The Lean Startup is about avoiding waste. It is about making sure what you do provides value or a benefit. It is about doing the right things that provide value to customers.
But how do you know what customers want or need?
Well you experiment, get measured feedback and decide to change or continue your direction?
“Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer. Anything else is waste”
Eric Ries
Let’s look at the big idea in the book. The big idea is about Build, Measure, and Learn Framework
Essentially, You must define and know what you want to do. The idea here is to experiment with products and services to know what the customer wants.
Create and launch your product or idea before it is “finished”. Launch the product to actual paying customers.
It is now time to learn from the feedback you receive from paying customers.
From the measured feedback, you decide on what to do. Do you continue or change direction?
The idea is you do not wait and build a final product and realize customers are not interested.
In other words, you build something quickly and get it in front of paying customers. Measure their responses. Learn and change to fit what they want.
What makes the framework unique is that the learning is validated. It involves actual measured feedback from customers. Not focus groups or personal preferences. This helps you align your strategy with customers’ real needs and wants. When the data comes in you must decide to change or continue.
How I used Lean Thinking to Start a Blog
As it turns out, starting a blog is something you do, without knowing how to do everything. So in my case, I started my blog and published my website. Unknown to me, the WordPress theme I used was not optimized. I later discovered that I have an 80% bounce rate on my website. This was critical feedback. I then decided to change direction. It meant I had to redo the whole website again and make the pages load faster.
By starting and experimenting I was able to get feedback and build a more suitable website to host my articles.
My Take
To wrap up, you act on your idea and launch the moment you have a Minimum Viable Product. It is the feedback from the actual customer that helps you to decide. You decide on whether to go ahead or change direction.
You do not go down a rabbit hole but guide yourself with customer feedback.
Practical Insights
Creating and building a product takes a lot of work and time. Thus, you must test your product in the paying market before it is “finished”.
Basically, just start and take measured feedback. From there, you either change or continue with your direction.
Everything takes practice.
Buy the Book:
Book Link #ad: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
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