First 90 Days

Abstract

Protect the program by promoting the concept of learning by failure; share the expectation that not all ideas will yield beneficial results, and yet the lean engine enables much faster turnaround time in learning which ideas do not have merit. The fear of getting out of the comfort zone and asking for direct feedback on their ideas, assumptions, and hypotheses is not something they were ever training to perform. The best method to overcome this resistance is to coach the teams, post the two-day training, to start experimenting with the customer immediately without letting the fear sink in. The learnings from the simplest of experimentation are vast. The teams I coach often discover that they crafted the wrong hypotheses or that the hypotheses were quickly refuted. Once they start, they get excited since they are receiving unfiltered feedback to their idea, something that for most is a revelation.