Why our decision making processes are holding us back--and what we can do, instead
One of my favourite UU YouTube comedy videos is “Shit Seminarian say”, in which a seminarian moves through life doing things like standing in the toilet paper aisle, saying “just a moment, I’m trying to discern whether or not to go with ultra-soft”.
This way of thinking is built into UU institutions… We form a committee, we study the idea thoughtfully, and we build buy in. This is a great way to make decisions if you are an institution, with large amounts of resources you want to spend wisely. Solving problems that are fairly predictable, within a context of slow change.
In the world we are expanding into, it can be a disaster. For two reasons:
It often results in bad decisions, and
It decisions so slowly that even if the good decisions often become bad.
It doesn’t always create bad decisions. If you’re replacing the roof of the church or choosing the investment portfolio, absolutely use our traditional decision making methods.
If you’re creating a Digital Ministry or doing some other out-in-the-rapidly-changing-landscape project, there’s a better method. Which is the placing of small bets.
When I created the Hysterical Society, I didn’t just create the Hysterical Society. I created thirty six different groups in that time frame. Only one of which has lasted until this point. The rest are what we might consider failures—either nothing happened, or something happened that was good but has now concluded. All of them were low investment—including the Hysterical Society. In the beginning, I just checked in on it maybe once a week when the algorithm showed me something funny while I was waiting for my tea to steep. It was something like a year before I even turned on post approvals, and another year or so before I started putting any work into moderating.
I didn’t try to imagine which decision was the right one. I placed a bunch of small, low investment bets, and gathered information.
To be clear, I didn’t do this intentionally. It just kind of happened this way. It was years in before I developed an articulated strategy (or, read about it—the phrase “small bets” didn’t come from me). The contrast between that and traditional strategies is best illustrated by looking at an example of when I didn’t use a small bet strategy.
In 2018, I decided to start creating and selling products in a UUHS store. I hired a graphic designer to make a log and branding (this was a great decision). Then I had her help me design a bunch of pdfs (medium quality decision) and stickers that I ordered (bad decision). The problem is, you just don’t know what other people will want. I loved these stickers. My friends loved them. My friends bought them. Unfortunately, nobody else did, and I don’t quite have enough friends.
We also sold mugs and t-shirts—which we did using a print-on-demand service called printful. This meant no up front costs, but the creation of each mug was so expensive that we made very little money that way. But, by placing a small bet, we gathered two years of data on which mugs people buy. When I went to make an actual factual stock order, I did it knowing that 80% of our sales were for one specific mug design. I would never have been able to guess that in a million years.
So, my formula for decision making has become:
Is this a slow decision or a fast decision? If slow, use traditional methods learned in school and at church committee meetings.
If fast, pick several options, and make a few of the smallest, easiest bets you can, and see what happens (business calls this a “minimum viable product”.
Invest in the one that works.
How might you apply this in a church context? Let’s say you have a mailing list, and you’re wondering how to best increase your open rate. Instead of reading books about what people click on, you do what’s called “AB testing”. Half of the congregation gets one February newsletter with one subject line, and half of the congregation gets that same newsletter with a different subject line, and you see what people are opening. The key is that a) you are not doing something that requires much work, and b) you are relying on data collected immediately, rather than your own (or my) theories.
Wanna read more about this idea? Good search terms are “placing small bets”, “minimum viable product” and “AB testing”.
A couple of tool suggestions (neither of which are paid promotions)…. For graphic design, I used Arcana Creative, who are amazing in every way, and work with several UU organizations. For printing stickers, I used a company called sticker mule. Their stickers are absolutely incredible. The “Weeds are a Social Construct” sticker, which I put on my watering can, made it through four years outside in Canada, before I had to throw out the watering can. The sticker still looked brand new. If you want stickers, but only want a few, you can sign up to their mailing list (or check the website regularly) and wait for a sticker promotion of the type you want. For an incredibly low price and free shipping, you can order a 50 unit “sample order”, which is all I ever order, now.