“Let’s See What Happens”

It was Wednesday at 7:30 am. I was in a modern French-themed café preparing for the pilot of a slightly innovative event format that started in 30 minutes. The last note I wrote down atop the printed agenda was “Let’s see what happens.”

It’s a reminder that I write or type before any planned event, training program, strategy offsite, or one-to-one session. No matter how big or small. The work could affect one person, a million customers or a billion humans.

In these sessions, even with the best-laid plans, the outcomes are uncertain. While we can be confident we can’t be closed-minded. It’s essential to allow unexpected events and listen closely to what is or isn’t being said in the room.

This morning, it was simply a friendly and fun first edition of a business book club. However, like any new idea, venture, or proposition, you don’t know if it will or won’t work until you try.

While I was hopeful it would work out, I needed to be accepting of the fact it might not, be okay with that possibility and if so be appreciative we learned quickly.

In my experience, most executives can understand this need to learn by doing in theory, however, in practice, most really struggle.

So I thought I’d share an example of how I launched with my co-conspirator Frank a small and innovative(ish) event through a nice framework from the book we discussed.

Firstly, what were we trying to do?

The hypothesis for the book club is that people and professionals love to socialize through ideas. Also, there is a yearning to convene again and rebuild such forums post-COVID and in the techno-anxiety era.

For the first meeting, I selected a book relevant to any organization and grounded in evidence, not pop-management fluff. No Rules Rules is a research-based investigation of Netflix’s journey, culture, and learning over two decades.

It was a biased selection as I was trained by Erin Meyer, the academic co-author. Erin deepened my training in cross-cultural communication development methods and is a teaching role model.

I was also motivated to disseminate key principles of modern software ways of working to other industries as exemplified by the other co-author, Reed Hastings, CEO and co-founder of Netflix.

If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. Thanks to 20 years of honing and refining, the practices revealed in the book are crisp and robust. Rather than a self-aggrandizing biography, it’s the true cut and thrust of working life in the constant pursuit of innovation, excellence, and results.

How did we do it?

In hindsight, we followed Reed’s innovation flywheel. Now, this isn’t all unique to Netflix, but it nicely represented how we were working and what we were okay with success or failure.

Reed’s innovation flywheel:

“Farm for dissent” or “socialize” the idea.
For a big idea, test it out.
As the informed captain, make your bet.
If it succeeds, celebrate. If it fails, sunshine it.

While our book club was “just” a book club, it was hosted within an organization where the format and focus were unprecedented. Just as any innovative idea starts as “just” an idea, until you test it out to see what happens, you don’t really know if it will work or if the organization can accept it.

We made our bet.

So, what happened?

Well, of course, the contents of our discussion are confidential as we operated under Chatham House Rules and the in-person experience was the point.

However, I can report that it was a super engaging, insightful and fun discussion over a fantastic breakfast. Participants loved socializing through ideas about the organizations in their lives and it was a super easy group to moderate as people listened intently while sharing meaningfully.

Now, thanks to a super high NPS, over three times the number of attendees wish to participate in person in the future.

Why did that happen?

Firstly, it was evident how ready people were to learn from and with others. Many alluded to big challenges they faced without forums to think, ideate and get feedback more broadly.

Secondly, one of the challenges to innovation or change through new ideas is that work has become more collaborative, distributed and workshop-based so that there is ever more to do. What can get crowded out is the thinking and learning and people LOVE to think and learn together.

Thirdly, I’m constantly heartened by how a light but clear structure empowers participation with high levels of interpersonal responsibility. We set the context and then watched what happened.

Shall we try it again?

Yes, but we still need to see what happens the second time. I’m hopeful but we don’t know if interest and momentum will endure.

Let’s see what happens.

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Learn more about Brett’s leadership development practice for global innovation and change professionals.

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