I see this all the time, again and again. People with ideas (new business ideas or improvements to their current business) often focus on developing the operational business based on an idea, rather than testing if the idea will work as they assume (and if not, exploring alternatives).
Entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs do this under pressure, especially when an innovation feels obvious. Today, we will look at a useful approach: delivery is more important than excellence.
Important note: this is not an operational approach. I’m not suggesting you should run your day-to-day business like this. This approach is great for business design work, where you make tests and learn to de-risk business concepts through lean experimentation.
Once the assumptions under your business idea are revealed, and once a business hypothesis is formulated, the tests should begin. 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 the initial idea is improved or adjusted (as a result of learning), there is usually a need for more iterations. It’s quite easy to find out that the time you spend testing is crucial. If you spend too much time testing your idea, you might spend your resources without any gain.
In this context, delivery is more important than excellence.
Why delivery beats perfection at the testing stage
“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 the whole business. You should not try to build a final, ideal version of your product or service. You should not buy systems which you might need in a ready, working business.
All that you want is to confront your ideas as early as possible with your potential customers through customer discovery and real-user feedback cycles. This is evidence-based experimentation: you are replacing opinions with learning. 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.
A simple example: Zappos and a fast business model test
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 in 1999, had an idea to sell shoes online.
He could have raised enough capital to rent a huge warehouse, build a value chain, stock millions of dollars’ worth of shoes, and send 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. He had to be able to find business angels who would invest in his idea and, most importantly, he needed evidence that customers were willing to buy shoes online. In other words: he needed business model validation, not a perfect operation.
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 in, 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 operational excellence that was needed to serve customers at scale. This is what smart entrepreneurs do: validate first, then optimise.
When you are testing, there are two crucial factors: time and your ability to capture good learning. Focusing on building 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, two things matter most: speed and learning. If operational excellence slows you down or blocks learning, you are paying a high price for the wrong thing. This will probably lead to a big fail.
“When you are testing, two things matter most: speed and learning. If operational excellence slows you down or blocks learning, you are paying a high price for the wrong thing. This will probably lead to a big fail.”
What “delivery is more important than excellence” is not about
The approach is not about:
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being disorganised when you are in the process of testing
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providing a poor quality test
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accepting poor quality thinking
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delivering poor quality value propositions during a 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 practise strategic skills. I would like you to take part in it at 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?
Practical takeaway: validation loops before operational excellence
Focus on delivery of the test and capturing learning rather than building on excellence
In practice, this means you prioritise value proposition validation and business model validation over building a perfect operation too early. This is evidence-based decision making for innovation, not guesswork.
If you want to build something that survives contact with the market, start by delivering small tests, learning fast, and only then investing in excellence.
