BUILD FROM THE MIDDLE

Don’t take the approach that every new idea needs to be lovingly built up, brick by brick from the bottom, like a medieval cathedral. There simply isn’t time for that. By the time you’re ready for the topping out ceremony, the market will already have moved on.

Forget starting with foundations and instead begin in the middle. Don’t waste three months making and positioning the cornerstone; build the altar and see whether people will rally to it. What that means in practice is you need to start at the heart of the problem you’re trying to solve, or the opportunity you want to unlock. Whether that’s raising awareness of your business in a new market or building a new app to give your customers a better mobile experience, try and identify the nub of the issue: how you could most quickly do something that demonstrates the idea is worth taking further.

The key thing is to test your riskiest assumption as early as possible – before you waste time adding bells and whistles. When market conditions are changing so quickly, and time and money are precious resources, it’s much better to fail fast than to fail slowly.

People often ask us, how do you know if you’ve failed or not? Sometimes it can be difficult to tell, especially when you’re in the thick of it. That’s why it’s critical to be data driven here as there’s always a temptation to be swayed by how strongly you feel about an idea or a project. So set clear metrics for what constitutes good/better/best before you start the test and before you get emotionally attached to the project – this will keep you honest!

TEST, LEARN AND TEST AGAIN

With new ideas and experiments, you’re often best served by starting small. Test your ideas at limited scale, in just one market or for just one type of customer so you get to the result faster, so you can A/B test how your experiment performed versus what was there already, and so you contain any unforeseen issues without affecting the whole customer base. Based on what you learn, once you’ve proved out an idea on a small scale, this gives you the case study to go big with the idea. You’ll be much more likely to convince your boss and stakeholders to restructure the ops team/use a new analytics provider/crowd-source your weekly agenda if you’ve piloted the idea on a small scale first and ironed out the kinks.

Don’t labour over new experiments. Focus on getting something done, and not making it perfect first time around. See how it goes and most importantly what you can learn. Then refine your approach, try again and see how the results differ. Think of experimentation as many low-cost, low-risk test runs that help you to understand whether there’s a worthwhile idea to pursue and, if so, how you can best develop it at larger scale.

CREATE SPACES TO INSPIRE CREATIVITY AND SAFETY

To keep your team grounded when so much is changing can be a challenge. As you foster your culture of continuous innovation and collaboration, think what you could do with the physical spaces in your workplace to give people room to meet and share ideas. For me, the kitchen table is the most important piece of furniture in the office, and the most important office appliance is not the printer, it’s the coffee machine. It’s so important to have a space where people can eat together, slurp tea together, dream up ideas together and troubleshoot together in a space that feels safe, a place where they feel encouraged to be themselves, rather than a formal boardroom where people tend to be less natural, more on their guard and as a result less able to think creatively and behave empathetically. If you’re part of a smaller company, this space doesn’t have to be within your office; it could be a park bench round the corner where you eat a packed lunch and feed the ducks together; it could be a coffee shop where you all feel relaxed and are more likely to come up with a name for that new product you’ve been stewing over.

And if you don’t have a team or you have limited influence over your workspace, don’t let that stop you – think about your own desk and how you could hack that square metre of space to become a conversation starter that supports the goals of the organisation. My own desk has a row of favourite business books so I can lend them to people really easily. Our dev team has their walls filled with memes and photoshopped images, the sales team likes to scrawl the week’s wins on a white board, and the design team has a wall of nerf guns ready to shoot. What could you do to make your own desk or your team’s bank of desks a talking point that inspires conversation and creative thinking within your company?

USE RITUALS TO MAINTAIN A STEADY PULSE

When the political climate is so febrile, your industry is in a state of constant flux, and your business model is being reinvented around you every day, it’s easy for things to feel out of control and that’s the last thing you want to feel as a stepping up leader.

Focus on the things you can control and keep a steady pulse where possible. Whether it’s Monday stand-ups or Friday beers, weekly one-to-ones or exec open hours, regular pub quizzes or quarterly Town Halls, rituals ensure that there’s a framework, a scaffold that underpins the activity that’s going on.

We’ve talked a lot in this book about the pace of change and how you need to embrace that to step up as a leader. But that doesn’t mean you have to do everything at breakneck speed. The need for speed is becoming a business truism, but in many cases it’s the more patient leader who is best placed to assess and take advantage of opportunities. You want a balance between managing fast and slow, between stepping up to act and stepping back to pause and reflect, so be careful not to rush at opportunities just because they’re there.

Sometimes the best decisions are those made when you’ve had a little time to reflect, rather than charging straight into something. You can be too early to markets, products and deals. Pick the races you want to run in carefully. Sometimes it’s OK to be the one who hangs back for a better view while everyone else is going hell for leather.

In a business world full of hares, there can be an advantage sometimes (though certainly not always!) in being the tortoise. Sustained effort, combined with patient determination, very often wins the race.

Stepping up to lead really is a marathon not a sprint, and in this book, with its focus on vision, values, velocity, votes and victories, you have the framework you need to prepare you mentally for the challenge. You have the wise words of today’s successful business leaders ringing in your ears like a passionate coach, willing you on to win from the sidelines. You have a broad range of tried and tested actions to help you flex your leadership muscles and practise behaviours that will give you the confidence and the skills to truly unlock your leadership potential and step up to the challenges of leadership with authenticity, purpose and empathy. It’s time to get on your way!