Aptify

I am fortunate to have studied at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Cal Poly is a great university and one of its defining characteristics is a motto called “Learn by Doing”. The idea is to ensure that students are engaged in the real world trying out ideas. Everything that is done across all disciplines at the university in some way relates to this philosophy. I found it to be very compelling while studying, and I’ve since found Learn By Doing to be even more powerful in the business world.

One of the things I often hear from executives is that they feel they can’t change a process due to risk. It is true that changing processes always carries risk, and in some cases the risks are intolerable without a huge amount of due diligence. An often overlooked concept is the idea of rapid prototyping. In the software world, rapid prototyping is widely used. In many business processes, it is possible to carve out a small sample set that would be statistically relevant, and try out a new process in a limited way before rolling it out on a widespread basis. Many executives do not consider this option and focus purely on information they can gather on “Best Practices” from other organizations. There are certainly lessons to be learned from “Best Practices” and we  actively encourage our clients to adopt them in many cases. But, by definition if you only follow “Best Practices” you’ll end up squarely placed in the wide band of “Average”. If you want to really drive innovation, you have to try new things before they are adopted as “Best Practices” and I’ve found that the Cal Poly motto of Learn By Doing can be applied quite effectively to try out different ideas.