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If harnessed correctly, failure can be a powerful thing. The information you acquire by failing can transform your business if you're able to analyze what caused the misstep and apply those insights to future endeavours. I was recently reminded about how important it is to listen to customer feedback and rapidly test the solutions addressing their needs.
We met with our accountant customer panel to explore how our products could be better integrated for efficiency. After months of developing what we thought was a promising solution, we learned that our focus was misplaced at the wrong end of the customer work-flow, and although good to do, was significantly less important than steps further up the process. We failed to ask the right questions that would give us a thorough understanding of our customers' business operations. Unfortunately, we spent a considerable amount of time and energy down the wrong path, a misstep that could have been avoided by rapid prototyping with customers along the way.
We've learned the hard way, but now employ these best practices to build products faster and with more confidence than ever before. When we engage customers and allow them to feed into our process, we can proceed knowing that they are going to appreciate our offerings.
To compete with the flexibility and speed of smaller startups, larger organizations must adopt "fail fast" philosophies. Nimble in nature, startups are able to test and deliver inventive solutions, and can react to the ever-changing demands of the marketplace faster than big corporations. However, though companies worldwide are embracing the "fail fast" mantra, many miss the mark when they try to incorporate its practices into their businesses.
So how can you learn to thrive in the face of defeat? Remember, what doesn't kill you can make you stronger, and here are a few more tips to keep you on the right track:
Experiment rapidly and efficiently
Experimentation is vital when developing solutions for the marketplace. By testing and failing in controlled, low-risk environments, you're able to build upon your knowledge without impacting your bottom line.
Take calculated risks. Intuit's "Design for Delight" (D4D) approach was born in an effort to learn fast with customers and create awesome experiences together. In small teams, D4D gathers deep customer empathy and executes rapid experiments that allows us to try new ideas, innovate and gauge real-time customer feedback. These low-cost experiments prevent us from going too far down one path of development before eliciting and analyzing constructive feedback.
Focus on culture
To inspire entrapreneurship in your organization and instill a passion for improvement in employees, you must build and maintain a company culture that fosters engagement and innovation.
Encourage employees to pitch ideas and challenge the status quo in constructive ways. After all, if something functions well, that doesn't mean there isn't room for further enhancement. Also, ensure employees know that failure is an option. Give them the power to try new things, make mistakes, learn from their errors and move on productively.
Understand that not all things are equal
What works for other companies in Canada and abroad may not necessarily work for your own. While a number of companies integrate the "fail fast" approach successfully, each one is different. Unfortunately, you can't apply existing principles to a new problem and expect the same results; you have to forge your own path.
In order to succeed, you need to know your audience. Start from a place of empathy to understand the needs and wants of your customers, and give your employees the freedom to dig into those problems and try new approaches to solving them. You'll create delighted customers, engaged employees and more profit for stakeholders.
Jeff Cates is president, Intuit Canada, Toronto.