Row­ing harder

Back­wards For­ward
 

Here’s the paradox:

Life push­es for­ward, unstoppable.

To run projects and busi­ness­es we need ideas, bud­gets, goals, and fore­casts. This would make per­fect sense if we were in con­trol, if ​“uncer­tain­ty” was sim­ply a dis­tant fog in the sea, a blur effect on our glimpse of the future.

But we’re not look­ing ahead. We have the per­spec­tive of a row­er. We can only guess where we’re head­ing, while the past is right there, in front of us. Like the Maori’s ​“ka mua, ka muri”, we walk back­wards into the future.

Our work as entre­pre­neurs is not to sell a com­pelling vision. Not even to craft a per­fect plan.

Our job is to row hard­er than most. To fig­ure out where we are through under­stand­ing where we’ve been. And to adjust the course as we go until we hit sol­id ground, only to set out again to claim a new ambition.

How can we plan for a future we turn our backs to?

1º / 99%

Bear with me as we nav­i­gate today’s metaphors. The 1º rule, or ​“1 in 60”, is a prin­ci­ple that states that a small devi­a­tion in direc­tion can quick­ly com­pound into big mis­takes in the course. A ter­ri­fy­ing reminder that small mis­steps can lead to mas­sive mishaps.

The point(s)?

• It’s a fact that run­ning a busi­ness comes with an oblig­a­tion to keep row­ing: inno­vat­ing, seek­ing dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, com­pet­ing hard­er, expand­ing our cus­tomer base.
• We must do all of that and win more than we lose, all while deal­ing with uncer­tain­ty and with what we don’t know we don’t know.
• And we must be bold with some of our bets, know­ing that a 1º left unchecked can run amok.

The sce­nario is set. I’m drop­ping the anchor on my nau­ti­cal ref­er­ences.
Let’s talk about man­ag­ing flex­i­ble dig­i­tal projects so we can do more, bet­ter, faster, and more cre­ative­ly, with prop­er check­points to make sure we can cor­rect the course when needed.

Expir­ing decisions

Research shows that rough­ly half of the projects in B2B will be killed before they begin due to inde­ci­sion, fear, uncer­tain­ty or incom­plete infor­ma­tion (Dixon/​McKenna, Jolt Effect).

This affects every­thing hor­i­zon­tal­ly: the way I sell ser­vices to com­pa­nies like you, and the way you sell your prod­ucts to your cus­tomers. For every pen­ny you make, you’re miss­ing out on anoth­er. There’s a 50% chance that your clients are afraid of mak­ing deci­sions, and anoth­er 50% chance that you haven’t invest­ed enough into your sell­ing processes. 

And this is most notice­able in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, ecom­merce and online marketing. 

I believe there’s a bet­ter way to tack­le those problems. 

Do more: Adopt a cul­ture of experimentation. 

Para­phras­ing Edi­son, improv­ing per­for­mance is more about per­spi­ra­tion than inspi­ra­tion. About chas­ing hunch­es with a plan and work­ing hard to prove your­self wrong. Instead of gigan­tic plans and wish­ful goals, write down brave objec­tives and cre­ate short lived projects.

Do bet­ter: Assume things might fail.

Have a more light­heart­ed view on tech­nol­o­gy. Projects can tank. Hypothe­ses can be proven wrong. If you take inno­va­tion too seri­ous­ly, you’ll fos­ter a cul­ture where there’s no room for mess­ing up. And cre­at­ing new, unex­plored shit is messy. 

Faster: Noth­ing lasts in digital.

If you’re look­ing for per­ma­nence, you’re in the wrong newslet­ter. Today’s Shopi­fy is tomorrow’s Yahoo! Stores (yes, that was briefly a thing). This isn’t fail­ure; it’s shelf life. The secret isn’t to aim for ​“for­ev­er” but for adapt­abil­i­ty. Treat every suc­cess as a step­ping stone — a tem­po­rary win that needs to evolve before it expires. Dig­i­tal is a game of con­stant iter­a­tion: test, learn, adapt, repeat. The soon­er you embrace that noth­ing lasts, the faster you’ll be ready for the next wave of change.

More cre­ative­ly: A project-first approach.

Our prac­ti­cal advice is to change the par­a­digm of tech­nol­o­gy and mar­ket­ing entirely. 

Rather than tasks hier­ar­chies, have projects. Instead of end­less meet­ings and reports up the cor­po­rate lad­der, have small, nim­ble teams. Instead of end­less or über-ambi­tious plans, have focused, eas­i­er to mea­sure scopes. Give your teams the bare min­i­mum direc­tions and let them man­age their own ideas, deci­sions and priorities. 

With prop­er check­points: Set expi­ra­tion dates.

Maize’s Tomas Baraz­za coined the term ​“Yogurt Orga­ni­za­tion” to describe a way of work­ing with expi­ra­tion dates on every ini­tia­tive. Con­straints rock. This self-cre­at­ed one forces you and your team to be prag­mat­ic, fast, and have very con­crete check­points and KPIs along the way. And it has one par­tic­u­lar­ly mag­i­cal effect: It helps every­one detach effort from result imme­di­ate­ly. It turns the chal­lenge into an excit­ing race — let’s make shit hap­pen before this expires — while giv­ing you clear rules about what will hap­pen when the buzzer rings. If a project expires, we review it, jot down con­clu­sions, and move on to the next chapter.

Mea­sure, and then mea­sure some more.

Being prag­mat­ic and embrac­ing risk doesn’t mean you neglect respon­si­bil­i­ties. Under­stand­ing there’s a chance our ini­tia­tives will crash means we need clear goals, a shared under­stand­ing of what suc­cess looks like, trans­par­ent score­cards to track all rel­e­vant per­for­mance met­rics, and a plan of what to do when things go south.

By trans­form­ing your dig­i­tal strate­gies into a project-ori­ent­ed mind­set, you gain mul­ti­ple advan­tages. And embrace this idea of ongo­ing evo­lu­tion through iter­a­tion, instead of the wrong fixed idea of hav­ing a web­site ​“you only need to revamp every four or five years”. This cre­ates dif­fer­ent lev­els of account­abil­i­ty for your inter­nal team and pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment dynam­ics. It helps you under­stand when you need to lean on a third-par­ty friend like my agency vs. when you can han­dle every­thing in-house. And because every­thing comes with an expi­ra­tion date, it’s much eas­i­er (emo­tion­al­ly and ratio­nal­ly) to pull the plug when we see we’re on the wrong path.

A real world example.

The wrong way
In the past few years, I’ve seen lit­er­al­ly dozens of com­pa­nies spend huge por­tions of their bud­get on intol­er­a­ble Sales­force adop­tions, fol­lowed by a typ­i­cal case of what you might call ​“Sales­force regret”. Instead of hav­ing small, time-bound projects, the team adopts a mas­sive chal­lenge. A few years and sev­er­al hun­dred grands lat­er, they find them­selves still strug­gling to jus­ti­fy the price, and not using enough features.

The right way
If you want to trans­form any­thing in your dig­i­tal stack, lim­it the project as much as pos­si­ble and give it an expi­ra­tion date. Work through this min­i­mum viable idea as hard as pos­si­ble. At the end, look for what didn’t work. Find the root, and fix the prob­lem. If the team isn’t adopt­ing the tool prop­er­ly, train­ing and account­abil­i­ty can fix this. If the team is work­ing prop­er­ly, but you just bought an expen­sive, overkill mam­moth, then count your loss­es and reshuffle.

In short: The 1° is there all the time. 

Expi­ra­tion-led projects lim­it risk, and check­points turn threats into opportunities.

There’s a plan. There’s a cul­ture that helps us cope with fear, because we know things can fail and we’re okay with that. We have ways to tame those small devi­a­tions that can turn into big issues. We can con­clude that noth­ing is irre­versible, and we can make the right calls, and avoid get­ting crushed by novelty.

A smooth sea nev­er made a skilled sailor.
If a project is suc­cess­ful, you restart it and sail to new shores. And if not, just say ​“Oops” and try again, row­ing harder.

Rule of thumb

You should be able to con­vinc­ing­ly prove a project with­in twelve weeks. 

That’s enough time to:

• Decide a scope, and the met­rics to con­clude if it’s suc­cess­ful or not
• Turn the scope into a project, assem­ble a team and assign leadership
• Pro­to­type, devel­op, ship, mea­sure and iterate
• Go through the check­points (fig­ures, time­frames) to cor­rect the course as needed

Being nim­ble and account­able is key.

When it comes to plan­ning, pre­ci­sion needs to give way to flex­i­bil­i­ty. The most suc­cess­ful teams I know don’t waste time try­ing to craft the ​“per­fect” plan — they cre­ate a plan to get start­ed. Then, there’s no mys­tery: you just row. The mag­ic is in the check­points; when you pause, look at the progress, and make the nec­es­sary adjust­ments when the wind shifts. 

Because you know it will.