Do You Experiment at Work?

One of the most tragic things I hear in management circles is this:

"I want to make a breakthrough happen. I really really do. But I don’t want to take any risks. How do I do that?"

If I’m honest, and say "Well that’s nice. It’s just, you see, well, it’s fundamentally impossible." They walk away in search of another author dude who’s willing to pretend it isn’t.

The principle at work here is knowledge capture: if an innovation is something new, or something you haven’t done yet, you have to capture the knowledge and skills needed to do it. An experiment is one of the few ways to capture knowledge you don’t have. If there are no experiments, you are repeating yourself, and can’t possibly be putting new ideas into practice.

An easy test of the culture of an organization, or the potential for change in a manager, is to ask the following question:

Full Story: http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/berkun/2008/07/do-you-experiment-at-work.html