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Lean Impact Webcast on Tuesday
Lean Impact Webcast on Tuesday by Eric Ries
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Lean Impact Webcast on Tuesday
By Sarah Milstein on Nov 01, 2013 12:35 pm
Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference.
Lean Startup techniques have beentaking off in the social-mission sector, helping people solveproblems more effectively, and earning the name Lean Impact. To explore what’sworking on the ground, we’re hosting a webcast, Lean Impact: Implementing Lean Startup in Mission-driven Organizations, next Tuesday, November 5 at10a PT. It will feature a conversation that gets into the details of how non-profitand mission-driven organizations are making use of Lean Startup methods to getcloser to their goals, faster. This webcast is free with registration, and ourspeakers will answer questions live from attendees. One other note—we’re introducinga special scholarship program to bring non-profit organizations’ staff andvolunteers to the conference in December. More details on that at the end ofthis post.
Few people arebetter positioned to talk about bringing Lean Startup techniques tomission-driven organizations than Akash Trivedi and Christie George, bothspeakers at The Lean Startup Conference in December. Akash is a business leadfor Kiva’s pilot program Kiva Zip, which seeks to make microlending even moredirect—for example, by facilitating payment via mobile. Christie is director ofNew Media Ventures, the first national network of angelinvestors supporting media and tech startups that disrupt politics and catalyzeprogressive change.
We asked Christie to give a sense of how she sees therelationship between Lean Impact and Lean Startup.
LSC: Do you see Lean Impact as a direct application of LeanStartup ideas in non-profit and mission-driven organizations, or is thereanother element to it that's not so obvious?
Christie: There are huge opportunities to build bettermission-driven organizations using Lean Startup principles. And "Lean Impact"offers a reference point for people to start that conversation—there is realpower in naming. I think of Lean Impact more generally as the conversationabout the challenges in addition tothe opportunities of applying LeanStartup ideas in mission-driven organizations and businesses.
There are some specific challenges that I’m looking forward todiscussing, both with Akash and at the conference:
1) Measuring Impact: Fororganizations that are in the "business" of social change, questionsof measurement are notoriously tricky. How do you measure a movement for socialjustice? How do you measure that it's actually your work that's moving the needle on an issue? The clearfocus on users and revenue is hugely useful formeasurement, but for organizations serving a population and notbuilding a 'product', the language and culture of Lean Startup is still finding itsfocus.
2) Vanity Metrics: Especially forthose working to increase awareness, social change groups oftenreport member numbers, Facebook likes, and news hits as proxies forimpact (which may in turn generate furtherrevenue). Metrics around petition signatures or Facebook likes arerelatively easy to track, but of course, they don't tell you whetheryou're winning. How can we come up with impact metrics that gofurther than vanity and get to the core outcomes we're working to achieve?
3) Customer Development: In thesocial change space, the customer who "pays" (e.g. a foundation) isoften not the beneficiary of the service. In some cases, this is a standardthree-sided market problem, but it often goes deeper thanthis. Mission-driven entrepreneurs are disrupting more than markets, andare therefore choosing to address issues of power and culture that may not fitneatly into the customer framework.
4) Failing Real People: Entrepreneursin the social sector are solving big, gnarly, complicated problems. The costsof experimentation (and failure) can be high. I've been reminded by socialentrepreneurs, "When we fail, we fail real people." That is humbling,even daunting. But it’s important to remember that it is a privilege to be ableto run experiments in order to fail fast.
The most exciting thing for me is thata community of practice is starting to develop around LeanImpact, with best practices and actual case studies, to guideentrepreneurs navigating these issues. And we've got some great examples ofpeople and organizations doing it well—from the data-driven culture of onlineadvocacy groups to the relentless testing that Kiva Zip hasdone, something that Akash will speak to directly. [Editors’ note: The Ultimate Glossary of Lean for Social Good, from the folks at LeanImpact.org,has some great examples (PDF).]
LSC: One key element of Lean Startup is the idea of organizing astartup around multifunctional teams. In mission-driven organizations, how doyou see teams reorganizing to apply Lean Impact ideas?
There is a pretty wide variety of organizations that fit intothe social sector—from large, traditional non-profit organizations tonimble technology enterprises. Some of these organizations are justbeginning to be exposed to Lean Startup thinking, while others have deepexperience with experimentation.
The space that I work in—online advocacy—has a long historyof running controlled experiments and using A/B testing tomeasure and optimize campaigns. I've also observed that these groups—everyonefrom MoveOn.org, Change.org, UltraViolet, Upworthy—have comparatively flatstructures.
But even more than reorganizing teams, the work of Lean Impactseems to be one of making a change in the organizational culture. Social entrepreneurs are working to get institutions tounderstand the value of taking risks. I see digital teams gaining influencewithin larger organizations, as well as a generation of entrepreneurs buildingnew types of social businesses and organizationsthat are embedding Lean Startup principals from the start.
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For a deeper dive into the challenges and opportunities facingLean Impact organizations, register for our webcast on November 5 at 10a PT. Andjoin us at the Lean Startup Conference, December 9 – 11 in San Francisco. Ifyou’re part of a non-profit organization and are interested in Lean Impactideas, we strongly encourage you to apply for our scholarship program. We areoffering a dedicated group of scholarships specifically for non-profitorganizations, their staff and volunteers. We are particularly interested in smallerorganizations that otherwise would find the conference financially out ofreach. So, the smaller your org and the tighter your budget, the more we wantto hear from you. Just fill out an application, and we’ll follow up with you asap.
