Designing New Workplace Experiments

“The experiments are worth it.” – says Melissa Boggs.

Culture is vital to consider when designing a new workplace experiment. Culture is not just about what you say but how you act. It’s not just about the work environment; it’s about the people who work there. It’s also about how people interact with each other as well as how they interact with their organization. 

Culture often starts at home: in this case, it means whom you hire and what expectations you set for them during onboarding. How employees are treated at your company will impact their behavior and attitude, affecting how they treat other employees and customers (or clients). For example, suppose employees aren’t happy with their working conditions. In that case, they’ll show unhappiness by taking a passive approach toward helping solve problems instead of actively participating in finding solutions. Learned helplessness is one of the most difficult challenges leaders face as they roll out an experimental culture. Employees will also be less inclined to reach out if there’s nothing in it for them—such as being rewarded financially or receiving recognition from higher-ups because everyone deserves credit sometimes!

Any experiment needs a compassionate framework at the core to help people consider and embrace the fundamental change an experiment brings.

• Give people space and time to think about new experiments.

To give people the space to think about new workplace experiments, you will need to:

Give time and space for employees to share their ideas.

Give time and space for employees to discuss the implications of those ideas.

Give time and space for employees to consider how those ideas will work in practice (for example, talking through potential barriers or unintended consequences).

In The Experimental Leader: Be a New Kind of Boss to Cultivate an Organization of Innovators, Melanie Parish says, “Using conversations as ways to test how to improve feedback loops will ensure your success as an experimental leader.”

• Test, test, and test again. Start with a prototype as soon as possible before building out something with significant costs.

The first three phases of a workplace experiment will help you understand what it’s like to be in a new environment. However, the essential phase is testing and measuring. This phase aims to determine whether or not your unique design can work. Of course, you might need to change a few things for it to be successful, but if you don’t test and measure before implementing significant changes, then you’re likely going to end up wasting time and money on an idea that isn’t working out well. A process that starts with a prototype is always the goal.

Suppose there are doubts about whether a change will work out as planned. In that case, it’s better for everyone involved if these doubts are addressed by testing early on rather than later when more time has been spent making significant changes already invested into something that may not work for everyone involved—or anyone at all! It doesn’t matter how sure someone else thinks their ideas might be; what matters is how well those ideas work out once they come face-to-face with reality outside their heads.”

• Be prepared to work on the experiment over time.

It’s important to remember that it takes a long time for the right people to come together for any experiment. You want to start quickly (prototype and short time frame) and frequently revise over time for continuous improvement. Involving many over time will help in the revision process. You want to involve people and feedback in the process to improve. This will make it more likely that your experiment will succeed once it begins.

The first step in designing workplace experiments is finding an appropriate team of people who can help bring them about. This will include:

Leaders who are committed to innovation and willing to invest in new strategies (the importance of these two aspects cannot be overstated)

A cross-functional group from across departments

A core team responsible for carrying out the experiment
As you choose employees for this core team, look for resilience, empathy, strong intellect, collaboration skills, and the ability to doggedly pursue a task. They will need to have these skills to keep the experiment running in the face of apathy or natural opposition.

• Involve employees.

Employees can provide valuable feedback. Employees should be involved in the design process to be part of the solution, not just an afterthought. They may have ideas to improve the new process or suggest recruiting new employees who will fit into your workplace.

Invariably, employees may be resistant when you do any workplace experiment—they probably feel an attachment to the status quo! Change often makes people fear for their own job security…So it’s essential to involve employees as much as possible during this stage and ask them for input on ways to make improvements. Their suggestions might be very insightful; for example, when Microsoft tested its employee satisfaction survey results at a few different locations, one location saw its scores go up significantly after being put through a rigorous interview process with fresh newcomers instead of long-term employees (who already knew what was expected).

Employee involvement also helps if you need help finding the right people for your experiment: employees can help guide recruitment efforts by sending out emails about openings and encouraging friends who might be interested in applying for those positions. It’s essential to get buy-in from your team members because they know better how things work within your organization today—and whether or not something needs changing!

• Be clear about your expectations for behavior and performance.

In a collaborative work environment, you want your team members to feel like they can be themselves and be productive. To achieve this goal, you must ensure everyone understands their expectations.

This means communicating how people should behave in the workplace and why those rules are in place. So, for example, if you’re asking employees to wear jeans on Fridays because it makes them more comfortable and productive (which it does), then say so explicitly: “We have found that wearing jeans makes people more relaxed and creative. So, we’re going to allow jeans on Fridays! You can even use our informal style guide if you want inspiration for an outfit that fits into our culture while still being appropriate at work.”

You can introduce new ideas into the workplace, but you have to be thoughtful about it, or it won’t work out.

You can introduce new ideas into the workplace, but you have to be thoughtful about it, or it won’t work out. You’ll need a good plan and take your time with it.

“Go to where the work is done and watch what is happening. Observing the behavior is better than hearing about the behavior.” – Melanie Parish

• Here are some things to keep in mind:

Be prepared to spend a long time on it. Continuous improvement happens iteratively over time; you will likely be working on this for weeks or months before seeing any results. Therefore, the planning and testing phase is crucial and should not be rushed.

Test, test, test again! Before trying anything else, everything must work as expected (and when I say “everything,” I mean every aspect of your experiment). If you want employees to feel comfortable with this new system, they need assurance that there are no bugs or issues with any part of their workflow; otherwise, they might feel frustrated trying something new if they’re having trouble accomplishing their tasks within its parameters—and then who knows how many other employees will give up too? So, make sure everything is running smoothly before adding more people into the mix; maybe even run several tests outside of work hours so you can gather feedback from different types of workers (elderly vs. young adults vs. parents). It’s worth spending extra time here because everyone else will want access once an idea catches on at work!

“Figure out where you can experiment…” – Melanie Parish.

Ultimately, the workplace is a human institution. And like any human institution, it will be shaped by its culture and the people who work within it. So, the best way to introduce new ideas into your workplace is to carefully consider these factors while designing your experiment—and then to be patient when testing it out.

To get a free copy of our Experiment Kata card Template (you can print it), click here: www.kata.experimentalleader.com