Many people will be
surprised to learn that the most dangerous animal in the African savannah is
not the lion, or the crocodile, or the leopard. The animal that causes
more human fatalities than any other is the hippo. While the hippo might look
to some like a jolly roly-poly carefree character, that couldn’t be any further
from the truth.
Hippos are
ill-tempered, aggressive, territorial, and most important, not afraid of
humans. Many poor saps minding their own business canoeing down the river
met their end when an angry hippo decided to capsize their vessel and gnash the
occupants between their giant teeth. Check out this article on hippos and read about their
endearing “dung showering” practice. If you ever go on safari, avoid the
hippos!
At Intuit, we use
the acronym HIPPO to mean the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. Making HIPPO
decisions is also something to be avoided. When it comes to innovation,
data is what we value. We prefer to make decisions by experimentation, running
lean, scrappy tests that yield data that informs our decisions. We prefer
testing our hypotheses with real customers and learning from how actual
behavior deviates from what we expected. Making decisions by
experimentation are core tenets of Design for Delight and the Lean Startup.
When we hold Idea,
Solution, or Code jams, we advocate that organizers not have a panel of judges
made up of senior leaders because this propagates the HIPPO decision mindset
we’re trying to change. Instead, we want to develop an experiment culture. We suggest jam organizers
invite real customers to judge. One of our techniques is to give the
customers a finite amount of “Scott bucks” which they can choose to invest in
their favorite ideas.
If inviting
customers to the jam is not practical, a more palatable alternative to HIPPO
judging is popular voting by employees, tapping the wisdom of the crowd.
We’ve used SMS voting which makes the process fun and engaging. Also, teams
should be rewarded for the amount of real world data they’ve been able to collect
by testing their idea.
Another reason we
discourage HIPPO panels is that we’ve found the best presented ideas (vs. the best ideas) are the
ones that tend to win. Often the gist of the idea gets lost when a team is
given only a couple of minutes to make their case to the judges. This
might be fine if the goal was to entertain like some sort of American Idol for
ideas. Our goal is to drive growth!
You might then ask,
what is the role of senior leaders if they can’t be judges? Isn’t it
helpful to involve senior leaders who can be most effective in making sure the
best ideas become funded initiatives? We believe an important role for
leaders is to inspire. Senior leaders have an important role of defining the
business strategy and articulating the vision of what success looks
like. Senior leaders can be invited to speak at the beginning of
jams. They can also be recruited to coach teams over the course of the jam
and after the jam. The senior leaders’ engagement will encourage teams to
continue testing their hypotheses and applying what they learn.
Remember: Avoid the
hippos, whether on safari or making decisions!