A strategy is a hypothesis and its implementation is an experiment.

Prove it. two words that can kill any possibility whether it is an idea, a product or a strategy.

Leaders use these two words because they think in doing that, they will protect their business from risks. They think they are protecting their business from the new ideas and the risks they bring with.

But what they are really doing is cutting their business off from radical innovation and new ideas that can differentiate them in the market.

Our intentions do not control fully our thoughts. One consequence of that is that leaders often generate ideas and strategies without paying attention to their internal process of creation and testing.

In creating strategy, it is often important to take on the viewpoints of others, seeing how the situation looks at a rival or to a customer. Leaders need to shift the point of view to “Thinking about your own thinking”.

Customers are searching for something different that resonates with their identity. They need to choose easily between products and service. In doing innovative ideas you can reach that and be different in the eyes of your customers.

This is a very important step for building a charismatic brand.

In a nutshell, it is literally impossible to prove that a new strategy or idea will work before we actually trying it. Experiment it and test it to learn what works and what not.

Strategy is a hypothesis — an educated guess that needs to be tested.

In our world, no new idea has been proven in advance analytically.

But that doesn’t mean we should blindly leap into the future hoping that our possibilities (possible strategies) will work out. Hope is not a strategy.

No. We need to find a balance between the rigor and creativity. Between analytics and design, between logic and magic and human centered and business focused.

We need the accumulated wisdom about our business and our industry that is unlike anyone else’s to make a better educated guess toward winning.

Here we can take a lesson from design thinking where the creativity connects to the logic through iterative prototyping.

The idea of prototyping is to take an idea, make a rough tangible approximation of an idea or a product, put it in front of the users and let them impress you with their reactions and feedbacks.

Using the insights and feedbacks from users, you can make iterative tweaks, learn and make better prototypes till you reach the needed level of confidence to start build this product, or place a bet on a strategic choice.

Rather than searching for proving an idea or strategy, creative people generate the proof they need through building and getting feedback.

Prototyping can bring an idea that was in fact a losing proposition and turn it out into a big winning idea.

But prototyping alone is not enough. Good strategies rely on both creative and analytical tests while also keeping in mind the organization’s goals and focus.

We do that not to prove that one possibility will really work, but rather to increase our confidence in making a better decision that increase the likelihood to win and succeed.

Iterative prototyping and testing can help us gain the confidence we need to place a strategic bet.

Using tests, good leaders learn more about what does and doesn’t work and adjust their strategies accordingly. A strategist, like a scientist, starts with complexity and crafts certainty.

A business strategy deals with edge between the unknown and known. It is a competition with others that pushes us to the edge knowledge. Only there we can found opportunities that keep us ahead rivals. To minimize the unknown we need to test, experiemtn and learn.

Remember,

Strategy is a hypothesis — an educated guess, about what will work.