We need more at bats at this.  That’s what I said to myself after our recent sales strategy team meeting.  I left wondering, how do we accelerate the pace of our learning so that it matches our desire to grow?   That’s when it hit me, our growth is limited by our learning curve.  If we want to grow faster, we have to create systems and opportunities to hypothesize, test, and learn.  Essentially, run mini experiments.  

This isn’t a new idea for our team, it’s core to how we operate.  But how do you operationalize learning in the middle of fast-paced growth?  It’s easy to be distracted by work that’s less important.  Ironically this is a classic conundrum we help managers face everyday in their work, so it makes sense that as a team we’ve been building this muscle ourselves.  Here’s how we’re attempting to get better faster as we grow our own work.  

Hypothesize

There’s a difference between what you think you know and what you can prove.  At the beginning, all you have are theories about what will work.  Everything is up for debate until it meets the rigorous test of reality.  Teams that are in start up mode run on assumptions, but assumptions aren’t insights. To move fast and smart, ask:  

• What do we think will happen?
• Why do we think that is?
• How will we design our experiment?

We’ve built theories about our ideal customer and how to reach them, but we know hypotheses are only valuable when pressure-tested.

Test

Next comes the fun part, the doing.  Some tests are easier to run than others, but they all matter because they each tell you something.  A few key considerations for us include:

• Who owns what?  (Clarity enables execution.)  
• How will we track and measure our progress?  (We use a shared “Learning Lab” tracker to evaluate results.)  
• What’s the timeframe and criteria for evaluation? (This helps ensure you don’t waste time and energy.)

Learn

This is often the hardest part of the process because most organizations don’t have cultures built for learning.  This is where it helps to have managers who can model the vulnerability it takes to engage in productive feedback loops.  Some of the questions we’ve found helpful over time include:

• What’s working and how do we know?
• What’s not and what’s the evidence?
• What should we keep, start, or stop doing?      

Framing our work through the lens of what my colleague calls a “lab” approach helps us to depersonalize feedback.  We’re still a work in progress, but one way I know we’re making growth is how well we respond in these moments.  

Teams don’t fail because they move fast. They fail because they don’t learn fast enough.  If you want your managers to lead with agility, reflection, and real-time feedback, ManagerEQ can help. We train and coach leaders to build the systems and mindsets that accelerate learning, right when it matters most.

Book a time with us and let’s build your managers into learning accelerators.