I see this all the time – again and again; People with ideas (new business ideas or just improvements to their current business) often focusing on developing the operational business based on an idea, rather than testing if the idea will work as they assume (and if not on the exploration of alternatives). Today, we will look at another useful approach: Delivery is more important than Excellence.
Important note: This approach is not an operational approach. I’m not suggesting you should develop this approach in your operational business. This approach is great to make tests and to learn to de-risk our business concepts.
Once the assumptions, which are the base for your business idea, are revealed, and once a business hypothesis are formulated, the tests will probably need to start. Some of them will be successful (the hypothesis will be validated) and some will fail (the hypothesis will be invalidated). After the first iteration, when the learning is captured and when initial idea is improved or adjusted (as a result of learning), there will be a need for another iterations. It’s quite easy to find out, that the time of testing is a crucial thing (if you spend too long time testing your idea, you might spend your resources without any gain).
In this context – delivery is more important than excellence.
Why?
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” – Mark Twain
At this stage where you are still looking for evidence, you should not build an excellent operational structure, you should not build a business, you should not try to build a final, ideal version of your product or service. You should not buy systems which you could need in a ready, working business. All that you want, is to confront your ideas as early as possible with your potential customers. Then you can apply the learning, for as long as you need, to make a decision with limited uncertainty.
Refining and perfecting in peace and quiet, in the office or garage is a great idea until it is perfect – it’s a bloody risky strategy. The most painful thing, is to find out after months of hard work, that nobody cares about your product.
Refining and perfecting in peace and quiet, in the office or garage is a great idea until it is perfect – it’s a bloody risky strategy. The most painful thing, is to find out after months of hard work, that nobody cares about your product.
Zappos case
Let me tell you a little story. In the late 90s, ecommerce was not as developed as it is now. Nick Swinmurn, who founded zappos.com in 1999 had an idea to sell shoes online.
He could have raised enough capital to rent a huge warehouse, built in place a value chain, stocked millions of dollars worth in shoes and sent them to customers ordering online. So, what was his next move? Did he start to speak with business angels? Did he start to negotiate with suppliers? Did he find a place to keep the stock?
He realised that he could build a business under certain conditions; be had to be able to find business angels who would invest in his idea, and most importantly, that customers were willing to buy shoes online.
So, he made a deal with a few local shoe shops, he took pictures of the shoes and published them on his landing page. When customers put an order, he went to the shop, bought the required shoes and sent them by post.
This allowed him to validate the idea, and prove that there was a market demand. Then, he could think about raising money and building the excellence operational service that was needed to serve customers.
When you are testing, there are two crucial factors: time and your ability to capture good learning. Focusing on building an operational excellence while testing, will probably disable both of these abilities, and should be seen as ineffective resource allocation. This will probably lead to a big fail.
“When you are testing, there are two crucial factors: time and your ability to capture good learning. Focusing on building an operational excellence while testing, will probably disable both of these abilities, and should be seen as ineffective resource allocation. This will probably lead to a big fail.”
What “Delivery is more important than excellence” is not about:
The approach is not about:
- being disorganised when you are in the process of testing.
- Providing a poor quality test.
- accepting poor quality thinking.
- delivering poor quality value propositions during test.
Often, during a test, you charge your customers for the value you deliver to them, but sales is not your goal. Building clarity and awareness is what you want. And this is a very fair approach as long as you communicate with your customers honestly.
Imagine, I could come to you and make an offer: „I’m testing my new case studies for my strategy workshop. I need to ensure I choose the best case studies to help my clients to practice strategic skills. I would like you to offer to take a part in it – for a reduced price. In return I will ask you to give honest and deep feedback to help me to improve the case studies” Would it be fair for you?
Focus on delivery of the test and capturing learning rather than building on excellence
In order to confront the rapidly-evolving world around us, we need to have a system in place to adapt to the changes. This article is the fifth from the series which aims to describe basic approaches, which can help to be more responsive and adaptive. Sign up to the newsletter – so you will never miss an update!
