Always Be Testing Plan B
I recently finished a great book by Randy Komisar and John Mullins called Getting to Plan B: Breaking through to a better business model. I originally got turned onto this book from the Startup Lessons Learned Conference in spring of 2010. While the book has become a must read for startups, and in fact does focus a lot on starting new business's the core aspects of the book can be used across any business that:
- is starting up a new business unit
- carries out new product development
- is developing new service offerings
- is looking at evaluating new business strategies
... so pretty much any modern business that wants to stay competitive will get some benefit from the book. The title is a good summation of the book: Always be looking for and testing plan B, C, D etc. To do this the authors focus on 3 main principals:
- Analogs: Don't re-invent the wheel. Analogs to your idea are successful predecessor companies that are worth mimicking in some way. Portions of others ideas which can be borrowed and/or adapted to you to help understand economics and other aspects of your idea.
- Antilogs: Be Different. Antilogs to your idea are predecessor companies compared to which you explicitly choose to do things differently.
- Leaps of Faith: Ask the right questions. Anilogs and Antilogs help you reach conclusions about some things faster with at least some level of certainty, but there will be questions that cannot be answered by historical precedence. Leaps of faith are the beliefs you hold about the answers to your questions despite having no real evidence that they are actually true. Therefor you must experiment.
These leaps of faith must be tested, and measured via a dashboard. This can essentially create the framework for a simple yet effective management framework. The book has many great examples but I will use one of my own for this post.
I support and have been involved since the early days with a startup non profit called Create Common Good. Create Common Good provides training and employment to refugees and others in need through experiential programs that transform lives and enrich communities One of our programs is a farm program where we train refugees in farming techniques but also use the proceeds from the farm to support our efforts. One of the ideas that we have had is to create a mobile lunch truck that serves up international cuisine made by refugees based on food from their native homeland using in-season local produce produced at the farm. In addition to some Anilogs and Antilogs found for mobile food trucks, here is a sample Leap of Faith Dashboard to describe how it can be used. (results listed below are fictitious:)
Many companies try and create complicated sets of metrics and dashboards, but often they are just patting themselves on the back with metrics that already prove what they know to be true. Next time try innovating and exploring some leaps of faith in your business using this simple tool to test and measure.
