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Nathan Whitaker: Experiment Before You Accelerate · Uncommon Impact

• 0:01
  Speaker: Welcome to the season finale of Uncommon Impact.
• 0:04
  Speaker: I'd love it if you took a moment to like, review, subscribe to the podcast.
• 0:10
  Speaker: Hope you've enjoyed it, and I hope you get something out of today.
• 0:12
  Speaker: Today is a look back at season one.
• 0:15
  Speaker: Maybe not in the way you think.
• 0:16
  Speaker: There certainly has been an important leadership principle that has come out.
• 0:20
  Speaker: There have been a number that have come out over and over through people, different observations, different ideas, different leadership concepts, different team building concepts.
• 0:28
  Speaker: But one thing is I kept looking back on these episodes that we've had throughout the season.
• 0:33
  Speaker: People keep coming back to purpose.
• 0:35
  Speaker: It comes out when we talk about significance.
• 0:38
  Speaker: It comes out when we talk about mentoring.
• 0:40
  Speaker: It comes out when we talk about everybody doesn't have to be a part of your team.
• 0:43
  Speaker: There are some people that'll find a different place, a better place, a place where they can get on board.
• 0:48
  Speaker: And that's all okay.
• 0:50
  Speaker: But when we think about why we're doing what we're doing, it helps us and it helps our followers get there as well.
• 0:56
  Speaker: If I believe in something, if I'm following it because it matters, then that makes me less concerned about who gets credit.
• 1:03
  Speaker: That makes me less concerned about am I gonna have to spend a little more time helping somebody else learn to lead?
• 1:09
  Speaker: Or whatever it may be.
• 1:10
  Speaker: There's a whole variety of things, but that kept coming up over and over.
• 1:13
  Speaker: This idea of why we're doing what we're doing.
• 1:16
  Speaker: And then that brings me to just a little bit of a look inside at this podcast itself.
• 1:21
  Speaker: When I started out, I had this idea of Amy Edmondson's on the brain.
• 1:27
  Speaker: Her most recent book is called The Right Kind of Wrong.
• 1:30
  Speaker: And she talks about when we launch something and how we do it matters as far as learning from it and understanding.
• 1:38
  Speaker: This idea of experimenting and evaluating before we accelerate.
• 1:43
  Speaker: And so as we've launched this, I've been inundated, as you might imagine, by people on LinkedIn or Facebook or just emailing me saying, hey, I can get your podcast views up to X, or I can alter this and this, and or take out ads.
• 1:57
  Speaker: And well, I haven't taken out any ads.
• 2:00
  Speaker: When I like asked you to like and subscribe earlier, that's the first time I've ever done that.
• 2:04
  Speaker: So as we try something new, the first objective shouldn't necessarily be growth, but it should be understanding and evaluating where we are and then figuring out what our benchmarks are for success.
• 2:15
  Speaker: And so when Amy Edmondson talks about these kind of experiments in life, in business, in organizations, she talks about four different things.
• 2:23
  Speaker: One is it's a new territory for us.
• 2:25
  Speaker: Podcasting certainly was for me.
• 2:27
  Speaker: It involves a new opportunity, the chance to share.
• 2:30
  Speaker: People who have important, I think, interesting, insightful things to share.
• 2:35
  Speaker: And then a hypothesis.
• 2:38
  Speaker: And we need to think of something and try to figure out how we're going to measure it as we go through.
• 2:44
  Speaker: And then finally, keep it as small as you can, small as practicable for this stage.
• 2:49
  Speaker: So that is the more things that we include in the way of variables.
• 2:52
  Speaker: If I had taken out ads halfway through, if I had totally changed how I was distributing it halfway through, might have changed how we evaluate things.
• 2:59
  Speaker: And so we're going to take a couple of weeks, look back, and see some of the best practices, some things we might do differently, solo episodes, compilation episodes, types of guests, and the like.
• 3:10
  Speaker: One thing I'm sure I want to continue though is I love the idea of having business people.
• 3:15
  Speaker: I love the idea of having educators, people in sports, whether it's high school sports, whether it's college sports, whether it's pro sports, but people who have learned in different fields about leadership, about team building, and have something to share with the rest of us.
• 3:29
  Speaker: I think a lot of things worked with this.
• 3:31
  Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
• 3:32
  Speaker: I really enjoyed my guests.
• 3:33
  Speaker: And so I'm going to keep a lot of things the same.
• 3:35
  Speaker: One of the things I've really liked is all these insightful, interesting people that I've had.
• 3:39
  Speaker: And so that's going to continue, even as I take a look and just try to figure out the best path for season two as we move forward.
• 3:45
  Speaker: So enjoy a couple of weeks off, but think about this.
• 3:49
  Speaker: In your business, on your team, in your organization, in your classroom, is there something that you might do?
• 3:55
  Speaker: Is there something you're thinking about as an initiative, as a next step?
• 3:58
  Speaker: And then think about is there a way to keep it small initially and figure out how best to go through so that you can see what's working, what's not, and not have so many changing variables that it's hard to determine as you go.
• 4:11
  Speaker: After all, the goal of an experiment is not to prove that we're right, it's to figure out what we need to learn and then keep moving forward.
• 4:19
  Speaker: That whole growth mindset that so many of my guests have had so far this year.
• 4:23
  Speaker: Thanks so much for being along for the ride.
• 4:25
  Speaker: We'll be back in a couple of weeks for season two.