Omar Usman – 3 Things I Learned from Little Bets Peter Sims
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The speakers discuss the benefits of growth mindset and experiments in creating great ideas. Small wins are crucial for achieving success and finding the most successful ideas. Expansion mindset is crucial for achieving success and finding the most successful ideas, while constantly checking in on small wins can lead to failure and small wins can provide a roadmap for improvement. Expansion mindset is crucial for changing and being willing to fail fast.
AI: Summary ©
In this video, I'm sharing 3 things I
learned from the book, Little Bets by Peter
Sims. And the basic premise of the book
is this, is that little bets, little experiments
and creative thinking can be used to identify
possibilities and achieve greater outcomes. One example that
he gives is like that of a comedian.
When we see someone like Chris Rock on
a Netflix special or an HBO special, what
we don't see are the dozens or hundreds
of experiments
that were put into crafting that special. We
don't see them right we don't see comedians
writing jokes and going to clubs every night
and testing them out. Testing out different punch
lines, different analogies, examples, test testing out different
word choice or tone of voice or any
of these things. But they go through multiple
iterations and experiments to figure out what is
the best way of doing this. That same
philosophy of experimentation
can be applied across multiple facets of life.
And so the first thing that I learned
was that great ideas
are not magically born.
They come about through a series of experiments.
One great example of this is the post
it note by 3 m. 3 m was
trying to develop a super strong adhesive and
through experiments and multiple iterations,
they ended up developing the post it note.
Challenge with this, you know, and now that
sounds like a great story. Say, okay, that's
great. I need to have this mindset
of just doing all different types of experiments
and I'll be successful.
The challenge is is that it requires deprogramming
a lot of things that we've grown up
with. See, in school, throughout our entire schooling
experience, we're taught a set of facts, we're
taught how to retain those facts, and then
we're tested on our retention of those facts.
When we get into the workplace or into
a career,
what we find is that management science is
basically trying to figure out how to break
down the tasks that we do into a
repeatable,
optimizable format so that we can be more
efficient.
The idea of just, you know, being able
to fail, to creatively think, to try different
things, it's a lot more difficult to achieve.
And so one of the things that we
get from this is that this mindset of
little bets, of experimenting,
if someone really understands this because it's more
rare, it's that much more of a valuable
skill and it actually helps you to achieve
and find and unearth those more successful ideas.
The second thing that I learned was that
a growth mindset is needed for Little Bets.
In order to experiment,
you're going to fail a lot. You're gonna
have a lot of things that you try
and they're not going to work. Now when
someone has a fixed mindset,
they think that their skills and their capacity
and their ability to succeed
has already determined. Like, I'm only gonna be
so good at x y z. And so
if I can't do it, there's no point
in trying. And so when they experiment and
try something and they fail, what they do
is number 1, they stop. But number 2,
is that they view it as a reflection
on themselves. That the fact that I'm failing
at this means I'm less intelligent or that
people are going to think badly of me.
I'm not gonna get the validation that I
need. A growth mindset on the other hand
is just approaching it almost like a scientist.
Like, okay.
I tried this experiment and it didn't work.
Now let's write down. Let's see. What did
we try? What were the variables? What can
I change? And let's iterate again and try
it again. They're looking at these failures as
an opportunity to to succeed. Like, okay. That
didn't work. Let's see if I can change
it. Let's see if I can get something
to work. And they view these as an
as a way essentially to fail forward. And
so someone with a growth mindset,
they're not concerned with what people think about
them. They're not concerned about that validation of
it working right away. They're just simply experimenting
and trying and see what they're able to
unearth.
The third thing that I got from this
book was the idea of small wins. And
now that's something that we're familiar with, but
small wins are vital when we're trying to
build something. See what happens a lot of
times is, especially in the business world, is
people come up with an idea
and or a service or a product,
and they think that they've got it figured
out. They'll take out a loan or they'll
try to raise a bunch of money and
they'll go out and do things,
and they've never actually validated the idea. They've
never seen that it actually works. And you
see this on the TV show Shark Tank
all the time. People show up and they've
got this product
and the investors say, like, okay. Well, what
do you have? Do you have any sales?
They're like, no. This is a ground floor
opportunity. They're like, okay. Well, what do you
have to show for it? Is there any
interest? You know, what what wins do you
have under your belt? And they'll be like,
well, it's just a great idea.
Well, the reality is a great idea is
just not enough, but a lot of people
think they have a great idea. They invest
everything they have into it, and then a
lot of times they end up failing. They
end up not succeeding because, really, with that
thing that they thought was a great idea,
the market didn't want it. And so they've
invested a lot and they've lost a lot
as a result.
A small lens mindset on the other hand
is saying, like, okay. I've got this great
idea. Let's figure out the smallest possible version
of that. So maybe I create a prototype,
and maybe I have some friends try it
out and see if it works. And if
that works, okay, now I can take the
next step. If not, if my friends didn't
like it, I can go back to the
drawing board and say, okay. What about this
prototype do I need to change? What needs
to be different in order to make it
work? And what happens is that when I'm
constantly checking in on small wins, it helps
me to develop a roadmap. It signals me.
Keep going down this path or
change direction. Or as, you know, they say
in the start up world, pivot.
But I have to be looking for those
small wins and seeking that validation
in order to be able to get that
signal of continuing or changing direction. And so
that's why I get on Shark Tank, you'll
see people come in and they'll be like,
okay. Well, I've got this great idea. My
you know, I did a Kickstarter campaign. I
raised a certain amount of money. I've got
a retailer that wants to purchase my product,
but I don't have the money to fulfill
that order. And so even though they don't
yet have 1,000,000 of dollars in revenue, they
don't have this great big success,
but they have enough small wins to indicate
that we're on the right path. And it's
those experiments
that really give you that signal. So make
sure you're always looking for small wins. Make
sure that you're experimenting. And the other thing
is be willing to fail fast. Being with
small wins, it gives you the ability to
fail quickly. See, with the comedian,
they're testing jokes that they wrote the same
day. And so they're not invested in that
idea. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
They can discard it and move on. When
we become emotionally invested in our idea or
financially invested in our idea, we've got a
lot more at stake.
When it doesn't get validated, it's a lot
it's a much tougher pill to swallow. And
so we keep churning our wheels, we keep
going down a path that
has no validation, has no feedback. But because
we're so bought into it, we have to
keep going and the failure becomes
that much tougher, that much harder to deal
with. So you fail fast. You look for
small wins. When you get those small wins,
you go down the direction that you need
to go. And these little bets, these little
experiments
open the doors to much greater success. Hope
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