HOW THIS

Tell us about The Library Corporation.

TLC is a 40-year-old company in a very tough industry. Libraries didnt need to change very much for their first 2000 years, but the advent of the Internet, and, by proxy, Google and Wikipedia, has been hugely disruptive. TLC has an amazing history of innovation, and we are extending that now by, among other things, applying Lean Startup concepts.

Getting Started
We wanted to get everyone on our product team to a common level understanding of Lean Startup, but we also wanted a team building exercise with some teeth.

Why did you bring in Lean Startup Machine?

We started paying attention to Lean Startup in 2010. We sent one of our team members to an LSM in NYC in late 2011. He had a great experience, and felt it really clarified Lean Startup for him. I didnt want to go through the expense or complication of trying to send everyone to individual LSMs, so I called Trevor to see if they would do one inside our company. We wanted to get everyone on our product team to a common level understanding of Lean Startup, but we also wanted a team building exercise with some teeth. We wanted people who werent necessarily used to working together to have the experience of trying to do something real, under pressure.

,,

How did you prepare for the 2-day workshop?

We toyed with the idea of giving TLC attendees concepts to choose from, but decided they would be more passionate if they came up with their own. To get the creative juices flowing, we developed an intense, three-day long ideation process where we broke down successful apps already on the market into smaller elements, and combined them in new ways. At the end of the ideation process, we had 45 original pitches. We narrowed that down to 10 that appealed most to the general group, and formed small groups of 3-5 on the basis of interest. On the morning before the first LSM, on our way to DC, we worked on the tour bus -- getting landing pages and social media up and running, creating surveys -- anything that could prepare us for what wed be doing at Lean Startup Machine.

What were you most concerned about before the workshop?

We made a big investment in this process. We rented a bus and a space in DC, because we felt it was important to take our staff out of their usual environment, away from ringing phones, customer demands and the like. We also spent two weeks preparing ideas... so, if this hadnt gone well, it would have been a serious, highly visible flop.

How was the experience?

For being everyones first Lean Startup Machine for a corporate entity, it was a surprisingly huge success. Many of the challenges we anticipated early-on turned out not to be an issue at all. For example, we were concerned that our TLC employees wouldnt be as driven to Get Out of the Building as most Lean Startup

attendees. After all, our TLCers were doing this (in some part) thanks to the extrinsic motivator of their job at the company, versus independent Lean Startup attendees who are intrinsically motivated by their entrepreneurial desires. But once our group got over the initial awkwardness at approaching total strangers, they were surprisingly motivated to see their ideas validated or invalidated -- as much so, Trevor told us later, as many of the independent attendees typically are.

How has your company culture changed since?

Lean Startup Machine has changed the way we we go about our day to day work. LSMs two key mantras, Invalidate My Assumptions, and Get Out Of the Building, have had a huge impact on how we do business. People are much quicker to recognize when they or their team members are making assumptions, and they are willing to go through the work to figure out if those assumptions are valid or not. To do this, they are not just willing, but actually eager, to get out of the building. Im going to triple my budget for customer site visits in 2013 to accommodate our teams desire to get out of the building. On a broader level, weve seen greater teamwork and camaraderie between staff members since the Lean Startup Machine experience.

What skills did your team obtain?

Many of our team said the LSM experience shifted the way they view and interact with our existing customer base. Team members are working harder to get directly in touch with customers and try, as often as possible, to communicate face-to-face with them. Theyve learned the value of letting a customer talk -- often for longer than seems necessary -- to tease out the root of a problem. Theyve also become a lot more adept at pivoting, and are less likely to hold onto their assumptions for dear life. They understand that failure is a good thing -- as long as theyre continuously learning to fail quickly, and smartly, in this marketplace.

How did you continue the momentum afterwards?

Immediately after LSM, we established an ongoing LSM inside the company. Anyone from the company can pitch an idea at regular pitch meetings open to the entire company. If they can then get a team together to validate with them, they can move forward. If they get initial validation, well build a functional MVP.

What did you do 6 months after Lean Startup Machine?

The intense nature of LSM put people who wouldnt typically work together in the same room, and forced them to interact closely with each other. That reconfiguration definitely had a rejuvenating effect within the company. Afterwards, we heard several reports that team members at TLC felt much closer to each other than ever before. Weve since tried to replicate that at our main offices in Inwood, West Virginia. Most recently, we did so by holding a two-day hackaton. There, we combined elements of a traditional hackathon with elements of Lean Startup Machine -- that was, to my knowledge, the first time anyone tried to do anything like that. Lots of ideas were put on the table, but we let team members self-select

-- anyone who could form a group around their idea could go ahead and start working on it. Points were allotted for both validation and elegance in development, which meant that some members of the team worked the former, and others on the latter. It was a very messy, but very rewarding process. At the end of the two days we had several smart ideas that could, potentially, make almost instantaneous revenue for the company.

Where are you today?

When teams start new projects, they now look to apply whatever makes sense from Lean Startup. For example, in some recent instances where we are building new versions of existing products, teams have taken an MVP approach. We get early adopters to work with us to define what the new version needs to be by actually using what we build as we go. This has given us cover to drop features that didnt make sense in previous versions, and helps reduce the risk that the new version will be an unwelcome shock to customers.

Are Agile practices a prerequisite to implementing Lean Startup methods?

Lean Startup Machine actually does a great job of driving home some things that are key to meaningful agile adoptions. It helps teams take learning seriously as an objective. It drives home the importance of building the right things, not just building things right, which I think too many agile adoptions focus in on.