This all-day workshop puts Eric Ries's Leader's Guide into practice through a series of 9 hands-on activities. The introductory talk makes the case that Change is the greatest threat to business today, and Lean Startup is emerging as the leading Management Practice enabling companies to adapt.
5. “To meet the demands of
the fast-changing
competitive scene, we
must simply learn to love
change as much as we
have hated it in the past.”
–Tom Peters, 1987
11. For 100 years, the business
world has emphasized
planning and control as a
means of ensuring predictable
outcomes.
12. When change is your greatest threat,
plans and predictions are (literally)
unbelievable.
13. Tom Peters saw the problem
coming in 1987, but nobody
really figured out what to do
about it, until now.
14. Lean Startup is a management approach
that mitigates the risk of change, turning
it into an asset that can be leveraged, by
supporting entrepreneurship throughout
any company.
15. Lean Startup is not religion.
These are not rigid rules set in stone.
I don’t care if you use the jargon.
It’s the thought behind your action that counts.
16. How do you retool for
entrepreneurship when your
planning and accountability
processes look like this?
Analyze
Plan
Stakeholders
Feedback
Revise
Budget (staged-gate system)
Approve
Execute
Measure
17. Level 1: Project processes
Start prioritizing assumptions, running experiments, measuring outcomes,
and making learnings-based decisions.
Level 2: Broad company culture
Share the experience and value with leadership. Share the know-how with
teams. Emphasize experiential learning and corporate storytelling.
Level 3: Deep operating systems
Yes, You Can. Retool incentive, budget allocations, and other management
mechanisms.
To change your company, target three levels:
18. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems
19. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems
23. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems
24. Vision
Your vision is your destination,
and provides a navigational
beacon for your internal
entrepreneurs.
Work to open up any process,
assumption, or person that
gets in the way.
LEADER’S GUIDE
Gaining Focus
Why is your company here?
What are you trying to accomplish?
How might you measure progress?
Removing Barriers To Your Vision
Which company beliefs and values support
entrepreneurship?
Which beliefs and values hinder entrepreneurship?
Culture > Focus on What Matters > Vision
25. Leadership
Getting leaders behind the
change is essential. Look for
understanding, belief, advocacy,
and decision-making.
Storytelling is a powerful tool in
creating support for the Lean
Startup mindset.
LEADER’S GUIDE
Storytelling
• How do we talk about success and failure?
• What stories exemplify the change?
• What are the key messages you want to
convey?
Advocacy and Decision-Making
• How can you help fellow leaders understand how
their actions support innovation?
• Which employees have proven themselves to be
effective change agents?
• How are they rewarded for entrepreneurial
behavior?
Culture > Focus on What Matters > Leadership
27. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems
28. LEADER’S GUIDE
Cross-Functional
What are the barriers to cross-functional
teaming?
Which other leaders need to allocate their
workers to this team?
Who manages the cross-functional team?
Fully Dedicated
What are the barriers to allocating the core
team 100% to the project?
Collaborative
What does collaboration mean?
How can you share ideation and decision-
making?
Team Structure
Entrepreneurial teams are cross-
functional, collaborative, and fully
dedicated.
Recognize the systems that are
creating drag on your startup
teams and begin devising
strategies to change them.
Culture > Focus on What Matters > Team Structure
32. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems
33. LEADER’S GUIDE
Leap of Faith Assumptions
What beliefs do you hold that must be true in
order for the project to be successful?
Which LOFAs represent the most risk?
Learning Metric
What metric would convince you that your
assumption is true?
MVP
What is the smallest thing that you can build or
do to get that learning metric?
Pivot or Persevere Meeting
When will you make a decision based on
experiment results?
Experimentation
Instead of making big, thoroughly
vetted plans, entrepreneurial
teams quickly sketch out a
framework and then experiment
to validate which parts of their
framework are correct or
incorrect.
The experimentation process is
straightforward in theory, but
nuanced in practice.
Project Process > Lean Startup Experimentation
34. It’s a blow to our egos when we
discover that a lot of our beliefs
about the future are wrong.
But when we get over that, it’s quite
liberating. We realize that we don’t
need to know everything.
We can put our ideas to the test and
change course based on what we
learn.
—Eric Ries, The Leader’s Guide
35. • Teams shift questioning from “can this be done” to “should
this be done?”
• Seeing predictions falsified inspires exploration and fosters
informed humility.
• Seeing customers actions creates confidence.
• Confidence creates a drive for definitive action.
• Experimentation discourages vagueness and ambiguity.
Impact of using Experiments rather than Plans
37. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems
38. LEADER’S GUIDE
No Surveys or Focus Groups
The most likely outcome of these techniques in
this context is unreliable results. What other
options are there?
Customer Actions
What could you ask the customer to DO that
would be a gesture of commitment to prove your
assumption?
Per Customer Learning Metrics
Learning metrics are per customer. Any metric
expressed as a per customer can be looked at
the same way no matter the business size.
Better Experiments
To get better results, you will
need to improve your experiment
approach. It is common to find
that each step causes you to
refine the prior step.
Project Process > Better Results
“In this group, 5 of 7 hospitals
built a room.”
“This quarter we had an average
of 3.5 Sessions/user/week”
39. 1. Actionable
Metrics must demonstrate a clear cause and effect.
2. Accessible
Make reports simple and give everyone on the team access to them.
3. Auditable
Metrics must be based on credible data.
The 3 As of Learning Metrics
Metrics to avoid: ROI, Margin, Market Share, and gross numbers of any kind.
41. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems
42. LEADER’S GUIDE
Sequence Your Learning Priorities
Which learning objectives (LOFAs) are most
critical to the success of your business?
Smallification
What can you NOT do and get learning sooner?
Reducing Complexity
What are the components of your effort that
cause complexity (eg, geography, scale,
comprehensiveness)?
Can you isolate and eliminate most of them in
order to gain urgent learnings sooner?
.
Being Efficient
Moving quickly means learning
quickly. You will not be able to
learn everything at once.
Therefore, find ways to simplify
and reduce the experiment and
MVP.
Project Process > Being Efficient
45. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems
46. 1. At the Start: Set a baseline
Create a simple dashboard of 3-5 metrics the team agrees are vital to the success of your
project. Figure out where you are. Get some practice learning under your belt and make the
model more complicated over time. What you measure here is necessary but not sufficient.
2. Upgrade to a dashboard of inputs to an eventual ROI case
Build a dashboard that represents a complete set of “input” metrics that make up your business
case.
• Conversion rates
• selling price
• average revenue per customer
• A first stab at margin calculation
• Cost to acquire a customer
3. Translate our learning into dollars by running a complete business case after your
learning metrics have changed. This is where you run your ROI.
3 Levels of Innovation Accounting
47. Starter Dashboard
LOFA
We can fund loans (value)
We can close more loans over time (growth)
Lenders will get paid back (value)
Avg. loan offers/request/week
Loans closed/week
% late payments/week
Learning Metric
48. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems
49. 1. Go Slow
Being “buttoned up at every step”
2. Leverage Collective Institutional Wisdom
Make decisions about future performance
based on conclusions drawn from past
experience
3. Measure Project Outcomes
Reward on-plan delivery
4. Staged Gate Systems
Accomplishing predefined milestones
How Risk Is Managed Currently
Analyze
Plan
Stakeholders
Feedback
Revise
Budget
Approve
Execute
Measure
50. Technical or Compliance Risk
For example, a product will fail if you don't do your
technical due diligence.
IMPACT: A mistake can put people's lives in danger.
ACTION: Avoid at all costs.
Rethinking Quality and Risk
Strategy Risk
For example, customers won't like our offering or
we'll be embarrassed by showing them a prototype.
IMPACT: Insignificant.
ACTION: We change strategy
When looking for places to speed up learning,
“Let’s look for things where we're not going to
short up someone's pacemaker.”
—Cindy Alvarez
51. Session 1: Culture
TODAY’S PROGRAM
• Introductory Talk & Setup
• How to Refocus on What Matters
• How to Set Up Entrepreneurial Teams
(Each bullet is a 30min hands-on segment)
• Lean Startup Experimentation Basics
• How to Get Better Results
• How to Be Efficient
• How to Monitor Progress
• How to Manage Risk
• Retro
Session 2: Project Process
Session 3: Deep Systems