Think Small

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As I’ve worked with association execs adopting lean startup methodology to help them develop their ideas for new programs, products, or services they could offer to their members and other audiences, one thing that often trips them up is creating a *minimum* product.

We know how to create a vision and sell it. We do that all the time, most frequently between the board and senior leadership (one has the vision and pitches it to the other).

Viable products are also no problem. We know how to make stuff for our members. We also do that all the time.

The hard part is not throwing too much stuff in there, not, to use a common MVP metaphor, giving people a Mercedes when what they actually wanted was a bike.

Once you’ve gotten through your lean canvas and are starting the Build-Measure-Learn cycle, the first step is to think about the features your MVP could have, broken into the smallest possible components.

Let’s say your idea is to create training in meeting regulatory requirements. That’s not federal rules and state rules and contracts and IP and disclosures and ethics all in one. Each of those is a separate feature. In fact, some of those might break down even further. (“IP” is a big topic. So is “ethics.”)

When it comes to your MVP, you need to think small, not big.

Remember, you could be going in the wrong direction. Your target audience may not want this at all, or they may want kind of what you’re proposing but not exactly. If you put too much stuff into your early tests not only will you have invested more resources than you should in an unvalidated idea, you’ve also made your own job of trying to more closely approximate what your audience needs by way of a solution to the problem you’ve identified that much more challenging.

Keep it simple, keep it small, track your metrics, and keep it moving, on to the next iteration of your idea.

Want to learn more? Join me, Jamie Notter, and Tiffany Dyar for a free webinar, Lean Startup at 10: Navigating Disruption and Opportunity in Today’s Association Landscape, next Wednesday, September 10, at 2 pm ET, hosted by the nice folks at Professionals for Association Revenue (PAR). Learn more and register here.

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Persevere, Pivot, or Kill

Black on orange road work style sign that reads DETOUR with a walking stick figure and an arrow that points left against an out of focus background of a sidewalk with a tree box and chain link fence

In lean startup, the point of building a prototype, running experiments with your intended audience, and measuring what happens is to LEARN.

  • Did you identify the correct audience?
  • Did you choose a problem to solve that is both real and significant – is it a problem worth solving?
  • Does your solution work, at least in part, at a cost that audience is willing to pay (cost being defined not just as money, but potentially as time or effort)?

That is, are you on the right track?

If you are, great! It’s time to persevere, to make your next investment of resources in running your next round of experiments as you work your way towards  a fully fleshed out, marketable program, product, or service.

If you’re not, it’s time to revisit your assumptions about audience, problem, and solution, and use the data you gathered in the measure stage to see where you were off. Then you pivot your understanding of ONE of those elements, put together another prototype, and try again.

What if you learn you’re REALLY off? It’s OK to decide that you need to kill the project.

In fact, in the American Association of Veterinary State Boards case study related in Lean at 10: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch, that’s exactly what the AAVSB did in their first iteration through the lean startup process. They learned that a product that had already been launched into the marketplace before starting to use the methodology was not salvageable, and they were able to make the evidence-based decision to kill it.

As I wrote about recently, remember that lean startup doesn’t guarantee success, it guarantees insight.

That insight proved valuable at the AAVSB, as they were then able to make a clear-eyed decision to terminate a failing program without casting blame on the board members who originated the idea or the staff members who had been charged with executing it. Staff wasn’t telling the board, “Your baby is ugly” (or vice versa), the data was saying, “You chose a problem that, while real for your target audience, was not significant for them.” That is, it wasn’t a problem worth solving. Terminating that program then freed up resources – money, volunteer attention, staff time – to work on something more promising.

That’s where the magic happens. You make a small investment and only make subsequent larger investments if the data supports them. You don’t waste significant resources going the wrong way.

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Measuring Is the Hardest Part

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What seems like the most difficult piece of the Build-Measure-Learn Cycle to you?

  • Putting together a low-fi, low-cost, low-effort prototype?
  • Figuring out what measurements will be meaningful?
  • Making the persevere – pivot – kill decision?

In my experience, it’s usually choosing your metrics.

Why is that hard?

There are LOTS of options, and it can be difficult to know which ones are actually going to deliver the data you need to prove or disprove your hypothesis about audience, problem, and solution.

The key to designing a good measure is to focus on the assumptions behind what might make your idea a good product or service, not on the idea itself.

The hardest thing to avoid is choosing vanity metrics, things that make you feel good but don’t actually test your hypothesis. It’s tempting to choose measurements of volume – how many likes, followers, downloads, etc. But that’s usually not helpful.

Quoting Innovate the Lean Way:

Take conference attendance. Associations commonly measure the success of annual meetings by number of attendees. But is that really a good measure? What assumption does it test? Attendance numbers don’t tell you what those attendees were trying to accomplish by participating or whether they achieved their desired outcomes. They may have come to learn about a topic, to network, to do business, because they wanted to hear a particular speaker or meet a particular person, because they were intrigued by the host city, or for myriad other reasons. Measuring how many people attended doesn’t tell you anything about whether those goals were met.

Likewise, if you were to launch a mobile application for your association, it’s likely you would immediately begin reporting on downloads. !is is a clear vanity metric, as downloads don’t tell you whether the app is solving a problem your members think is worth solving. Think about how many apps you download because they’re free and you want to try them, but you never use them again.

A better way of testing the success of your mobile app would be to measure the number of members who use the app versus your website to perform particular functions or take advantage of particular services. Do they prefer one platform to the other? Do different cohorts of members use one versus the other? Can you isolate particular features that incline people to use one versus the other? Can you then make adjustments to move you closer toward your goals?

Some guidelines to consider as you think about what to measure to help you validate or invalidate your hypothesis. Good metrics tend to:

  • Be a rate or a ratio
  • Allow for comparison over time
  • Be simple (if it’s too complicated, people can’t measure it, remember it, or use it)
  • Be predictive
  • Allow you to make changes based on what you learn

Some possible metrics to choose:

  • Acquisition: How do potential customers / users discover our program, product, or service?
  • Activation: How many potential customers / users take our calls to action?
  • Retention: How many one-time customers / users become regular customers / users?
  • Revenue: Are people willing to pay for our program, product, or service?
  • Referral: Do our customers / users like the program, product, or service enough to tell others about it?

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No Guarantee of Success

Black text on cream colored paper background that reads INSPIRING WORDS "Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will" SUZY KASSEM

One of the common misperceptions of lean startup methodology is that it’s a guarantee that your idea for a solution to one or your audience’s problems will succeed.

It’s not.

In all of those examples, the company was able to pivot successfully.

  • Turns out EVERYONE wants to be able to send money electronically to their friends.
  • People already have platforms to mobilize for social causes, but (at the time), they didn’t have a platform to mobilize for the cause of saving money.
  • Video for dating? No thanks. Video for cute cats? Yes, please!

But what if you can’t?

In Lean at 10: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch, the American Association of Veterinary State Boards’ first use of lean startup resulted in exactly that: the realization that the product in question was un-pivotable.

“We were used to hitting home runs for our members and affiliated customers,” said Chrissy Bagby, CAE, PMP,
Chief Strategy Officer at the AAVSB. “Then, when we had a launch fall flat, it didn’t feel great.”

The AAVSB ultimately decided to kill that particular product, using the evidence gained through the process to make a data-informed decision.

For many associations, that would be it. “We already tried lean startup, and it didn’t work. Our product was a failure, and we had to pull it.”

What allowed the AAVSB to continue using the methodology?

Their culture. 

The AAVSB team was willing to have difficult conversations, work together to create shared understanding, learn and institutionalize the PRACTICE of innovation (not just the concept), measure their effectiveness, and make decisions accordingly.

In other words, they realized the actual benefit of lean startup: insight.

To quote Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate, related to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards’ story:

One of the axioms of lean startup is that people can’t be right all the time, so if you’re not pivoting, you might actually not be testing the right assumptions, or you might be choosing metrics that prove you right as opposed to those that will provide new insights. ‘Time to Insight’ has been one of our Metrics That Matter. How long did it take us to fail (learn) when using lean startup versus when using traditional product planning?

It’s that insight that will allow your association to keep iterating and moving towards solving a real and significant problem, a problem worth solving, for one or more of your audiences, at a price (in both money and time) they’re willing to pay.

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Lean at 10: Lessons Learned

Graphic for a live UST Education webinar, Lean at 10: Lessons Learned, featuring Elizabeth Engel, Jamie Notter, Chrissy Bagby, and Tiffany Dyar

Are you ready to use lean startup methodology to create new value for your members and other audiences, but find yourself stuck?

Maybe it’s your culture.

On Wednesday, July 16, Jamie Notter, Chrissy Bagby, Tiffany Dyar, and I presented a webinar for UST Education: Lean at 10: Lessons Learned.

Jamie and I kicked things off by briefly touching on:

  • What is innovation?
  • What is design thinking?
  • What is lean startup?
  • What is culture?

Then we moved into the meat of the conversation, discussing how the American Association of Veterinary State Boards and the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians have used lean startup methodology to create new value for their audiences while also managing the cultural challenges that accompany any big change.

We addressed questions like:

  • What are the challenges associations face in developing their ideas?
  • How can lean startup methodology help?
  • How do you effectively harness your team’s creativity and resourcefulness to ensure that you’re delivering a solution your audiences will need, use, and pay for?
  • What is the role of organizational culture in working in new ways to gain new insights?
  • What tools exist to help association execs guide their teams through the culture change they’ll need to embrace to be effective?

Did you miss it? You can view the free recording at the UST Education website.

Walking Your Talk on Innovation

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I recently participated in a virtual roundtable where the topic of conversation turned to non-dues revenue and the need to experiment with new ideas in a time of rapid change (it may be trite to point out that the pace of change keeps accelerating, but that doesn’t mean it’s not accurate).

One of the participants observed that membership organizations that are experiencing growth generally have a process in place to encourage innovation. And, in fact, his own organization was “leaning in” on innovation, but he was worried they wouldn’t be successful because they lacked a process to guide them.

Of course, I immediately thought of lean startup methodology.

But I also found myself thinking of Jamie Notter’s contributions to the recently-released Spark collaborative whitepaper, Lean at 10: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch. Jamie astutely observed that, often, associations want to do lean startup, but the culture won’t allow us to.  One of the key cultural challenges he identified was “incomplete innovation.” He went on to point out:

“This is arguably the biggest cultural challenge for implementing lean startup. This pattern, which is very common among associations, is one where a culture values the concepts of innovation (e.g., creativity, future focus) more than the practices of innovation (e.g.,experimentation, prototyping, beta testing). In other words, we’re talking the talk around innovation, but we’re not walking the walk (which is why the innovation is incomplete).”

What are the practices you need to embed in your organization to be able to walk your talk on innovation?

  • Testing new ideas
  • Experimentation
  • Risk taking

Does that sound scary?

It doesn’t have to be.

Learn more about this and the other culture patterns and practices that can impede your innovation efforts, and what you can do to overcome your culture roadblocks and innovate successfully by downloading the free whitepaper here.

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Lean at 10: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch

Ten years ago, Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate and I co-authored Innovate the Lean Way, a free monograph designed to introduce lean startup methodology to the association industry, explain why we think it’s a good fit for us, and share some stories of associations using it successfully to test out and develop their ideas for non-dues revenue programs, products, and services.

Last fall, with the paper’s 10 year anniversary approaching, G and I thought it might be fun to revisit the topic, this time with a focus on what we’ve learned in the past decade of working with concepts, tools, and techniques of lean startup (which we still think is a very useful tool to assist associations’ non-dues revenue efforts).

That new monograph, Lean at 10: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch, is ready and available for download at https://bit.ly/LeanAt10.

As you might guess from the title of this post, one of the main things we’ve learned (spoiler alert) is that it’s not the concepts, tools, and techniques that are the hard part – with a little time and effort, your team can learn them and become proficient. The hard part is the culture change, which explains why, in this iteration, we worked with Jamie Notter, who you may know for his excellent work on culture and culture change, to explore what you need to know and do to create a culture that will support and encourage innovation as a practice, enable you to take effective action, provide organizational clarity, and develop the courage to engage difficult conversations.

The whitepaper also includes:

  • Case studies with the American Association of Veterinary State Boards, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, and the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians.
  • A sidebar of lean startup methodology tools.
  • A series of thought questions for you to use to spark discussion with your team.
  • An extensive list of resources in case you want to dig deeper on any of the topics addressed.

As is always the case with the Spark collaborative whitepapers, it’s 100% free, and you don’t even have to provide any information to download it – you can just have it, no landing on a mailing list you didn’t ask for or having to dodge calls from us.

Are You Lean-Curious?

Small brown and white owl perched on a branch in the woods with a quizzical expression on their face

By this point, most executives have probably at least heard of lean startup methodology. You may even know that it’s used for product development, and, in the association context, particularly applicable to ideas for new non-dues revenue programs, products, or services. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Build-Measure-Learn cycle, or the idea of the Minimum Viable Product. Maybe someone has mentioned vanity metrics versus Metrics That Matter (and you can hear that capitalization in their voice) to you.

  • But what, really, is lean startup methodology?
  • Where did it come from?
  • What do all those terms mean?
  • How does the methodology work?
  • What tools exist to support the methodology?
  • How does it apply to associations?
  • Are any associations using it successfully?

Answers to all these questions and more can be found in Innovate the Lean Way, a monograph I co-authored with Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate (of NCARB at the time, now of the American Society of Appraisers) ten years ago. Yes, it’s still relevant, and G and I think that associations would still benefit from learning how to ensure they’re heading the right direction as they think about an audience of customers or members, the problem they’re trying to solve for that audience, and their potential solution to that “problem worth solving.”

Are you read to dive even deeper? Check out my new Lean Startup Series of services.

Regular blog readers may also notice that I’ve been revisiting lean startup concepts pretty regularly over the past several weeks. There’s a reason for that, which will be revealed next week. (Can’t wait that long? Click here.)

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Retooling Your Business Model

electric car charger plugged into a silver car

Earlier this week, Associations Now profiled a recent report from McKinley Advisors, Business Model Innovation, in which they identify five innovation elements that can provide the revenue that fuels your association’s ability to achieve your mission:

  1. Value – rethink your value proposition
  2. Revenue – pursue new pricing strategies
  3. Community – provide opportunities for relationship-building, both online and in-person
  4. Reach – expand your thinking beyond just your members
  5. Operations – get your own house in order to support all this

These are all good points.

But how do you actually do those things?

One possibility: lean startup methodology.

Lean startup allows you to jump start your innovation practice and non-dues revenue via a structured process that can help you to learn whether you’ve identified the right audience, whether you’ve selected a problem that’s both real and significant for them, and whether your audience is willing to use – and pay for – your great idea to solve their problem.

Remember: It doesn’t matter how quickly you’re moving if you’re headed in the wrong direction.

Learn how Spark can help.

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Big Risk, Big Reward

two red dice with black dots

This is IT. You’ve just come up with THE game-changing idea for your organization. It’s going to transform your profession or industry, bring in more members, or dramatically increase your non-dues revenue.

Upside: potential HUGE reward.

Downside: equally HUGE risk.

But we’re associations. We’re risk-averse. So don’t do it, right?

WRONG.

Part of making a big impact is being willing to make a big bet. But be smart about it, and find ways to reduce your risk.

Do your homework on your audiences. Craft a business plan that helps you surface your assumptions so you can test them. Create a prototype. Run beta tests. Get member input, and not just from your board. Invest. Determine in advance how much you can invest before you need to start seeing a return. Have a plan B and a plan C. Define what success looks like. Be ready to capture what you learned, whether it works or not. Iterate. Know what your exit strategy is.

You only get so many opportunities to take the big leap, so choose carefully. If you do, you’ll start a virtuous circle where you get MORE opportunities to take those game-changing risks because you know how succeed AND fail well.

Want to learn more about how your association can do this successfully? Check out Spark’s lean startup consulting options, and get started innovating better today.

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