Why Teams Lose Trust in Experimentation

Experiment WITH not ON... Over the years, I have encountered many process experiments. Sometimes I have been the one doing the experimenting, but most of the time I (and my team) have been the test subject. Someone (often more senior, but not always) has an idea about how to improve something. And that something involves my team. Being in the thick of that dynamic can be difficult. It can be hard to tell what is really happening. At times, it can feel like you are being experimented ON. In my coaching calls, I observe this dynamic with the benefit of some emotional distance. Someone is planning an experiment, or is in the midst of an experiment. Someone is grappling with a coworker's experiment. Or both. Most of the time, it isn't called an experiment. Rather, it's the new process or new way we're doing things. In these calls, I've noticed a common pattern. First, the Why is missing, unclear, or lacks focus. And second, the people involved are not invited as co-experimenters. There's a huge difference between: OK. So here is the new OKR process. OKRs are a best practice, and management thinks they'll be a good idea. and In yesterday's workshop, we decided to try [specific experiment] to address [some longer term opportunity, observation, or problem]. We described the positive signals that would signal progress. They include [positive signals]. We described some signals to watch out for. We agreed that if anyone observes [leading indicators of something harmful or ineffective], they should bring that up immediately. We agreed to try this experiment first over [other options] because [reasons for not picking those options]. Those were good options, and we may revisit them in the future. We may very well experience [challenges] in the short term. Let's make sure we support each other by [tactics to support each other]. In a quarter, we'll decide whether to pivot or proceed. If we proceed, we'll work on operationalizing this, but that is not a given. As we try this, consider opportunities for future improvements. The difference is stark. Yes, the second approach takes longer (at first, and maybe not, see below). Yes, it is more involved and messy. But let's face it: no one likes being the subject of random experiments. The first option is fragile. The second option is powerful and resilient.

After nearly 20 years in digital experimentation, I can honestly say the deeper you go, the less sense it makes – at least in the way it is practised today. It's the most misunderstood, misused, and misrepresented concept in the business world – to the point where almost no one is truly doing 'experimentation' at all. Most businesses think "experimentation" is the name of a category of software tools and, therefore, a line on a P&L. It misses the true power of critical thinking, strategic innovation, and deep customer understanding. Check out this manifesto I wrote some time ago to try and channel this discipline into something more useful. The key messages: 1. 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗳𝗹𝗮𝘄𝗲𝗱 "𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗳" 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: A/B testing is simply not as good as most people think it is. Even with perfect data, there are still many issues. It doesn't mean it's worthless; it just means you are thinking of it in the wrong way. It's just a form of research, not an autonomous decision, and certainly not proof of anything. YOU make the decisions, so get better at making decisions. 2. 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗮𝗻 "𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗶𝘁𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳" 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗿: Imagine if you asked a scientist what they did and they replied, "I do experimentation." Experimentation FOR WHAT? Experimentation is just a tool and technique in the service of something else, but in business, it has become THE THING. This means what it is being used for has become secondary and is even ignored entirely in many cases. 3. 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 "𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻" 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗲-𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Why do you have a team doing careful statistical experimentation on very basic UX changes, and yet all other enormous, expensive decisions are just made based on opinion and an 'annual strategy deck'? Why does that make sense? 4. 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 "𝗺𝘆𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀" 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: It is very easy to increase conversion rate or even revenue whilst, at the same time, systematically destroying your business through poor customer experience, poor competitive strategy, or many other things which simply cannot be made into 'metrics'. We need to transcend surface-level numbers to understand the complex systems at play, driving deeper, truly valuable business outcomes and customer experiences. https://lnkd.in/ey5q3V6W #experimentation #cro #productmanagement #growth #digitalexperience #experimentationledgrowth #elg #growthexperimentation

1 in 3 team members admit they’ve stayed silent after spotting a problem. Because speaking up felt riskier. I said that it is a shame when my HR friend mentioned it as feedback from the exit round. And in our pursuit of perfection, we build systems that penalise risk. We teach people to hide. To protect their image, instead of sharing their ideas. 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁 - They leave places where mistakes are punished harder than silence. Perfection isn’t a standard. It’s a chokehold. It cages creativity. Kills innovation. And creates cultures of high anxiety, not high performance. 🎯 Mistakes aren’t the issue. 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒂𝒗𝒐𝒊𝒅𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒊𝒔. Every time you: ❌ Don’t speak up ❌ Don’t experiment ❌ Don’t admit we missed the mark You trade trust for performance theatre. And theatre doesn’t innovate. ✅ Mistakes are attempts in motion ✅ Owning them builds credibility ✅ Learning in public creates trust ✅ And great teams? They screw up. And talk about it. 🔄 So the real KPI: 💡 How fast can you recover, learn, and try again? 📣 Leaders—this starts with you: → Normalise “I got it wrong.” → Reward honesty over image. → Build cultures where mistakes are data, not drama. Because failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s the compost it grows in. The safest environments are the ones where it’s safe to mess up. What do you think? -------------- I’m Jayant — sharing actionable insights on mental health, growth, and well-being every Mon/Wed/Fri at 5 PM IST. Follow along and tap the 🔔 to stay updated.

Two leaders. Same market chaos. Completely different outcomes. Both faced identical challenges in 2025: geopolitical uncertainty, restructuring pressure, shrinking opportunities. One continued to be the market leader. The other lost their market leader position and best people. The difference? How they responded to stress. Leader A panicked. Targets missed? Blame someone. Team struggling? Issue warning letters. One team member told me: "I stopped suggesting new ideas because I watched colleagues get written up for 'failed initiatives.' We all just kept our heads down." The result: A revolving door. Talent fled to competitors. The remaining team spent more energy protecting themselves than serving customers. Leader B took a breath. Targets missed? "What did we learn?" Team struggling? "How can I support you better?" When their biggest client campaign flopped, they stood up in the team meeting and said: "This was my call. Here's what I got wrong." The result: Zero resignations. Market leadership while competitors flailed. Here's what I've learned working with both teams: ⚠️ ⚠️ Fear-based leaders think they're driving performance. Actually, they're killing innovation. When people are afraid to fail, they stop trying anything new. 💟 💟 Trust-based leaders understand that psychological safety isn't soft. It's strategic. Teams that feel safe to experiment, fail, and learn will outperform those paralyzed by perfectionism. In COMB, we help teams identify what's blocking them: ❎ the old stories about failure, the cultural beliefs about "keeping your head down" ❎ the generational patterns of command and control ❎ destructive conflict which keeps one another in silo, burn out and causing lose-lose-lose We replace these with a collaboration code built on care, wellbeing, and genuine trust. The result? People stop hiding their mistakes and start learning from them. Innovation happens. Performance follows. Not easy as we are working from deep within those beliefs but learnable, followable and highly applicable. This matters more in 2025 than ever. We can't afford to lose talent. We can't afford teams afraid to adapt. The market rewards courage, not compliance. Which leader are you being right now? #trustbasedleadership #psychologicalsafety #COMB #leadership #teamperformance #cassandracoach

"The metric moved. The business didn’t." A story of when good experimentation metrics go bad 👇 I was working with a subscription business where the north star was “active users,” defined as using the core product. Seemed fine... until the metric started moving TOO much. Eventually, it clicked. Teams had started optimising the metric instead of the mission. The revealing moment? The onboarding team announced a massive win: a huge spike in actives. But the reality was messier 👇 To hit the metric, they short-circuited the onboarding flow, skipping guidance and throwing new users straight into the product. It worked numerically. Everyone was “active.” But follow-up analysis showed it actually hurt engagement and retention too. 🥳 The spike was real. 😬 The signal was false. That moment prompted a shift: 📅 New primary metric based on sustained engagement 🔢 Guardrails to catch these mismatches early 💼 An understanding that good metrics help guide good decisions, not just tell a story This topic of signal quality is one I talk about a lot because it's easy to miss. If your metrics are easy to game, they’re easy to mislead. What’s the most misleading experiment outcome you’ve seen? I’d love to hear it 👇 - - - P.S. I unpack ideas like this in The Experimenter’s Advantage, my newsletter on building high-impact experimentation programs.

We broke something during internal testing. It was a tiny Slack parsing bug in one of our early Deemerge prototypes. But that “tiny” bug made a sales manager at Legend miss a client follow-up. The order was lost. That moment snapped me out of the “move fast and break things” mindset. In B2B, breaking things doesn’t just slow you down, it breaks trust. And trust is the only thing that matters when teams rely on your product to do their jobs. That’s why we’ve adopted a different mantra at Deemerge: Move Fast and Build Trust. We still move fast. We experiment daily. But every change we ship is designed to earn trust — not burn it. Because in B2B, a small bug isn’t just a bug. It’s a missed shipment. A lost client. A broken promise. Are you still “breaking things”? Or building trust? #B2BSaaS #StartupLessons #BuildInPublic #FounderJourney #TrustMatters

If your team’s not speaking up… you’ve already lost. Not ideas. Not productivity. Trust. And once trust is gone? Innovation stalls. Collaboration dies. People check out—or walk out. The fix? Not another tool. Not another policy. But something far more powerful: Psychological safety. It’s not a “nice to have.” It’s the hidden engine behind every high-performing team. Here’s how you build it—one conversation, one decision, one moment at a time 👇🏼 1. Lead with curiosity, not judgment. ↳ “Help me understand…” beats “Why’d you do that?” 2. Admit your own mistakes. ↳ Model the safety you want others to feel. 3. Give credit generously. ↳ Shine the light on others—often and publicly. 4. Respond, don’t react. ↳ Let people tell the truth without fear of fallout. 5. Invite pushback. ↳ Ask: “What am I missing?” 6. Remove silent punishments. ↳ Reward honesty, not just agreement. 7. Normalize “I don’t know.” ↳ That’s how real learning starts. 8. Make feedback feel safe. ↳ Correct with care. Aim for growth, not shame. 9. Start meetings with check-ins. ↳ Connection before conversation. 10. Celebrate courage, not just results. ↳ Applaud the voice, not just the victory. Because when people feel safe, they don’t hold back. They contribute. They challenge. They soar. If you want your team to rise—safety comes first. Which one of these 10 will you lead with this week? ♻️ Share this with your network if it resonates. ☝️ And follow Stuart Andrews for more insights like this.

💥 Innovation Challenges sound great on paper. But behind the pitch decks and PR, something’s breaking down. Startups are opting out. Not because they lack innovation— But because they no longer trust the process. Here’s what I’ve been hearing from hundreds of founders globally: 🚫 Ghosted after submitting brilliant solutions 🚫 Promises of partnership with no follow-up 🚫 $600 “prizes” for IP that took months to develop 🚫 Internal champions with zero authority 🚫 PoC… and then, nothing. And yes—sometimes, the ideas just get copied. Quietly. This week’s edition of Open Innovator’s Digest unpacks: ✅ What startups are really experiencing ✅ Why this keeps happening inside corporate orgs ✅ A concrete blueprint to earn back startup trust ✅ What “doing it right” actually looks like Because 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫. And startups aren’t signing up for the show anymore. 💬 Have you experienced this yourself—as a startup or corporate? What do you think needs to change? ♻️ Repost if you're building innovation that respects founders. 📧 DM me if your team is ready to rebuild trust—startup-first. #OpenInnovation #StartupVoices #CorporateInnovation