I read a book and tried to put it into practice..
As simple as it sounds I read a book and tried to put the processes outlined into practice…
The book in question is Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres (although that is somewhat irrelevant but does give some context).
I finished the book a few weeks to a month a go and while reading it I decided I would try to implement some, if not most of the ideas within…
Having said that, I do often think “I could do that easy!” when reading, even if the book is Jack Reacher and he’s taking down a huge criminal org!
Anyway…
In this instance I actually followed through on my own shallow threat.
My approach
I came at it quite logically and with my “Product” head on.. what would be the highest impact / low effort ‘thing’ I could do first? Then what are the priorities after that? My list from the book were / are:
- Interview at least 1 client / customer every week
- Introduce the idea of the ‘product trio’
- Capture all interviews in the ‘interview snapshot’ format
- Map opportunities discovered using the opportunity solution tree
- Complete one cycle of; Discovery > Opportunity > Ideation > Test > Build using the format in the book.
So how far have I got… was it worth trying?
I am up to line 3 in the list “Capture all interviews…”.
At a basic level it has reaffirmed what I read in the book but more importantly it has given me the scope to adjust it slightly and learn by doing:
- I have been trying to speak to at least one customer a week and sort of have! This will balance out over time e.g. 2 one week and none the next (this was being set in motion anyway).
- The ‘product trio’ isn’t quite there yet but we will find our feet in time (currently have priorities partially blocking this).
- The snapshot is working but takes some out of the box thinking and is slightly out of my comfort zone… it requires some drawing!!
I have enjoyed the challenge of trying to implement something new purely from reading about it in a book.
What’s next.. Simple. I will continue to go through the list and tweak what is suggested to meet my needs (wish me luck).
Final thoughts
Although its not easy and might not always work, it is 100% worth it. If you are reading a lot and just moving on to the next book / learning (courses etc) without actually putting it into practice are you actually learning anything?! I don’t think so, in fact all I think you learn is someone else's opinion and probably forget about it in the long term!
I encourage everyone to practically implement new learnings as soon as possible.
