Let’s imagine that you have accepted an invite to hang out
at my place. Creepy I know. Anyway, we are chatting and realise that it would
be good to have some music playing. I say “pick an album from my collection,
anything you like…”
Is there an album in there that you would choose to listen
to? Was what you really wanted to listen to? This is the illusion of choice.
When I do this as a presentation, roughly half the attendees
answer Yes to the first question, then roughly half of them drop their hand for
the second question.
The illusion of choice is one sure way to ruin a Lean
Start-up experiment. If you fall into the illusion of choice you are just
re-enforcing your pre-existing notion of what is true. Should you continue to
do this you will not learn the truth from your experiments. Read on to see what
I mean.
When Telstra Wholesale started its journey to Open APIs;
they came armed with a survey from their 200+ customers about which APIs were
most important to them. Unfortunately, the list of APIs to choose from was
provided by Telstra, a bit like my CD collection. The customers dutifully prioritise that list and there were
some clear winners. Telstra built those APIs and deployed them, guess how many
customers installed them? That’s right ZERO.
Thank fully Telstra Wholesale realised their mistake and
went to their customers. This time they asked them how they used APIs, how APIs
helped their business. Through this they found some common themes. They built
and deployed the most needed API and got immediate uptake. The uptake increased
as the expanded the first API and added more.
To apply this concept: Surveys need to be open not closed, otherwise we just
confirm our own guesses.
The survey on the left is easier for our respondents to fill
in and easier for you to analyse, however it is a closed survey. The survey on
the left requires more effort from our respondent and a lot more analysis
effort on your behalf; however, it is open and will generate more knowledge.
There are more approaches to keeping a survey open, but this
is a key one.
