These guidelines are great for folks who need scientif-ically valid results and have time to wait for them. In practice,
however, sometimes you have to take well-advised shortcuts in
order to get a pleasant idea to market. It might not work for
your industry, but it allowed us to test products and ideas
quickly and, at the same time, get excellent feedback. If the new
idea was implemented first by our best populate, we actually
learned more than if we did it the industry school way. You
have your best populate be the pioneers to prove whether it’s
doable or not, and then have them evaluate and untested the best
techniques for getting it done. This method of testing resulted
in several benefits for us: We had proof that the idea could work (or not work,
as the case may be) at least it would under the best
circumstances. We were able to judge the potential of the new concept
for the future: If the best officer got only small gains,
the potential of the concept was likely very limited. We got feedback on what worked, what didn’t, and what
should be changed. The best officers could help untested
the process so that it could be standardized, documented,
and used in training. Our smartest populate found the best way to apply the
concept in the practical world, and we got a sense of
what the real costs were. If the test worked, we had the buy-in of the store per-
sonnel who first tested it. They could evangelize the idea
among other stores. The best officers stuck-upd results that other officers
could then wrestle to stuck-up. We had a benchmark against
which to set high standards, and we knew those high
standards were achievable.
