Side comment
It was made on a Monday by someone advising me. When addressed, in that advisor’s opinion, the existing solution would become a solid MVP.
The comment came as I was on track with a plan, and in my mind, this was one of the pieces that would fall into place later during a pilot. However, as I reflected on the side comment, it dawned on me that waiting for the pilot phase to solve this would add more risk to the pilot itself.
And so over the course of a day, rather than address any of the list of problems that were part of my plan, I built a system that allowed me to mitigate those later risks up front. As I introduced that system into my solution over the next week, it became clear that many of the problems I had been encountering and had been added to my list were automatically solved by creating this new system. Furthermore, it opened up a number of new possibilities that had not felt feasible just a week earlier.
One thing I have valued recently is how quickly I can change course when things aren’t working, or if they just feel a little off. While these changes don’t always lead to success, they’ve helped me maintain a momentum that has enabled more successes to emerge as the result of quickly being able to test a range of ideas.
That was hard to replicate in other environments I had operated in. One key difference has been size. Leading a large effort in a big company involves a lot of stakeholder buy-in. While those checks and balances are important to avoid degrading a user experience or avoiding harm, when a project is at an early stage, those kinds of constraints can significantly reduce that momentum. However, when smaller teams are able to incubate those kinds of changes within larger organizations, and those teams are able to demonstrate success, I’ve found the lack of but-in that may have created headwinds for those teams early on are often rewarded later.
As I think about how this effort will play out over the coming months, I am excited to take in other side comments, and make quick adjustments where needed.