Here’s how to use Five Whys analysis to build an adaptive organization: consistently make a proportional investment at each of the five levels of the… - Eric Ries

A few years ago, a team that sells products to large media companies invited me to help them as a consultant because they were concerned that their engineers were not working hard enough. However, the fault was not in the engineers; it was in the process the whole company was using to make decisions. They had customers but did not know them very well. They were deluged with feature requests from customers, the internal sales team, and the business leadership. Every new insight became an emergency that had to be addressed immediately. As a result, long-term projects were hampered by constant interruptions. Even worse, the team had no clear sense of whether any of the changes they were making mattered to customers. Despite the constant tuning and tweaking, the business results were consistently mediocre.

Internal or external, in my experience startup teams require three structural attributes: scarce but secure resources, independent authority to develop their business, and a personal stake in the outcome.

All innovation begins with vision. It’s what happens next that is critical.