Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:00:49: The 3 must-dos of experimenting

00:02:46: Idea for action 1: pitch, prototype and pilot

00:03:40: Idea for action 2: labelling the experimental work

00:05:08: Go-to guru

00:05:38: Relevant podcast episode

00:05:46: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast.  And this episode is part of our Skills Sprint series.  We've recorded 20 episodes, each of them are less than seven minutes long, and they're designed to help you build some career development momentum.  So, in every episode, we're going to talk about Squiggly Skill, share an idea for action from each of us, and then we'll give you a go-to guru and a podcast episode so you can learn a bit more.  And we really want you to turn this Skill Sprint into your learning streak.  So, for everybody who completes the entire sprint, that's 20 days, we're going to offer you a free Five Skills to Succeed in a Squiggly Career virtual workshop with Sarah and me in September.  All you've got to do is listen and do a bit of learning and then post about your progress on social and tag us, we're @amazingif in your posts, and then we will be in touch.

Sarah Ellis: In this Skills Sprint, we're talking about experimenting, and when we think of an experiment, I think there are three things that are sort of the must-dos of something that you can classify as an experiment, and that's imagining, you've got to have a hypothesis that you're working towards; doing, you've got to put something out there, you've got to put your work out in the world so you can learn from it; and then the third part is evaluating, so: imagining, doing and evaluating. I think experiments are getting more and more useful in the context of Squiggly Careers. 

I think you can see them from a zoomed-out perspective, which is that our careers are essentially becoming a series of experiments.  So, every choice you make in your career gives you an opportunity to learn.  You've probably got a hypothesis of, "Well, I think I'm going to enjoy working in this team or in this area" based on what you know about your career so far, you then go and do that role and do that job.  And as you're going, if you are self-aware, if you're reflecting, if you're learning as you're going, you're getting even smarter so that you can keep squiggling with success. 

So I think this almost experimenting mindset really helps to set us up for success as we squiggle. Then, I think more day-to-day, so more zoomed in, experiments are part of our day jobs, are part of what we do, so that we discover new opportunities, new ways to add value.  It's kind of that phrase, "What got us here won't get us there", we need to sort of find ways to do things differently.  And if we're not creating experiments, we're not trying new ways to do things.  But I think often the challenge with experiments, or certainly in our experience, is you tend to be good at maybe one, two, but perhaps not all three of the component parts of experimenting.

Helen Tupper: And I think this has been really helpful for us and our business and we've still got some things to improve upon, but this approach to experimenting with career development has definitely helped us do lots of different things with Amazing If. So, our ideas for action then, mine is about pitch, prototype and pilot, and I find this a really good structure to approach experiments from. 

So pitch is, I might say to Sarah, "One thing that I think would be useful for our business is…" and you can use whatever frame.  "Useful" is one of our values, so that works for us as a starting place.  Then prototype is, "It could look a bit like this".  That could be a drawing on a piece of paper, sometimes I might use camera or something to bring an idea for life, but you're trying to get it out of your head a little bit so someone else could contribute to it.  And then pilot is, "One way we could test this with people or the team could be..." 

And that pitch, prototype and pilot gets this thing out of your head and into the world quite quickly. But the thing that is really important is linking back to the bit that Sarah said, which is, how do we know if that pilot was effective?  If we're going to progress the pilot beyond then, what does good look like?  So never forget those results, that measurement at the end of it.

Sarah Ellis: And one of the things I think we found particularly helpful as we've been taking more of an experimenting approach, particularly over the last 12 months, is being very explicit about labelling some of the work that we're doing as, "This is an experiment".  I think if you're like, "Oh, we just experiment all of the time", I don't think it gives you the discipline or the permission to fail that you need to really make experiments effective. So as part of our good growth plans, so in Amazing If, your team objectives or your personal development plans, our equivalent is something called a good growth plan; and in our good growth plan, we all have in our team one page that says, "These are our experiments", and we are really clear about, "Okay, we're experimenting with…"  It might be a process, it could be a project, it could be a way of working. 

But as soon as you then say it's an experiment, you do then go back to, "Well, am I clear about why are we doing this?" that's the hypothesis bit, "Am I clear about what that then looks like in the real world?" which is the prototype, and then, "How will I know whether this has been successful?" which is then sort of, "Well, when I'm piloting it, am I measuring it as I go?"  And I think it gives you that awareness, as I said, I think often you are better at certain bits than others. So I'm really good at the imagining, I'm good enough at the doing, and I'm really not great at the evaluating.  But I think knowing that, when you sort of have the structure and the framework of an experiment around the work that you're doing, it really encourages you to fill in the gaps.

Helen Tupper: And our go-to guru on this is a bit leftfield.  It's Seth Godin, who we interviewed on the podcast a while ago.  But the reason we recommend him is he has a really nice approach to experimenting that goes across all of his work.  And he wrote a book called The Practice, which was all about, he basically wrote every day for years.  And he took away this pressure of perfectionism, got used to a fear of failure, and then actually really increased the quality of his output as a result. 

This is quite a lot that you can learn from how he approaches his work that you can bring into experimentation in your job. If you want to learn a bit more, episode 277 of the Squiggly Careers podcast is on How to Use Experiments to Accelerate Your Career Development.

Sarah Ellis: So thanks for listening to this Skills Sprint, we hope you're finding them useful.  We'd love you to share and subscribe so you don't miss a sprint, but that's everything for this episode, so bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye, everyone.