Companies want to have fail fast approach inside their teams and projects. What for?
Startups always wanted to fail fast. This is how they validated their business model, technology and concepts. By quickly finding out if the idea gets sticky, startups decide go / not go. There is no reason to put money into something that doesn’t work. But big companies?
There are few reasons:
- Adapt or die. Big companies have to adapt to the market quicker than ever. Startups, disruptive technologies and fast moving innovators have changed the game. It is so easy to launch new product and even easier to kill it. Put something on the market quickly (most large organizations can’t act quickly) and get massive feedback from customers. Feedback lowers the risk of crappy product development (and loosing millions by developing product nobody wants). To leverage that option you better adapt quickly.
- Imperfection role increases. Perfect is never done. Too much work. Too much money. It might turn out nobody expect the product to be so perfect. Imperfection and good enough is enough to beat the competitor. Speed matters. Company builds product (imperfect one). Puts it on the market. Focuses on customers feedback. Improves the product. Asks customers. Improves the product again and…. 100 times. Perfection has different meaning that it used to have.
- 100000 experiments and 1 victory. Globalisation. Connection. Internet. Mobile. One click buy. Everything is fast and will be faster. No time for perfectly designed process, product, budget, feature (spend too much time thinking and Amazon will kill you). Learning on the go is todays gold. Go and learn. Improve while walking around. Experiment. You better find a whole and kill the feature than launch the weak one. How people in large organisation can admit “ups I failed and I am proud of it”? “I will fire you if you fail” – the boss said. It is different now. Boss says now “I want you to fail, learn and share the experience so we can make that 1000000 experiments wisely to find the 1 victory”.