(2018-12-10) Cutler Opportunity Vs Intervention

John Cutler: Opportunity vs. Intervention. Product development teams often confuse:...

• The existence of an opportunity
• The size of that opportunity
• The nature (including the “exploitability”) of that opportunity
• How you intend to intervene to exploit the opportunity
• The “outcome” or value created by intervening to exploit the opportunity

Why do these distinctions matter? Many teams only perceive value as it relates to the likelihood that a particular intervention will work.

What’s perceived to be possible overshadows what is actually worthwhile (the opportunity).

I asked a senior leader what they would tackle if they were more confident about the team’s ability to “execute”.

He described a large opportunity that had resisted prior efforts. But attacking it was off the table because confidence was low. So I asked how many experiments they had run (3, largish batches with a long feedback loop). Back of napkin, if they had run smaller experiments — given their runway — they could have taken 10–20 “shots” at moving the needle. Meanwhile, the team was tackling “quick wins” that were certain to succeed, but whose opportunities were less lucrative.