Moving & Experimentation
On Friday, my wife and I bought a new house. In many ways, this was accidental. During our annual strategy retreat in December, we were discussing longer-term decisions when Erin mentioned offhand that a house around the corner had recently dropped its asking price.
Seven weeks later, here we are.
The movers don’t come until Wednesday, but I know myself well enough to anticipate that I wouldn’t need them. Just a few hours after closing, my closet looked like this, having moved most of my stuff to the new house.
That behavior—which was totally confusing to Erin—is related to my dislike of being unsettled. And having all of your stuff show up at once, having to sort through boxes to figure out what everything is, and the disorganization of it all is definitely unsettling! Because of that, I’m pre-staging the new house, so when the furniture arrives, it’ll feel comfortable as soon as possible.
However, I also realized that it’s possible to be overwhelmed on the other side of the move. Deciding where everything should go is more challenging when a house is empty. There are too many options and often no clear starting point.
My solution to that problem was experimentation.
For example, when deciding how to organize the kitchen, I brought one wine bottle, a pot, and just a few forks, knives, and spoons. By shrinking the problem to bite-sized pieces—essentially, an experiment—it was much easier to see how to proceed.
I had that insight partly because I had a conversation on Thursday with a client who felt overwhelmed by the volume and variability of her workload. Much of it was due to her boss’s inability to plan and create a smooth workflow.
As we brainstormed about the issue, we realized that trying to find “solutions” was less powerful than identifying experiments.
An experiment lowers the stakes because it doesn’t need to solve the problem—it just needs to provide information. That makes it much easier to get started.
It also would have been more difficult for my client to get her teammates to commit to wholesale changes in how they work. But “let’s try it out for a couple of weeks” for ideas like blocking out time to handle the “unexpected” work from their shared boss felt more manageable.
Moreover, “solutions” probably need to be approved in some form—she’d have to go to the boss and explain the rationale behind the change, potentially creating resistance before getting started. In contrast, a right-sized experiment can fly under the radar. Instead of saying to her boss, “You need to change how you work,” my client could say, “Tom, Dick, Harry, and I have been experimenting with a new routine for the last few weeks. It’s helping us be more effective.”
Finally, beyond the problem-solving and interpersonal benefits of experimentation, it just feels good. When we’re faced with an overwhelming problem—whether it’s moving all your stuff and trying to avoid a meltdown or a boss whose working style causes chaos in your life—conducting experiments puts us in action mode, which is usually more satisfying than thinking more about the problem.