{"id":1570,"date":"2011-08-12T18:00:28","date_gmt":"2011-08-12T23:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"This post was original part of <a href=\"http:\/\/kellblog.com\/2011\/04\/27\/if-we-cant-have-repeatable-success-can-we-at-least-have-repeatable-failure\/\">Kellblog<\/a>, written by Dave Kellogg, former CEO of MarkLogic, a database company specializing in unstruct"},"modified":"2013-08-05T08:42:12","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T13:42:12","slug":"repeatable-failures","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/spotlight-schedule\/perspectives-from-science\/repeatable-failures\/","title":{"rendered":"Repeatable Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post was original part of <a href=\"http:\/\/kellblog.com\/2011\/04\/27\/if-we-cant-have-repeatable-success-can-we-at-least-have-repeatable-failure\/\">Kellblog<\/a>, written by Dave Kellogg, former CEO of MarkLogic, a database company specializing in unstructured information.\u00a0 His posts cover next-generation database management, search, and content management technologies along with commentary on Silicon Valley, venture capital, and the business of software.<\/p>\n<p>As you read his post, consider what you have been learning about how science shapes the way we know things.\u00a0 This post is about the fact that some products that are developed do not succeed.\u00a0 Seemingly, this has nothing to do with &#8220;science.&#8221;\u00a0 But consider the assumptions he is making about the scientific process:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What kinds of assumptions does he make about variables?<\/li>\n<li>Why is it important to account for different variables?<\/li>\n<li>He asks two &#8220;key questions&#8221; at the end.\u00a0 Why are those important questions to ask?\u00a0 What other questions arise as you reflect on the answers to his questions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h3><strong>If We Can\u2019t Have Repeatable Success, Can We At Least Have Repeatable\u00a0Failure?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<div>Posted on <a title=\"3:11 pm\" href=\"http:\/\/kellblog.com\/2011\/04\/27\/if-we-cant-have-repeatable-success-can-we-at-least-have-repeatable-failure\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">April 27, 2011<\/a> by <a title=\"View all posts by Dave Kellogg\" href=\"http:\/\/kellblog.com\/author\/davidkellogg\/\">Dave Kellogg<\/a>|<\/div>\n<p>I\u2019ve always found business to have a fair amount of accidental, built-in hubris, largely resulting from the strategy formulation process.\u00a0 I remember one time at Business Objects we had a strategy offsite where, in our infinite wisdom and with a fair bit of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Groupthink\">groupthink<\/a>, we came up with the idea for a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Business_intelligence\">BI<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Workflow\">workflow<\/a> solution, which we dubbed Sundance for the name of the lovely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sundanceresort.com\/\">venue<\/a> at which it was conceived.<\/p>\n<p>I remember coming home from the offsite and having a conversation akin to the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Me:\u00a0 What if Sundance doesn\u2019t work?<\/p>\n<p>Exec:\u00a0 What do you mean, \u201cdoesn\u2019t work?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Me:\u00a0 Well, for example, what if nobody wants to buy it?<\/p>\n<p>Exec:\u00a0 What do you mean, what if nobody wants want to buy it!?\u00a0 It\u2019s strategic.\u00a0 We can put incentives in the salesforce compensation plans and bundle it.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry, we can sell it.<\/p>\n<p>Me:\u00a0 I didn\u2019t say what if no one wants to sell it.\u00a0 I said what if no one wants to buy it.<\/p>\n<p>Exec:\u00a0 But, it\u2019s strategic.\u00a0 We decided it at the offsite.\u00a0 You\u2019re talking crazy Dave.\u00a0 Come have another beer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As a marketer by background, I tend to view most everything as an experiment.\u00a0 That is the nature of marketing.\u00a0 You never know what\u2019s going to work.\u00a0 You can try different things.\u00a0 You can measure them.\u00a0 You can see what works and what does not.\u00a0 You can even try to build explanations for why certain things work and certain things don\u2019t.\u00a0 But you are trained to approach business with humility and with an experimental spirit.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Exec:\u00a0 Look.\u00a0 Sundance is not an experiment.\u00a0 We can\u2019t tell Wall Street it\u2019s an experiement.\u00a0 We need to tell them it\u2019s the future of the company.<\/p>\n<p>Me:\u00a0 But what if it isn\u2019t?\u00a0 What if we\u2019re wrong?\u00a0 Heck, it\u2019s not a bad idea, but we dreamed it up in two hours on a white board.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The problem is that things fail all the time in business.\u00a0\u00a0 Products fail.\u00a0 Startups fail.\u00a0 Business models fail.\u00a0 Heck, Sundance failed.\u00a0 And the bigger problem is that when we dismiss the possibility of failure in our planning, we dismiss the possibility of learning along with it.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, business \u2014 and particularly so in startup-up land \u2014 is the quest for finding a repeatable, scaleable model.\u00a0 (Why?\u00a0 So you can \u201cjust add water\u201d and create an arbitrarily large business \u2014 and valuation to go with it.)\u00a0 But quite often in the hurry for repeatable success, managers fail to design things scientifically so they actually have some degree of repeatability and can thus learn from either success or failure.<\/p>\n<p>Example:\u00a0 you take a new product and put it in the hands of 8 different salespeople (all of whom are \u201cworld-class\u201d as defined by the VP of sales) with 8 different backgrounds in 8 different cities selling to numerous types of different target customers with a variety of different sales pitches.\u00a0 Consider these scenarios:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Everybody sells.\u00a0 Buy more stock quick.\u00a0 Anyone can sell this stuff to anybody saying pretty much anything.\u00a0 (Hint:\u00a0 this does not happen very often.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Some sell and some don\u2019t.\u00a0 This is tricky.\u00a0 Did the folks who sold sell because of their background, their territory, the target customer, their approach, or their salespitch?\u00a0 Well, we don\u2019t know.\u00a0 We can look for patterns but we haven\u2019t designed the experiment to make things easy.\u00a0 The quick assumption is that the folks who sold did everything right and the folks who didn\u2019t did everything wrong, but if you think about it, you can\u2019t assume that\u2019s the case.\u00a0 Did we have a great salesperson in Chicago pitching the wrong message?\u00a0 The guy in DC who sold a lot carries a rabbit\u2019s foot \u2014 should we dispatch rabbit\u2019s feet instantly to the whole salesforce?\u00a0 After firing the VP of sales, we learn that \u201cworld-class\u201d actually meant \u201cI liked him\/her\u201d and can find virtually no additional common traits among the salesforce.\u00a0 Hum.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Nobody sells.\u00a0 This is hard, too.\u00a0 Was everybody doing everything wrong?\u00a0 Unlikely.\u00a0 Yet, no one came together with the right combination to sell.\u00a0 But are we sure the lady in Chicago is a bad salesperson?\u00a0 Can we be sure that the pitch they\u2019re using in DC doesn\u2019t work?\u00a0 Can we be certain that there is \u201cno market\u201d for the product as the VP of sales is insisting?\u00a0 What can we learn from such a random experiment?\u00a0 The answer is nothing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thus, my statement:\u00a0<strong> if we can\u2019t have repeatable success, then can we at least have repeatable failure?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If instead of hiring 8 salespeople, we hired only 3,\u00a0 put them all in NYC, and called only on the same handful of titles within investment banks using the same sales presentation and demo, could we have learned more?\u00a0\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If it works, it\u2019s great news, because you know exactly what to go scale.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>If it doesn\u2019t work, it\u2019s still good news (perhaps for your successor) because you can, with a pretty high degree of certainty, conclude that mix of levers tried will not work.\u00a0 Or, in the spirit of Thomas Edison, you\u2019ve learned <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mikelopez.com\/how-to-successfully-handle-failure.html\">one more way not to make a light bulb<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019ve picked two extreme cases and there certainly is middle ground in between, but the two key questions are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Are we assuming only successful outcomes in our planning?<\/li>\n<li>Are we designing things as an experiment from which we can learn no matter the outcome?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3><em>Join the Conversation<\/em><\/h3>\n<p>We welcome comments on this or other related topics on the main Spotlight page.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Return to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/spotlight-schedule\/perspectives-from-science\/\">Rusty Towell&#8217;s Spotlight page<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post was original part of Kellblog, written by Dave Kellogg, former CEO of MarkLogic, a database company specializing in unstructured information.\u00a0 His posts cover next-generation database management, search, and content management technologies along with commentary on Silicon Valley, venture capital, and the business of software. As you read his post, consider what you have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3459,"featured_media":0,"parent":1456,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1570","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P3T2tB-pk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2649,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1570\/revisions\/2649"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}