Be a hypothesis driven leader

Leaders, but Sales Leaders in particular, need to consistently test, iterate, and refine the way their team goes to market. The best way to do this is to be a hypothesis driven leader.

If humor is a leadership superpower then curiosity is a close second. The best leaders I’ve ever worked for can be described as consummate tinkerers more than consummate professionals. They are never satisfied with the status quo, always pursuing an optimization here or a new way of doing business there.

Back to the Future is one of my all time favorite movies (great Scott!) and whenever I see a leader hard at work tinkering away on tactics to make their team better it’s impossible for me not to think of Doc Brown.

But what does it mean to be a hypothesis driven leader? For me it’s someone who looks at their team as an entity existing within an infinite game which is constantly changing and evolving. The best part of sales / business is the dynamic environment where leaders can take their understanding of history paired with their own experience and apply it in novel ways in order to improve.

In my experience hypothesis driven leaders often have the following characteristics:

1. They are students of history

2. They value follow through and execution, not just ideas

3. They are never satisfied

Their study of history allows them to connect lessons from the past to situations they find themselves in the present.

They aren’t satisfied with talking smart about big ideas in an academic environment, they value measurable results.

They. Just. Keep. Tinkering 🔧

Why be a hypothesis driven leader?

But why should you be a hypothesis driven leader? It seems kind of hard doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be easier to just wait to be told what to do by your boss? BORING.

If you chose the privilege of leadership it comes with the obligation to ensure your team is positioned to be successful. You should be a hypothesis driven leader because you live in a dynamic world and you care about consistently stepping up your game while putting your team in a better position to win.

90 days ago it was unlikely you knew what Generative AI meant (I didn’t). Now people are writing birthday cards with ChatGPT.

Put simply, if you aren’t a hypothesis driven leader your team will get left behind.

Leadership and the scientific method

In practice, the best way to be a hypothesis driven leader is to throw it back to your 9th grad science class and get a quick refresher on the scientific method (excellent video from Khan Academy on the topic). It provides the perfect framework for any leader to run a hypothesis driven team.

6 steps of the scientific method

1. Make an observation

2. Ask a question

3. Form a hypothesis or testable explanation

4. Make a prediction based on the hypothesis

5. Test the prediction

6. Iterate: use what you’ve learned to implement or test something new

An example from business - you observe the Customer Success Manager on your team with the highest contract renewal rate has more contacts per account within your CRM than other members of your team.

You ask yourself if higher contacts per account increases the likelihood that customers will renew when their contracts expire.

You sit down with your top CSM and ask why they think they have more contacts per account than other team members. They mention to you that they amended your team’s standard pre-call planning template to include prospecting 3 different points of contact to ask for introductions to whenever they have their monthly business review calls.

You now have a hypothesis that increasing the number of contacts per account improves renewal rate.

To test your theory you implement a new pre-call planning process for 50% of your team which mandates that they prospect, and ask for, introductions to 3 additional stakeholders on their monthly business reviews as your top performing CSM does.

Let the appropriate length of time, relative to your sales cycle, elapse and compare the results between the 2 halves of your team. Iterate on the experiment or implement a new process based on what you find.

While an actual scientist or statistician would poke a myriad of holes in the way we constructed our experiment that is okay. For many leaders there is a real constraint on the sample size they’ll have available to run a test but the key here is to look for results which are directionally accurate.

Essentially, if your intuition tells you you’re on the right track and you validate with a small experiment of your own make the change. Chances are the environment in which you operate will soon evolve and you’ll be forced back to the drawing board again.

Hypothesize, test, iterate, launch, do it all over again.

A right way, a wrong way

The key to being a hypothesis driven sales leader is to avoid these two traps:

1. Ideas with no follow through

2. Whack a mole

Ideas with no follow through

Ideas without follow through are for academics on college campuses. In the real world where performance is measured by $ in the bank execution matters.

There is a famous aphorism in the military that, “amateurs talk strategy while professionals talk logistics” which works well here. No one cares about your brilliant ideas (least of all your team) if they can’t be paired with results. Be sure you have an implementation plan that you can execute. The simpler the better.

Whack a mole

The second trap leaders fall into is they get, “hypothesis happy” running more than one experiment at once and / or pivoting too quickly. If you’re running an experiment designed to impact a lagging measure (e.g. # of deals closed won) and your average sales cycle is 90 days you can’t pivot until at least 90 days have passed.

This is a good reason why it’s often best to run experiments which impact leading indicators.

Outside of pivoting too quickly leaders often want to run an experiment every time they’re hit with a new idea. This is a mistake as your team will likely mutiny and you’ll never be able to understand which experiment made the positive impact.

No monopolies on good ideas

Often the best ideas come from those closest to the ground. Encourage your team to be hypothesis driven individuals in their own right and ask them for ideas they have for hypotheses you can test across your team.

If one of their ideas catches on, try scaling it up to your broader team and give them the chance to lead the experiment at scale. Your team will get better and you’ve given one of your team members a chance to step up as a leader.

Happy tinkering 🔬