reports at the same time. Others purposefully set out to create an “always” culture (values, behaviors), asking for feedback from clients and industry experts, and delivering these cultures at any time through feedback channels and delivering them to people who are specifically reviewed and prioritized.

For example, a company set up a hotline for salespeople that can simply text or dial gold nuggets to call duirng client meetings from sent comments. Appletree has added an easy-to-access messaging screen to call center staff to generate ideas from customers’ comments and send them to answers to brands that support phone calls. Capture informal knowledge and customer feedback and turn it into opportunities.

Once unknowns are found, we do exercises to determine these exercises and set learning goals quarterly. These learning goals focus on conducting lean and fast experiments within the quarter to turn unknowns into known or reduce uncertainty.

Incorporating learning objectives and learning experiments into, for example, regular team planning meetings is a useful exercise to train people to learn agile muscles. Annual and quarterly team planning meetings should have business goals and learning goals as outputs. A useful way to prioritize learning goals is to look at what is currently unknown or uncertain, but if we get it wrong, it can have a big impact.

For example, perhaps this could be a fundamental assumption that a planned change to Google’s algorithm may or may not affect our future acquisition costs and marketing expenses, thus greatly affecting financial forecasts. Alternatively, the shift in consumer sentiment associated with our products may have a positive or negative impact on future sales growth and current trajectory. Or maybe a new entrant with a different business model and pricing structure, we need more information.

Finally, use the method outlined by Eric Ries to design experiments around learning objectives (Lean startup). Your experiment should have learning goals and be based on hypotheses. If there is quantification, if it looks like this:

Known and unknown: What is the best work we have to do and the brand commitment we have to offer our best customers?

Learning Objectives: To understand that the top brand commitment resonates with my best customers.

Learn assumptions: I predict that the customer response rate to Brand Promise B will be higher than that of Brand Promise A.

If qualitative, it might be a signal about your assumptions correct, such as the number of people who provide negative feedback than related to a certain brand’s commitment. Ideally, you can measure the more assumptions, the better.

Learn assumptions: “I predict that the top position B will get (add, activate, add) acquisitions on top job A through (x%, x client).

Some learning goals may be more knowledge-based. For example;

Learning Objectives: How will the new regulations affect the purchasing behavior of my best customers?

Such learning goals will require in-depth discussions with your clients and assess how or may not be achieved with their answers.

Write down the steps you need to take and the resources and people you may need, including budgets to provide learning experiments. Your schedule is up to you, as long as you can achieve your learning goals through the 12-week period of the quarter. I tried designing an experiment that was no longer than 4 weeks. Sometimes it takes longer if I rely on resources like resources that are not within the Y control range. Otherwise break the experiment into parts you can deliver and leave the rest of the time for the next quarter.

This is a practical, step-by-step guide and worksheet that can be downloaded for free. These can help you identify your biggest unknowns regularly. Set learning goals and design your own learning experiments. This exercise should help you determine changes and manage uncertainty, so it doesn’t always climb and surprise you. , If run regularly, it may help you build and codify dynamic features such as continuous learning, agile learning, and opportunities to perceive and shape institutions.

Hopefully you will find it part of your next team planning or strategy meeting and look forward to hearing any suggestions for improvement!

Any questions or do you want any convenience, please contact me directly and I’d be happy to respond. claire@made4scaleup.com