I’ve always thought the way a scientist does. My mother tells stories of me asking lots of why questions as a kid, and while many kids do that, I never really stopped.
The scientific method approach to observing the world, developing and testing a hypothesis, analyzing the results, and iterating has always been comforting and served me well. After I transitioned to lab management, people would ask me, “Don’t you miss the lab and doing experiments?” The truth is that I do miss the lab and the ability to probe the world through experimental science. But I never stopped doing experiments— they’ve just taken new forms. Experiments now are less about chemicals, materials, and samples, and more about people, process, and business outcomes.
The scientific method
The scientific method is remarkably simple and robust. It has served humanity well for thousands of years. A simple version includes these steps:
- Observe the world and ask a question
- Learn what you can about the question
- Form a hypothesis–testable answer or explanation of the question
- Test the hypothesis
- Analyze the data
- Form a conclusion
- Communicate the results
What is interesting about the scientific method is that the word lab doesn’t appear. Many people assume that only scientists do experiments, and that they occur only in labs. However, we can do experiments anywhere about anything that can be objectively tested.
People experiments
The transition from individual contributor to lab manager largely revolves around the change from doing science to leading scientists; from focusing on things to focusing on people.
One of my first challenges as a lab manager was to tackle the motivation of our team. The company had gone through a large layoff, and the new strategy was still being developed. I decided to do an experiment. I asked every member of the team what motivated them. Nearly everyone said money. Taking this data, I worked with line management and HR to develop a series of small awards and bonuses for people who met defined metrics and departmental goals. After six months, exactly zero awards had been earned. My hypothesis was blown. These awards did nothing to motivate the staff.
I talked to each staff member again. This time, nearly everyone told me that they just said money because it was easy and they simply wanted to escape the conversation. Then they told me their real motivators, which included things like flexibility, ownership, training, and control. Once I started giving them what they truly needed, the team blossomed, met several stretch goals, and was very successful.
People experiments can cover a wide range of activities, like who will make a good supervisor, who can develop novel methods, and who will be a good project manager. Investigating these options with hypotheses and data enables lab managers to make good decisions around who gets more opportunity and how that opportunity is offered and measured.
Business experiments
Though I’ve talked with many people who have earned MBAs as well as a few business professors, I’ve never heard them talk about doing experiments. It seems that the uncertainty of the concept makes them uncomfortable. Good thing for me, I didn’t know that experimentation wasn’t part of business planning. When our lab was acquired by a contract research organization (CRO), we had to learn quickly how to transition from an internal lab to a business. Since we were all scientists, we conducted a wide range of experiments to figure out how to survive and succeed in this new environment. These experiments covered topics like how to:
- set a competitive price for our services,
- evaluate the performance of a sales team,
- evaluate the quality of sales leads,
- manage the profit and loss (P&L) process, and
- build operational workflows to deliver for customers.
As with many experiments, we learned a great deal from experiments that didn’t work. It was very important to figure out what not to do while we learned what we could do better. Since I had no real experience in business, I wasn’t burdened with actual knowledge, so we could explore different ways to run a lab-based business. Through many iterations, we found business practices that served us well in the CRO market. We were able to double the staff of our lab and compete effectively in this market.
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Lessons
After applying the scientific method to a wide range of technical, business, people, and process questions, there are some important lessons to share:
- Curiosity – there is no substitute for curiosity. We need to be willing to explore and investigate to seek new and different opportunities and results. It feels like many people lose their sense of curiosity over time, even talented scientists. To continue to experiment, we need to keep our curiosity alive and well.
- Document – especially for experiments outside the lab, write down your hypothesis. People are good at moving the goal posts. Once data starts to arrive, we tend to change the experiment, and it can be difficult to remember the details of the original hypothesis, which makes it very hard to learn effectively from the experiment.
- Objective – the world outside the lab is full of bias, blind spots, and assumptions. Ask yourself questions about how to test the hypothesis and look for subjective and emotional tests. The more objective the experiment, the cleaner the results and the easier it is to learn.
- Creative – the scientific method works. Be creative in designing experiments to help your lab develop and improve. There are countless ways that experimentation can yield new outcomes, ideas, and lessons.
Everything you learned about science, experimentation, and the scientific method is still true. Look for experiments that will help you learn and improve your lab. Find opportunities to generate data that guides your leadership decisions—especially in areas like people, strategy, and culture. You have more skill in doing these kinds of experiments than you think.
