Transforming to Lean Startup in Learning and Development

You've completed the Design Thinking process that confirms your hypothesis is a priority need/want and now you are ready to experiment. Experiment? Yes, experiment. Launching a new product or service can seem like a process full of risk, and it is.  So which would you rather do, take 6 months or longer to develop a product your customer may only be satisfied with, or would you rather experiment by developing and delivering a minimally viable product (MVP) in one month. One month? Yes, one month. This is but one of the many differences of traditional vs Transformational work. If you are like me, continuous development and deployment seems like an easy answer. But if your work is like mine was, chances are you don't get to practice it. 

Be honest, I bet many of your L&D Performance Improvement products are built like the top half of the image below. Chances are you spent a long period of time building it, but along the way, because you did not have a usable product, the feedback you received was limited and therefore your final product was usable, but not exactly what the customer wanted. It seems silly right? Unfortunately we do this because this is the "traditional" way of doing it much like the top half of the image below. 

What's wrong with this process in the top half of this image? Well, nothing really, but the question is what could it have been? Let me explain.  In the traditional mindset and practice we probably use ADDIE to develop and deliver the product. We may use Kirkpatrick or ROI to measure it, and everything turns out okay; maybe better than okay.   

Think about this for a moment, what could this effort have been? The answer is "who knows" because of what we did not do. We could have developed a different product or multiple products associated with the original hypothesis. We could have discovered new ideas for products. We could have engaged and excited customers and stakeholders throughout the design and development process, we could have experimented with new learning channels or new measures all because we opened the door to new possibilities. This is where the Transformational mindset and practice will take you. 

But doesn't Design Thinking ensure we have the right solution? The answer is "maybe." Design Thinking is intended to test your idea (hypothesis). In other words does your idea have an interested customer base? The interest is in the idea, but interest in the prototype may be usable to excited and anywhere in between.  Here's an example, how many times have you said or heard, "that's out of scope?" I'm guessing a few times. What often happens with this mindset is whomever is saying it is not considering alternatives other than what was already decided on to pursue, "we're going to build an elearning course and put it in the LMS." Think of all the possibilities missed due to this mindset.

By the way, when I say "we" I am including myself in the "we" as I am just as guilty as the next person. So how do we open ourselves to possibilities? Let's start with an understanding. In traditional practice we often attack a problem in the solution mindset, "what's the solution to this problem?"  Lean Startup asks, "what problem is in need of a solution?" Thanks to Design Thinking, we have a problem and a possible solution, now we need to determine if the solution is what's needed/wanted by the customer base.  

The Lean Startup methodology has as a premise that every product is a grand experiment that attempts to answer two questions. The question is not "Can this product be built?" Instead, the questions are "Should this product be built?" and "Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?" 

In other words, is the product/service Desirable, Feasible and Viable? "How do we know that this is the right solution at the right time and for the right market?"  We know when we test by building Minimally Viable Products (MVPs). So, using the image above, instead of producing the car with no usable solution before the car is developed, we start by producing the skateboard, gather feedback and then decided to persevere or pivot. 

This article is a little longer than I anticipated, so I'm going to end it by promising to share a method I used to experiment with learning products using the Lean Startup method in my next article. Thanks for reading. Until next time…