Book 9/26 in Leader are Learning Series; The Lean Start-up by Eric Ries

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How does this book help leaders? I am trying to find every bit of insight in these books that can shed some light on leadership and how the lessons can be found in almost any forum. In my opinion, there is no perfect formula for leadership but it morphs and changes with every person you interact with. I am going to show my notes from the book below, but I think the most important takeaway from this book is that as a leader in a company or start-up you need to create a vision and strategy for your team to travel down. That Vision or Strategy can help you use the method Eric outlines of Build, Measure and Learn. 

Set the stage of an Idea, " We want to be a frictionless transaction for the bar industry. OK now that is the vision, to develop a frictionless transaction for your experience at lounges, taverns, or clubs.

What is the strategy you want to implement? How will you make this work financially for you and the customer and the bar owners? Do you integrate into their existing POS system? Do you create a new platform, but give them the hardware and software? Do you create an API to talk through a phone application and connect with the bar POS system? What are the roadblocks from doing all these strategies? This is where you as a leader have to make the decision to trust your Vision, your Strategies and test them using the Build, Measure Learn method. This is the part that is hard as a leader and where you learn the most. You need to trust the process and your team to run through this method and give you the feedback of if you should PIVOT in a different direction or Persevere down the path you are on. Many Entrepreneurs who are the leader are caught in the trap of this is my idea and this is where I want it to go and be. Perhaps that is why so many business and start-ups fail. 

My Notes from the book

  • The lean startup method

    • Entrepreneurs are everywhere

    • Entrepreneurship is management(Leadership)

    • Validated learning(knowing that your ideas can succeed based on empirical evidence)

  • Build, measure, learn

    • Innovation accounting

    • Experiment

    • Hypothesis

    • Test it empirically

  • Guided by startups(leaders) vision

    • The vision helps steer the direction of product or services

  • Having an MVP(Minimal Viable Product) helps test the feedback loop of build measure and learn

    • What is more important Value vs Growth?

      • Does your product create value or destroy it

      • Create value like FB bringing people access to others in the network, value-destroying is like a Ponzi scheme

  • Genchi Gembutsu - Toyota’s way of taking VOC and implementing it into the product

    • This is the feedback loop that tells the leader sif they stay on the path or pivot

  • Can you do too much analysis?

    • Yes, where is paralyzed you into making a decision, but not doing enough could hinder you when you try to come to market

  • The 3 A’s of metrics

    • Is the data Actionable?

    • Is it accessible

    • Is it auditable

  • MAKE A DECISION: Pivot or persevere

    • Pivot to the customer segment

    • Platform pivot

  • The Startup Way: Peole, Culture, Process, Accountability

  • The engine of Growth:

    • Word of Mouth

    • As a side effect of product usage

    • funded advertising

    • Repeat purchases

  • 3 engines of growth =

    • Sticky Engine of Growth - Keeping current customers happy

    • Viral Engine of growth - Customers market for you, or Network marketing

    • the paid engine of growth

  • Use the 5 whys to get to the root cause of the problem

    • Spend time on training

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