On “Failing Fast”

The idea of failing fast is in vogue among the corporate elite aka The C Suite. I love the experimental spirit of this concept, but, like many ideas that get co-opted by MBA marketing genius types, the Fail Fast mantra can be dangerous if you’re not failing fast the right way. Here are a few tips to help make your fast failures more valuable and actionable.

1. Identify a hypothesis

Failing fast is all about experimentation. Experimenting properly involves stating a hypothesis i.e., what are we trying to discover? The hypothesis may be grand (will customers actually buy our products on the Internet?) or very small (will more people click the button if we change the label to “Learn More”?); it doesn’t matter, as long as your hypothesis is specific.

2. Identify a hypothesis

No, you’re not seeing double. The key word is “A”. If your experiment contains too many variables, it will be very difficult (sometimes impossible) to determine the cause of the failure. Here’s an example:

Acme Inc. wants to update the way that their sales reps interact with prospective customers. They’re going to provide the sales reps with iPads loaded with digital sales presentations rather than the brochures the sales reps used to hand out. Acme Inc. is also going to change the content of the sales material to focus more on an emotional sale, and adjust the price of one of their key products.

60 days later, Acme Inc.’s CEO—a Fail Fast advocate—determines that sales have not improved. In fact, they’ve decreased since the iPad initiative began, and she pulls the plug on the program.

So the determination was made (due to lower sales figures) that the experiment of giving sales reps iPads was a failure, right? Or was moving the sales pitch from rational to a more emotional approach the failure? Or maybe the sales people weren’t properly trained? Or maybe changing the price point was the problem? Who knows?

Focusing on one element at a time will help provide clearer insights into what’s working and what isn’t. Which brings me to my final point.

3. How are you measuring success?

Although the fictitious Acme Inc. CEO had too many variables to determine the true cause of failure, at least she had a means of measuring her experiment: sales. You may be shocked at the number of people who actually forget this part, or (worse yet) are intentionally vague in order to relieve themselves of responsibility in the event of failure.

Are you measuring sales, leads, Likes, Retweets, page rank, sentiment? Are you going to use analytics? Run usability tests? Multivariate (A/B) tests? Interviews? Surveys?

Determine a period of time for the experiment, specifically what you’re measuring, any goals you’re trying to reach, and the methods by which you’re measuring.

Follow those three, simple steps and you won’t just fail fast. You’ll fail smart.

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