Chapter 33.
Learn to Experiment

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the most common complaints of today’s executives is this: The people that they supervise hate to make changes though they are constantly being required to in this highly competitive business environment. The executives then tear out their hair trying to get the needed changes accomplished.

The way we respond is that it may feel difficult to encourage people to change. But try this possibility: People may not like to change, but they do love to experiment!

As business consultant and journalist Dale Dauten has observed, “Experimentation never fails. When you try something and it turns out to be a lousy idea, you never really go back to where you started. You learned something. If nothing else, it makes you appreciate what you were doing before. So I think it’s true that experiments never fail.”

So in the businesses that we coach, there are never any changes. However, our clients’ businesses are constantly experimenting to find what works better for the employees, the business, and the customer. The executives simply tell their teams, “This is an experiment to see if it works better for you and our customers. If it does, great, we are going to continue doing it. If it doesn’t, then we will modify it or get rid of it.”

And as long as you monitor it and get feedback, you’ll find that the old-fashioned resistance to change melts away because your employees really do enjoy a good experiment.