I never set out to reach 42,700 people in two days. I was simply fed up with the news feed and shared my frustration on LinkedIn last Saturday.
The post went viral.
I hope my experience gives you a new perspective—it has for me. Here’s what unfolded.
Last weekend, I posted my reaction to the egregious “tell me 5 things you accomplished last week” message from Musk. My emotions? A mix of disgust, sadness, and embarrassment. The multi-week barrage of executive orders and strongman tactics also gave me vertigo as we face another round of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity).
I did not want to get stuck in that mode. It affects my health, creativity, and energy levels. I knew that I desperately needed a break from the news cycle.
Thankfully, I had planned five days in Atlanta with our AI growth group, clients and friends. That trip shifted and restored me.
I spent time with my best friend. We both unplugged from the news and enjoyed several forest hikes.
As we walked the Gold Branch Trail, we spotted graceful cranes on Vickery Creek. We celebrated hints of spring marked by the vireo’s elusive forest trill.
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Over five days, my aggravation transformed into inspiration. Apathy shifted to alchemy.
Why does this matter? Because it’s time to fully welcome and embrace experimentation in every aspect of our lives. Experimentation is the gateway to versatility and adaptability.
Versatile market leaders use experimentation to help them to set aside stale strategies, oversized teams, bureaucratic bottlenecks, and year-long project cycles.
I’m not suggesting this is easy. The shift in mindset and growth model requires a new way of living and leading. We need new alliances to make it happen—and to resist the temptation to isolate. For some, experimentation will feel foreign and uncomfortable.
And it’s why we selected The Art of Experimentation theme for our 10th in-person cohort. We’re headed to Boston May 8-9 with an incredible faculty lineup.
I’m sharing a sneak peek into the six-part framework we will use at CLIC ’25. This model will guide our C-Suite leaders and board executives who are embracing experimentation. The Experimentation Ladder™ has six steps:
1. Identify Customer Challenges—quickly.
You can engage with customers through surveys, interviews, and feedback channels to uncover specific problems or unmet needs. In today’s short attention span universe, keep your outreach short and sweet.
Here’s advice from Sprig CEO Ryan Glasgow: Skip long email surveys.
Sprig’s research shows that email survey response rates have plummeted.
Instead, use in-product surveys. Embed survey triggers at key moments, such as during onboarding or upgrading discussions.
2. Develop Hypotheses.
Formulate clear, testable statements predicting how potential solutions might address identified customer challenges. Allocate innovation funds quickly—not by hosting multiple, laborious consensus building meetings. Also, create a simple experiment request process for your team members. Consider creating an AI agent to save application processing time.
One of my high performing clients excels here. The CMO co-leads a five-person AI council. They ask AI-curious team members to complete a simple “use case” application to request funding to test their hypotheses.
Within 1-2 days, the AI council reviews it, then approves or requests additional information. That company now runs thousands of short-term concurrent experiments and just celebrated another banner year of profitable growth.
3. Conduct Digital AND IRL Experiments.
Want to run robust experiments? Include these four practices:
– Conduct small-scale tests: Implement pilot programs or A/B tests to evaluate different approaches. Where appropriate, use AI agents to scale quickly.
– Seek rapid feedback: Collect data promptly to assess outcomes and inform decisions. Your tests should run under 60 days wherever possible.
– Observe your potential “testers” (customers) in real life. Airtable CEO Andrew Ofstad shares his aha moment, which surfaced during a customer tour in New York: “After having mostly interacted with customers over the support channel or Zoom—I visited WeWork. I looked around and everybody’s computer monitor had Airtable open…I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a thing. People use it.’ (The experiment) became so much more real at that point.” Find the full interview here.
– Cultivate a supportive mindset and work environment: Encourage experimentation without penalizing failures, fostering a culture of learning. Celebrate low-cost failures AND early learnings. Teach your teams about the 3 different types of failure. At CLIC ’25, we will hear from the OG of healthy teamwork, Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson. Our cohort receives copies of her award-winning book, Right Kind of Wrong.
4. Analyze Results.
Measure outcomes against predefined success criteria to determine effectiveness. I am a big fan of including leading indicators (observable market, team and customer behaviors) versus solely relying on trailing indicators (survey results, lead flow, revenues, etc.)
Looking for early indicators of success, or a solid product market fit? Check out Amy Radin’s Sound Board Venture Fund summary here. For more company stories, check out the First Round Review examples here.
5. Iterate Based on Learnings. Invite criticism, not crickets.
Share insights across teams—even when they are painful. They will help you refine your hypotheses and experiments. This helps you to continually improve your solutions, programs, and events.
Gong co-founder Eilon Reshef reminds us that criticism is better than crickets. In the First Round article, he says “getting so many complaints about our system not recording all calls, which it wasn’t even designed to do, should have given us better indication that it was becoming a critical tool versus just a nice-to-have.”
6. Scale Successful Initiatives by Aligning Teams.
Scaling happens when teams reach across silos. For example, one Boston-based Chief Innovation Officer (and CLIC ’25 cohort member) consistently reinforces cross-functional alignment:
“We have a pre-read each month for our AI cross functional groups. We walk people through new functions, and make time to discuss upcoming capabilities (AGI, agents, etc.) that will impact our business.
We also schedule regular AI learning sessions where each department can demo one or two ChatGPT use cases in front of the entire company. “
I admire how this leader creates rituals to keep experimentation top of mind across teams!
Scaling also happens when you enable and launch large volumes of concurrent experiments. In HBR’s January 2025 issue, five authors from multiple industries and universities published “Want Your Company to Get Better at Experimentation?” Here’s how they recommend running experiments:
“Scaling up experimentation entails moving away from a data scientist-centric approach to one that empowers everyone on product, marketing, engineering and operations teams…but that presents a challenge.”
The authors also discourage 12–18-month long testing cycles and pursuing large scale experiments. They describe Airbnb’s neighborhood travel guide experiment in 2012, and how the long term test resulted in a decline in bookings. A smaller Airbnb initiative focused on making it easy for guests to open another browser tab. This experiment led to a 3%-4% booking increase.
Thinking small generated big gains.
Where are you feeling apathy and anger right now? How might you transform them to alchemy? Consider these six ladder steps before you get lost in a foggy forest.
The vireos are waiting.
Lisa
This post was completely written by me — a human. I did not use generative AI.
© 2025, Lisa Nirell. All rights reserved. lisanirell.com.