I’m a big fan of a concept Eric Ries calls shadow beliefs. Of course they aren’t something to strive for. Shadow beliefs are shared assumptions that are widely believed in the start-up but never spoken. For example:
- We know what customers want.
- We can accurately predict the future.
- Advancing the plan is progress.
They can also be unique to the start-up and company, but most of the time these shadow beliefs lead to executives and employees living in a reality distortion field. And reality distortion field is another name for a confirmation bias.
confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and to irrationally avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs.
Yahoo! is a great example. It came to fame as a portal but lost that distinction years ago. However the company never could realize that inside the reality distortion field. Even when Jerry Yang took charge he called Yahoo! a start page.
We have taken significant but disciplined steps to refocus our business on our objectives to become the starting point for the most consumers and the must buy for the most advertisers and enhance Yahoo!’s long-term performance.
Problem was that most people start with search, and Google owned search.
Most companies are guilty of creating reality distortion fields. Some are small and some are huge. In very rare occasions they can be successful, as with Steve Jobs and the original Mac. Other times they can take down a company. Much of the reason GM filed for bankruptcy is do to their reality distortion field.
After Roger Smith, Confirmation Bias kept GM from viewing the threat from Toyota as significant, contributed to its decision to pull its electric car off the market, and more recently led it to ignore the impact of higher gas prices and a collapse in credit markets on consumers’ willingness to buy profitable gas guzzlers like the Hummer or tricked-out Escalades and SUVs.
At GM it was beneficial to your career to toe the line and ignore what customers were saying.
So the smart thing for those seeking promotion within GM was to praise the CEO’s wisdom and carry out his orders.
But many times employees simply get pulled in, they drink the Kool-Aid. I have a friend right now working for free while his start-up looks for funding. You have to be dedicated at start-ups but that can also slip into a reality distortion field.
Breaking through the reality distortion field
I’ve run into my share of reality distortion fields in my career. When I was younger and more naive I thought I could simply prove my way through them. If I presented a strong enough business need they would see the light. Of course they never did, that’s the whole point of reality distortion fields.
Having taken part in Lean Startup workshop I think Eric has found a great process for breaking through the reality distortion field. Acknowledging the shadow beliefs is a big step in itself but he goes beyond just that.
The first place to find reality is in your users. But don’t just listen to them, validate your what you’ve learned through Customer Development. And remember the best form of communication is through providing customers with new products/features. They vote with their time and money – money being the more important validation. Eric also dives into a few techniques to shrink the time between major iterations, which is another way of saying speed up the conversation and learn more. Learn more than your competition and you’ll win.
Eric also offers some internal techniques to keep free of the reality distortion field. One he took from the Toyota Production System, Five Whys. He of course tweaks the techniques for software companies and start-ups.
In the end I think it might be one of the most important of Eric’s teachings – breaking the reality distortion field.
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