Instead of asking: Does this work?
A more useful question might be: Which approach works best?
Or: Under what conditions does this work?
Or: How much should we invest?
Or: Where is the point of diminishing returns?
This is often the difference between experimentation that drives evolution and experimentation that simply consumes time.
The businesses that cope best right now are not the most polished; they are the most responsive. When you build that responsiveness into the way your business functions, uncertainty becomes something you work with, not something that works against you.
If you want to build space for thinking how to change the game, try these prompts in a leadership meeting, planning session, or strategy day. If you are a solopreneur, try them in a journal or a thinking walk.
“Changing the game” can sound grand, like inventing a brand new industry but it can be far more practical and specific. Here are just three pretty straight-forward ways to find some Blue Ocean in your world.
Fail fast everyone says. Often offered as a cure-all for uncertainty but I find this is unhelpful advice for many small businesses
You may not even need a tool. You may simply need to make the best use of the tools you already have. Sometimes the problem is not technological at all. The important thing is that the business need comes first.
Project accounting is the practice of tracking, managing, and reporting money at project level, rather than only at business, department, or cost-centre level.
Create capacity, improve customer experience, and raise quality by using the digital tools you already have, or choosing better ones with more knowledge and more confidence.
Testing ideas, trying new approaches, and learning from what happens are all essential. Without experimentation, innovation remains theoretical. But experimentation on its own is not innovation.
“Analysis” has a reputation problem. It is often positioned as the opposite of creativity, something you endure in order to get back to the interesting work. And yet, much meaningful innovation can come from understanding how things actually fit together.
I find it useful to think of your products as a ladder, with different products being relevant at different stages of a customer journey.
