This is the Way.
Leaders are smart.
They typically have good ideas and a great work ethic to see things through.
But what ZERO leaders have... is all the answers. That's why testing is so important.
I'm not talking about tracking your phone calls for sales. Or the number of views on social media. I'm not even referring to employee reviews. (Which is a fantastic idea, but the way!)
No - I'm talking about testing your ideas.
Much like tracking your team's workflows helps you improve, so does tracking your own leader's ideas.
You might have a leader that comes to you and suggests that your organization start building out video content to educate customers.
They saw a cool training somewhere online that said if you build video content, the customers will come pouring in.
Great!
Now here is what a typical business will do in response to that:
Neither of those responses are good ones. So instead you could take an approach of testing.
Testing requires that you do just a few things:
It's not rocket science. Most of us do this in certain areas already. But here is why it is SUPER important to track ideas.
It Captures Errors
Many ideas come from something we hear or watch and then try to copy. Even if it's formalized training, we are still trying to copy the concepts we learned for ourselves.
And that means errors.
We ALL make errors every day. And it's ok. Nobody is perfect.
But that's why we start with testing. It flushes out the unessecary errors quickly so you can focus on the ones you actually need to catch for success.
It Kills Assumptions
Another thing that many leaders have in excess is confidence. That's a great thing in some ways. But it can also cause us to make assumptions about things just because we have seen similar things before.
Testing gives you the absolute answer. Not just a confident guess.
Encourages Creativity
It's nice to be great at something, but it's even better to be different. The most successful organizations have a unique view on what they do. It's almost as if the DNA of the team seeps out through the delivery of their work.
This is only possible when you give people the time and liberty to be creative. When you test things often, it exercises that creativity muscle. You have to keep thinking of different ways to try things so you can move to the next test.
That makes your team more creative everywhere.
Here are two examples from clients I've worked with this year.
Company #1
Revenue: $35MM
Size: 150+ employees
Problem: Needed conflict resolution help
The big boss was tired of his managers fighting for bonuses. The managers had started doing dishonest things to get ahead and the situation needed to be dealt with.
Rather than just give advice on how to fix it, I asked what they thought would solve the problem.
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Funny enough, 2 ideas came up.
The first was to get all the "offenders in a room together" and discuss how to make things fair for everyone involved.
The second idea was to change up the incentive structure to reward people based on inputs and activities rather than month-end monetary goals.
So we tested both.
The offenders got in a room together and it was mediated by myself to discover what other real issue was. (I may write an article on that another time!)
Then after a month, the incentives were changed to reward good tasks.
Guess which one got the results they wanted?
...
...
BOTH!
The discussion actually went really well and one particular person had completely misunderstood the whole system. That caused a lot of ancillary damage for the other managers.
So the madness started to clear up right away :)
HOWEVER, this was a test. So we decided to go ahead with the changes to the incentives.
If we had not been committed to the testing process, they would have missed out big time. While the managers started to get along much better, the output numbers just returned to normal.
Which is great.
But another month after we change incentives, the bottom line revenue went up near 18% year over year across all the managers' teams!
We never would have known if we stopped with the improvement.
Company #2
Revenue: $600K
Size: 12 employees
Problem: Needed help with stalled revenue
The owner had started a new service line to expand on their foundational business model. They had done market tests first to make sure it was a good idea. The data was good so they decided to expand.
After 9 months the team had almost no referrals and were having to chase people to get them to try the new offering.
We decided to test two things. (Disclaimer: The product was good and the marketing/sales message was clear)
Change the price point up
and
Changed the price point down
Since this new line was an add-on type product, we decided to lower the price first. It dropped from $495 to $395. While they did some a little spike in sales over 60 days, it wasn't enough to be sure.
So we tested raising the price. It went from $495 to $795.
I nearly choked when I saw the outcome. Not only did they sell more products, it cost more than the initial product the company sells.
(Yet another article that could be in the future, on price. Let me know if that interests you!)
So as you can see, the right answer is not always obvious. You have to be willing to try multiple things even though you may think you already know the answer.
What idea do you need to test this month?
P.S. I am testing my articles right now. The last 3 articles I wrote had about 500 words and several graphics or videos included. This time I wrote closer to 1,000 words and put no graphics in.
What do you prefer reading? Let me know will ya?
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Do you want help figuring out how to make your tests profitable? I'm here to help you just like the two organizations mentioned above. Book a call to chat on my website here.
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Getting business owners in front of their ideal prospects | Proven methods that increase engagement I Effective strategies to build loyal communities I LinkedIn Strategist I Social Media Manager | Servant Leader 💖
2yIsn’t it funny how testing out new ideas seems like it would be common sense but so many of us go to extremes? I think that’s part of the whole instant gratification thing. Testing new ideas over a period of time is the way to go!! You proved that here Jake Jordan. As far as my favorite newsletters from you… Each time I learn something but personally the humor you add with pictures and videos helps me retain the information and makes my Mondays a little brighter. ☀️