Its made me begin to wonder, is best practice actually a great strategic tool?
Or is it simply a safe excuse to hide behind when there is a lack of drive to innovate?
Relying on best practices does not guarantee success.
As we saw in 2020, what used to be best practice in 2019 was pretty irrelevant.
And this year is another new story yet again when it comes to customer behavior.
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So why are experimentation and innovation important?
Im going to state the obvious here… the world has changed, in many ways.
And we can expect it to keep on changing.
Its changed not only the way consumers think, but businesses too.
They managed to change this perception internally.
They allowed for failures.
British Gas selected a special team dedicated to developing a new piece of innovative heating tech.
The group was completely detached from the British Gas mothership they were given freedom.
They went on to innovate further and created a multi-product app allowing the control of lighting and appliances too.
Its pretty impressive, especially because youll most likely know its name: Hive, the thermostat kit.
But whats the moral of this example?
Otherwise, youll just keep doing what you were doing before… just a little bit differently.
You cannot dictate a specific time of day when they need to get creative.
So if large perceived monolith corporations like British Gas can flex, surely everyone can.
Its more about mindset than budget.
There needs to be a clear understanding that freedom to fail is an acceptable part of the development process.
Its about building a relationship of trust which will encourage motivation and boost creativity.
Thats certainly a principle that I have adopted at Freestyle.
People will only come up with amazing things if they feel psychologically safe to do so.
It should simply be down to the experimental team to find out what is going to work for them.
If we have learned anything from last year its that we can adapt at speed.
Work out the most effective way to experiment to suit your own company culture.
If youre manipulating results to suit an idea that has been developed internally, then ask yourself why?
Lets not forget, best practice is still relevant when it comes to proposition development.
But its about digging a bit deeper into analyzing customer research and segmentation.
Create a curious culture
Transitioning to a culture like this doesnt happen overnight.
I encourage teams to engage in curious thinking by introducing a how might we approach to the problem-solving process.
I believe the failures on the journey to innovation are as important as the successes.
Personally, I find including a did we try anything new?
style of question in project retros is a good way to surface curious thinking and experiments.
Now weve turned that on its head.
Ive also encouraged a more transparent personal freedom to fail culture.
When he made the grade just a few months later, everyone celebrated and we all felt wed won.
Tech for good is a great example of this using technology to improve social challenges.
All ultimately helping customer acquisition and retention.
Of course, its natural for every business leader to focus on business results first.
I know how easy it is to fall into this trap, so heres the process I follow.
Then its a case of ideating, prioritizing, and following the best ideas through to the experimentation stage.
And my biggest tip, always measure against outcomes.
However, lets not forget our customers are not the same they used to be.
We cant expect them to want the same things.
