Iterate. Then Iterate Again!

I've always struggled with iteration. While I was never part of the one-and-done crew, five, six, maybe ten iterations, and I tap out.

Five thousand one hundred and twenty-seven.

5,127 is the number of prototypes iterated by James Dyson over fifteen years before he reached the happy place. That place where the product fulfilled his early dreams. 

There are two kinds of truth: Truths of reasoning and truths of fact.

—Gottfried Leibniz [ 1646-1716 ]

The lean startup movement derived from the more comprehensive customer discovery playbook by Steve Blank.

In his four steps to the epiphany, there is nothing left to chance.

It represents one of the most comprehensive books ever written on new company sales methodology, but following this wisdom tablet requires iteration.

Iteration, then more iteration–quite frankly, it's hard–really hard.

But we all do iteration unwittingly. We are not the same person we were two weeks ago.

Recent news, connection with friends, work assignments–all have led to an iteration of our self.

We are intuitively iterating in trying, and keep doing so we reach our goals.

–The question is then one of goal setting. 

Just mention the words goal and setting together, and a shiver runs down the spine of many in the corporate world.

Semi-annual objective and goal-setting, 360 peer reviews [often taking as long as that in days], and the endless review meetings and moderations!!

In principle, these level-sets should have worked, but more often than not, they didn't.

The problem was that of iteration and culture.

Dyson could not have set an appraisal task to engineers to iterate 300 times per year.

They would have thought him absurd. No such goal would stand up in an unfair dismissal court in the face of an employee challenge.

And yet, that's what team members tacitly agreed to do. By focusing on the problem–the goal emerges.

Understand the problem, create a hypothesis, design experiments, collect data, interpret the data, draw conclusions and communicate results.

An iteration culture sets in stone a scientific mindset–leading to many more truths of reasoning and fact!