Remember science labs in school? They were an experimenter’s dream.
Unlike other subjects, making a mess was encouraged in the name of getting answers. Mixing, combining, heating and activating ingredients were all a critical part of the learning process. In a science lab, you could hypothesize, research and then test your theory in real time. If something went wrong? Usually, it means that you learned something, not that you failed.
However, for those of us who didn’t grow up to be scientists or researchers, the experimenter inside of us all may have fallen by the wayside. Somewhere along the way, we stopped giving ourselves permission to be wrong and instead put pressure on ourselves to be perfect.
In the business world, we should take a page from our science labs days in how to approach work. Experimentation, I contend, is one of the best ways to continually learn, think of a problem from a different angle and get creative in actually solving it, and foster innovation.
But how? Retail giant Kohl’s offers a picture of how to do this well. According to the article, “The Discipline of Business Experimentation,” in Harvard Business Review, Kohl’s was looking for ways to decrease its operating costs. Some executives were in favor of opening stores one hour later on Mondays through Saturdays, but not all agreed. They settled on an experiment: select 100 stores, open one hour later and monitor sales activity.
What happened next was this: Koh’s initially suffered an initial drop in sales. But because they put clear parameters around the experiment, they didn’t pull the plug. Instead, they continued to watch. Eventually, the initial decrease rebounded and transactions and total sales ultimately didn’t decrease as a result of reduced hours.
We can learn a lot from this story. Even if your organization hasn’t committed to a major experiment like Kohl’s, every leader can approach problem solving from an experimenter’s mindset. By opening yourself up to possibility, with the courage to stay the course and know that it might not work out in your favor, you will continually learn.
To embrace an experimenter’s mindset, ask yourself open-ended questions like the following:
What assumptions am I working with?
What problem exists and what do I think is the root cause?
How can I test my assumption(s) in a low-risk way?
What are the stakes if I’m right? What about if I’m wrong?
Who with a different perspective can I collaborate with?
So, if experimentation is so powerful, why aren’t more executives and companies incorporating it? To start, experimentation challenges the status quo. It’s difficult for many to see that the way things have been done in the past isn’t always the best strategy to move forward. Additionally, there is the pressure of performance that stifles taking time to test and learn. Experimentation, in the beginning, can also trigger a fear that valuable time and resources will be wasted. And finally, Experimentation feels risky – even when it’s riskier not to experiment. The very word “experiment” implies that someone doesn’t know what they’re doing. This mentality is counter-intuitive because we have been conditioned to think we must know everything.
My guidance to you as you embrace an experimenter’s mindset is to start small and start with something relatively low risk. Keep your mind open to how the experiment will turn out, even if it’s different than what you thought. Then, use this mindset to approach bigger, high-stakes problems or innovation with more objectivity and curiosity. Experimentation can be one of: your greatest tools to solve any problem.