Approach

Build a pipeline of testable ideas

The Challenge

Pin-point the opportunities you want to test that most closely align with your organisational strategy and capability and define the objectives and key results (ORKs) that you need to inform investment decisions.

Ideas that aren't yet proven can be risky, particularly when failure is perceived as career damaging. Some teams may want to err on the side of safe bets as a way of damage limitation. Some safe bets are okay but what you're aiming for here is a balanced pipeline of testable ideas that have the potential to deliver value in the short, medium and longer-term.

My Role

Story Teller | Facilitator | Coach

The Process

Learning is the goal - insights are the value-add so focus on learning (rather than proving you've got the right solution) through well defined experiments and target results.

Step 1: Combine all the data points for a systemic view

  • Where are the pain points?
  • What needs are not met?
  • Are there needs that are only partially met by you or your competitors?
  • Do you have data to quantify these yet?

Step 2: Agree which unmet user needs you are best placed to meet

  • What capability are you well positioned to exploit?
  • Where are the capability gaps and how easily can these be built?
  • What investment / level of change is required?

Step 3: Define your bets for ongoing learning

  • A bet is a potential investment opportunity; a component of work to test a potential solution to a user problem
  • It's called a bet at this point because it needs to be validated (or refuted) by users
  • The word bet sets the expectation that not all ideas will be successful
  • Once the bet is validated against a key indicator (i.e. successful) you can invest in it further to develop a viable solution.

You should now have prioritised bets and are now ready to introduce continuous feedback loops so you can test directly on users.

Additional Information

If you want to learn more about why language matters, including terms like bets when driving change read this short blog.