“Knowledge is nothing without action. Nothing changes until you do something. What you do will directly determine what you learn.” – James A. Belasco
In 2008, James Watt and Martin Dickie applied to go on the UK Dragons’ Den television show. The premise of the show is entrepreneurs pitch their amazing new product or business idea to a group of wealthy investors – the Dragons. James and Martin came along to pitch for investment in their craft brewing business, BrewDog. The two friends were invited to a screen test, but the show’s producers decided the company wasn’t worthy of investment, and they never got to pitch directly to the Dragons.
James later wrote on LinkedIn, “we were totally crushed, we were prepared to offer the dragons 20 per cent for £100,000.”
As of time of writing this book, Brand Finance has valued the BrewDog brand at $1.9 billion, and has even overtaken Carlsberg in global beer brand value. As beer connoisseurs ourselves, we often stop by BrewDog bar on our travels to sample a pint of Punk IPA! In fact, the company now has over 100 bars globally and in 2021, opened two hotels in Manchester and Edinburgh.
It has since been described as the biggest miss in Dragons’ Den history! How could such a seemingly sure-fire opportunity be missed? James and Martin brought a killer value proposition, with an already cult-following of early adopter customers, along with the data they needed. But they fell at the final hurdle – influencing investors with the authority and funding to help take their product forward and take action. They made it two thirds of the way around the Three-Stream loop.
This chapter will discuss how we can take our metrics and learnings, to ultimately influence action and achieve the type of product impact we seek to drive as Product people. We will explore influencing strategies, such as storytelling, change management, and making outcomes visible to our stakeholders.
Anti-Pattern: Surprise, surprise!
Antipattern: The broken loop to product strategy
Summary
In this chapter, we closed the Three-Stream Loop, taking our earlier learnings on Measuring and Learning and moving towards Taking Action.
We explored:
- Why data alone is not enough to encourage action, as evidenced by the BrewDog Dragons’ Den story.
- A framework to tell data-informed stories.
- A change management model to help you introduce product changes to your customers with no nasty surprises.
- The power of visualising outcomes.
- Integrating learning back into Product Strategy Reviews.
Next Reading: Last Chapters
The Third Stream Book 