Learning vs. Right Culture
Our framework behind growth at LiquidSpace is learning fast. As a distributed team learning and sharing those learnings is what keeps us motivated. I spoke at LinkedIn on the topic and now share with you the 5 reasons to create a learning culture vs. settling for just being right.
Why a Culture of Learning?
Sharing only wins feels good for that individual interaction. However, you and the rest of the team miss out on learning what did not work in 99% of the cases. Only one person or solution can be right at a time, the other options and people who proposed those options will get less motivated to share next time. Release cycles get longer because the premium on getting things right outweighs learning creating a culture focused on finding ways to not do things instead of risking breaking something that works.
In a learning culture a project is evaluated based on what we learnt capturing the 99% that would have otherwise been lost. Getting it right is no longer the only goal. We figure out faster what did not work and why. Because we shared the why we are less likely to repeat the same approach and instead use the learnings to test something different.
We also get buy in. It is not just one person telling the others what to do, but there is proof and data. Every person can take the lead and share what he or she learnt creating an additive culture that gets teams and different personalities to collaborate, share and innovate. We attract curious people that are motivated by learning, experimentation and sharing.
Here is Tom Chi from Google X on the value of building a learning culture.
Get to know your customer
A product manager’s value add is to know the customer and share the learnings with the rest of the company. You empower everyone to be customer centric. Supercharging the company’s awareness.
At LiquidSpace we do not have an office. We test our product daily by becoming a customer and booking space where we need it. Next week I’ll work in Toronto, this week I’ll work from Sausalito. This is in addition to user interviews, surveys, customer care interactions, and tools like FullStory that are invaluable in continuing to learn about our customers.
Here is an example of an old person suit developed by F0rd to help people building things for the older demographic and understand the constraints of being an older person. Remember, you are building a tool for your customer and their world, and not yourself and your world.
Don’t fall in love
It is heart breaking to hear a customer tell you that your beautiful well through out, countless hours spent on product — sucks. Force a non-biased smile, and listen. Thank them. It is not often that you get refreshingly brutal honesty. It is not them, it is you. Whatever you are building, including the company, is a tool for people to get a job done that needs to fit into their distraction filled life. If it is too hard, that is your problem. If it is confusing, yep also your problem. Don’t fall in love with your product or your design. Tweek. Throw Away. Learn. Share. Delight.
We introduced instant tour scheduling at LiquidSpace. I thought I had each interaction down, until I watched a customer get stuck as she could not find the continue button on the date selector pop-up, get absolutely frustrated, contact support and exit. Who’s fault was that? Mine. We updated the flow navigate to the next screen by selecting the date and then the time. Voila!
Break things down into small chunks
By setting projects into tests with measurable objectives and hypothesis you’ll get to a learning faster and be able to check if you’re on the right track. You’ll open up to noticing strange things, or learnings that are outside of the scope of the original problem and get to the Aha! moments that pivot a company or start a new product line. That does not mean it is always software or even product. Figure out the paper test. Can you put 5 words on a page and see if your customers are gravitating towards D or A? Then make the next iteration and test your assumptions again.
Share your learnings and your work
Just because you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing it is easy to infer that everyone else does, and then get upset because you’re getting seemingly stupid questions over and over again. If you are, you are not sharing enough. Share your work. With your team, the company and your customers. It does not matter if it is complete or not. Bring them along for the ride with you. You’ll get buy in, fewer roadblocks, more collaboration and fewer unpleasant surprises.
This is how we learn fast, adjust and build the largest real-time network for office space at LiquidSpace. Share what works for you.
