Low standard deviation is to be desired in medical procedures, launching rockets, and managing pension funds. But in most cases you’re looking for deviations from the norm in order to create breakthrough results.

If you want to see what your team or department results might look like next year, don’t look at their resumes or this year’s figures. Instead look at their test results in reverse order, i.e. from worst to best. You may find the following situations:

1. SNAFU. They won’t give you the test results, particularly the negative ones, without pulling teeth. They’re hiding things from you because they’re scared of how they might look. Unfortunately this is pretty normal for big companies.
   
2. TARFU. The tests are all +/- 5% lift and only apply for ~10% of the universe. This shows a lack of creativity and/or a system that’s beaten the variance out of team, rounding off all the edges.
   
3. FUBAR. There are no tests. This represents maximum MBA-driven culture. “No surprises.*”

Before you start blaming the team, look at yourself and your organization. Do you value managers and individual contributors who:

1. Can adhere to whatever asinine RTO procedures the suit monkeys have mandated, with no issues on the daily badge swipe report?
   
2. Create beautiful PowerPoint presentations explaining how the corporation is using “best practices” to [Check one: underperform on Gross Margin, Enterprise Value, Market Cap, Market Share, number of customers acquired].
   
3. Hit whatever the budgeted number is via cutting test budgets, outsourcing development to low cost region X, or laying off the most troublesome (variance-creating) employees?
   
4. Spend time listening to the Department of Subscription and Revenue Prevention, Department of No, Department of Not Invented Here, Department of We Can Build it Ourselves, Department of Scary Legal Fantasies, or Human Resources?

When you build a business of compliant, rules-followers, you don’t have a lot of noise in your system. You can grow topline at the rate of inflation and keep everything on an even keel.

But if you want to grow, you have to create variance. Response rate lifts of 20, 30, 40%. AOV increases of 10, 20%, LTV boosts of 50, 60%. And that means some of the stuff you try is going to do the exact opposite.

People comfortable with lots of variance are willing to try lots of things, even if they fail quite a bit. They’ll celebrate the horrible test, share the results with others, and then move on to the next thing. Every once in a while, that home run happens and you’ll be moving in a new direction or toward a new audience.

Or you can have nice PowerPoints, no variance or growth, and spend a lot of time talking to the Department of No. Eventually, on the bread line.

*When you hear “I never want to be surprised” from your manager, you are in a low variance culture. Act accordingly.

Also available on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/danger-low-variance-mark-pilipczuk-p0zze/