If you have a true optimization mindset, you can apply it to all areas of your life. So not just online, by running CRO experiments. You can also focus on the culture within your organization. How can you create a culture of experimentation there?

As with your A/B testing, there is no one-size-fits-all. You can test best practices on your website, but you'll find that not all of them work. The same goes for your business. Occasionally you'll see headlines like ‘8 steps for culture change’ or ‘to engage the board., talk money’. But these tips may not work for your organization.

There are things that almost always work to initiate culture change. For example, making experimentation more accessible, training people and giving people enough autonomy. But to really engage your colleagues and change the way they think and work, you have to experiment with your approach.

This article provides tips for incorporating this type of experimentation into your weekly process, followed by three case studies for inspiration.

Plan your experiments and make them part of your stand-ups

To be successful with experimentation within your organization, as in CRO, you need a structured approach.

Idea phase

Before you can conduct experiments, you need ideas. To get those ideas, you can consult several sources.

Get inspiration from others

Talk to other specialists in the market and exchange ideas. Read blogs, attend conferences and learn from speakers on stage and people in the audience.

Brainstorming ideas

You'll get lots of ideas by brainstorming with your team and other optimization experts. As a guide, you can use my Culture Change Canvas: How to motivate your organization to adopt CRO.

Books and scientific articles

There are many books and scholarly articles on change management. My favorite books on the subject are:

• Switch - Chip & Dan Heath
• Break the Cycle! - Arend Ardon
• Experimentation Works - Stefan Thomke
• Nudge - Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein
• Atomic habits - James Clear
• The science of organizational change - Paul Gibbons
• Drive - Daniel Pink

Sit down with a manager and make a plan

If you have a board member or manager who is enthusiastic about experimentation, get her/him on board as soon as possible. Together, create a plan to get experimentation higher on the corporate agenda.

Plan your experiments

Just like your online experiments, plan your organizational experiments in your documentation tool (such as Airtable or Notion). Give each experiment a start and end date and hold someone accountable.

Integrate experiments into your weekly process

You will probably have a stand-up (and possibly a stand-down) every week to discuss ongoing and upcoming online experiments. Use the last ten minutes to discuss the experiments you planned in the previous step.

As with your online tests, review who is doing what, how things are going and reflect on unfinished tasks. This keeps organizational experiments top of mind and makes people responsible for performing and completing their tasks.

Reflect

Reflect with the team after each organizational experiment. Was it successful? Should we do it more often? Can we improve the experiment or focus our attention elsewhere?

Again, just as you do for your online experiments.

Three case studies

Case 1: Engage management creatively 

As the first CRO specialist in one of my previous jobs, I faced the challenge of engaging colleagues and board members in this way of working.

I tried several things, such as a-which-test-won-competition, update emails, presentations and message sharing through the intranet. But the best solution was a physical, strategically set up data dashboard.

The image below shows the floor plan of the office. The green arrow points to a central area where everyone visits several times a day. There I placed a large TV screen with a live Google Analytics dashboard with current data on page views, conversions, marketing performance and general data.

This had several advantages:

• First, everyone saw the data several times a day. And because this was live data, refreshed every time, it attracted extra attention.
• Second, internal competition ensued as the dashboard displayed the page views for the different product teams.
• The biggest benefit, however, was that visitors also saw the data and therefore got the sense that the company was adopting a data-driven way of working. This was frequently mentioned at the beginning of a meeting.

Because the management saw visitors in the office daily, they received many compliments on the data-driven nature of their organization!

As a result, management became much more interested and involved.

Case 2: Convince 50% of your organization to provide test ideas

At Videoland, one of the goals of the CRO team was to receive more testing ideas from colleagues outside the team.

I have enjoyed being involved with Videoland since the beginning of 2021. Last year we tried several things to increase internal engagement. 

We put links to a form in update emails and mentioned it during sprint reviews, presentations and in meetings. But that didn't seem to work. We received one or two ideas....

What did work tremendously well was an idea contest.

With fun prizes (such as team activities and workshops), at the individual and department level, we motivated colleagues to submit their test ideas via an Airtable form.

We informed colleagues through various channels (email, Slack and in team meetings) about the current standings and the approaching deadline during the competition. All of this in order to keep as many buzz and create engagement.

This resulted in great internal involvement and created discussions about different ideas and fierce competition between departments. In the end, we received 133 ideas from nearly 50% of the organization. But it didn't stop there.

Because we knew who submitted which idea, we were able to keep people informed (via automated email triggers in Airtable). When an idea resulted in a winning experiment, we brought a cake to that department to celebrate.

This keeps colleagues engaged and creates an ever-improving culture of experimentation.

You can read the complete case of Videoland here. 

Case 3: Let people share their successes and failures

The third case comes from my colleague Desiree van der Horst.

At her previous job, her goal was to create a culture of failure and experimentation.

She started with magnetic boards on the wall where marketers could post their failures and successes. But unfortunately, that didn't work. Possibly because a walk to the failure sign felt like a walk of shame.

To come up with a solution, she did user research. She asked all marketers what held them back. The main reasons for not sharing fuck-ups: fear and not wanting to stand out. And for successes: uncertainty whether the achievement is interesting enough for others.

When she asked what would be a good way to share successes and failures, she was repeatedly told, “It should be online, light and airy, and it shouldn't take too much effort.”

Based on this research, Desiree had set up a new Slack channel and called it “Zeiken & Bereiken.” And she set some ground rules:

• The main purpose of this channel is to learn from each other's mistakes;
• This channel is for sharing successes as well as failures;
• Respect each other,
• The channel is for marketers only. So no management, sales or other departments.

With the magnet boards, 9 failures were shared in three months. With the Slack channel, 53 failures and 43 successes were shared in a short time!

You can read Desiree's case here: Bitching & Achieving.

Use your mindset and knowledge to create a culture of experimentation

Within our work, our job is not just to run A/B tests. A large part of our work should be focused on change management. So not only online but also offline.

As a CRO specialist, you already have the right mindset, knowledge and skills to experiment and optimize. Now you just need to apply this within your organization.

Make organizational experimentation a regular part of your (weekly) CRO process, get ideas and start experimenting.

Are you already experimenting within your organization? I am very curious about your successes and failures.