How innoway guides organisations through a pivot

At innoway, our mission is to help organisations bake innovation into their DNA using the Lean Startup Method. A vital part of doing that is making those organisations, no matter how big or small, comfortable with the idea of a pivot.

It’s something that a lot of organisations are apprehensive about when they first approach us. That’s understandable. Typically, they will have invested a lot of time and money into their current operating model and any changes to it might be perceived as a threat.

But by working with organisations to identify relevant stakeholders and helping them understand the Lean Startup Method’s scientific approach to pivots, we ensure that it ultimately stops feeling like a threat and more like an opportunity.

Making it scientific

The first thing we do when it comes to guiding an organisation through a pivot is to help them figure out whether they actually need to pivot in the first place.

We do this by facilitating Lean Startup-style experiments, which aim to prove a falsifiable hypothesis true or false.

These experiments are limited to two weeks in length, with a budget of no more than US$5000, and also include split testing, and control groups.

The results of these experiments, correctly interpreted, can help organisations decide whether to pivot or persevere.

Appointing someone as head of experimentation can help a great deal here.

It’s important to note that, especially within large organisations, most pivots aren’t about moving all the company’s resources over to a new product or market, especially not in the short-term.

Instead, they can be about adopting a new customer acquisition strategy or even something as small as deciding on which project management software to use.

At the start, our goal is simply to help organisations get comfortable with the experiment process. That way, if and when the time comes for a major pivot, it will be based the results of sound experimentation, rather than just a hunch.

Engaging blockers and support units

Typically, the people within an organisation who bring us in intrinsically “get” what we’re trying to do. They understand the need for continuous innovation and the benefits it can bring. But not everyone within an organisation has that mindset.

Some of these people might be what are known as “corporate blockers”. These people aren’t necessarily anti-innovation. They’re just incredibly invested in the organisation’s wellbeing.

Think of them as the organisation’s immune system. Their goal is to prevent anything bad from happening to the organisation or its assets.

Others are simply embedded in the organisation’s support units — HR, legal, corporate governance — and may have perfectly valid reasons for saying you shouldn’t pursue the path your experiment says you should.

At innoway, we help organisations engage with both these corporate blockers and the support units, bringing them into the creative process.

This further helps inculcate a sense of innovation and experimentation throughout the organisation.

But we also ensure organisations understand that this isn’t necessarily enough.

We therefore work with them to create a set of policies that will allow the organization take calculated risks – not to break the rules, but to bend them.