Validated learning & WIAGF — 005
Every once in a while, after I’ve been into a mess I begin to question myself and the situation. Why did this happen? How couldn’t I see this coming? Why didn’t I do this or that? After asking a gazillion questions and entertaining thousands of thoughts, I’d try to figure out what happened and how to get past it next time, except that it doesn’t work that way.
Time passed, and here I am making the same mistake again. “But I just learned not to mess things up again last time, how come this is happening again? Why don’t I ever learn?”
This is the exact same position I am in as I am writing this.
How many times do a mistake have to happen before I truly learn to take caution? Maybe 10 times? Ten is too much of an instance for a thing to happen before one truly takes correction. Some other persons make a mistake once and that instance is all they need to take real caution. Why do I ever need more than once?
While entertaining these thoughts, I remembered a lesson I learned from Eric Ries Lean Startup — Validated learning.
“Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high-quality goods. The unit of progress for Lean Startups is validated learning — a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty.
But learning is a tricky thing to quantify, which is why the word “validated” is so important in this definition. Validation comes in the form of data that demonstrates that the key risks in the business have been addressed by the current product.”
Validated learnings are key takeaways from a situation and are actionable. This means identifying major factors that are responsible for a mistake and then taking out key learning that can be acted upon the next moment. If such a situation happens a second time, are there steps that I can immediately take in an instant to avoid a mistake again?
But how do I get to the point of validated learning? There’s a difference between when I say I’ve learned a thing versus when I’ve truly learned a thing. Anybody can say they have learned a thing, but only a few persons can actually be in a particular situation a second time and not make the same mistakes they made as at the first.
For me to be able to truly pick out validated learnings from a situation, it means I have to place a lot of value on the mistakes I make to not make them again. I shouldn’t truly learn only when a mistake costs me a leg or a fortune. If I place a high value on the cost of mistakes I make no matter how little, then I should be able to pick out actionable takeaways to not be in such a mess a second time.
I am grateful for amazing people like Julie Zhou, Jocelyn K. Glei and the Google Design Team. I can’t place a price on the things I’ve learned from them in the past year.
