“Fail Fast and Fail Cheap”

For the past few weeks I have had the line “fail fast and fail cheap” in my head.
 
I have the opportunity to attend many credit union conferences throughout the year due to my position at CUinsight.  Almost every conference has the paid business motivational speaker/comedian who is trying to sell a book.  Normally after 10 minutes I am sneaking out the backdoor to check email, return calls or update the site.  The vast majority have the same message and stories that anyone who’s attended conferences have listened to a hundred times.  And then there was Doug Hall at CUNA’s America’s Credit Union Conference & Expo.  Picture George Costanza from Seinfeld without shoes walking on stage.  Needless to say on first impression I thought I was out of there in five minutes.
 
Mr. Hall is the founder of Eureka! Ranch, The Ranch is an “invention & research think tank” that specializes in helping corporate leaders and real world entrepreneurs develop Measurably Smarter choices for growth.  A few thoughts from the presentation that have made me think, maybe they’ll do the same for you.
 
Fail Fast and Fail Cheap: I use the phrase throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks about our success with CUinsight all the time.  I have a legal pad full of ideas that I would like to try but haven’t YET.  Some have been checked off.  Some successful and some not so much.  Why are there still so many on the legal pad?  How many more hour long discussions can we have before we see if they work?  What is there to lose?  It’s time to stop talking and start doing.  Do it fast and if you fail make sure a bad idea didn’t cost to much.  If it works, invest in it and take it to the next level.
 
20 Minute Rule: Think of all the conference calls, meetings and personal discussions you’ve had about the ideas on your legal pad or in your head.  In Doug’s presentation he put the rule out that if you spend more than 20 minutes discussing an idea it is either time to put it in motion or stop to examine the idea and study it more.  How many times have you had the same discussion over and over with no new information and not taking a step to bring it to fruition?  I can think of a couple off the top of my head.  No more talking.  Time to move them forward.
 
Small Business Success: As a small business owner and someone who has worked in the corporate world this one hit close to home.  Credit unions and community banks work with small business in their community every day.  We’ve all heard the statistic that half of all small businesses fail.  Mr. Hall put this statistic in a different perspective.  He stated that in corporate America one out of every five ideas fail.  Small business batting .500 looks pretty good when you compare them to corporate America.  I would consider the vast majority of credit unions and community banks small businesses as well.  Many have the same issues that any small business owner has.  How many hat’s do you wear?  Are you the CEO, HR department, director of marketing and so on?
 
Where do we go from here?  I know from personal experience that one of the perks of being a small business is not having to deal with the bureaucracy that comes with a large organization.  If I want to try something new at CUinsight I just need to get David on the same page and vice versa.  What’s stopping your institution from trying something new?  On Share What You Fear have often written about the new competition in the financial services industry.  Who can move faster with new ideas to provide value to our members?  You or B of A?  Are you willing to try and fail?  The way I look at it is with every failed idea I am one step closer to a winner.  The law of averages says so.  Just make sure the winners are more rewarding than the cost of the losers.
 
What idea are you going to stop talking about next week and get off your legal pad?