#34: Trial and Error for Success

It’s the 1970s and consumer goods firm Unilever have a big problem in their Liverpool factory, costing them millions of pounds a year. They make washing powder here and a key part of the process involves syphoning a mixture of boiling chemicals under extreme pressure through a steam nozzle (essentially a fancy tube). 

The issue – these nozzles block easily, leading to poor quality product and factory shutdowns.

They employ the services of world-renowned engineers and mathematicians, who spend several months collecting data and designing a new prototype. The results are unsatisfactory and with sales dropping, management are getting worried. In desperation, they throw the problem at a group of biologists.

The biologists aren’t experts in fluid dynamics or applied mathematics, but they understand how nature solves problems. They take ten copies of the faulty nozzle and make a small change to each one. ‘Some nozzles were longer, some shorter, some had a bigger or smaller hole, maybe a few grooves on the inside’, explained Steve Jones who was on the team. 

After testing each one, they took the best performer, made 10 copies of that, and then repeated the process. They did this again and again. In fact, they did this 45 times, testing 450 different prototypes!

Whilst each ‘winner’ was only a few % better than the predecessor, 45 generations of marginal gains led to a final version that was far superior to the original. Through systematic trial and error, they had replicated biological evolution. They let the performance data lead them to something amazing and as you can see from this picture, something no engineer would ever conceive. Source

It's not just the 'Ben and Jerry's' and Dove soap manufacturer who uses this approach. Social media marketing and product design often follow this iterative process too – Using an A/B test (also known as monadic testing) one can test 2 adverts to see which performs best and evolve the strategy accordingly before further testing. Similarly, firms bring minimal viable products to market, test features for popularity and tweak on the go.

WISDOM 💎

“You’ll learn a lot more through trial and error than through constant success.”

Unknown

Tip 1 - A SMART PLAY ✅

We can apply trial and error to many areas of life and work. In early relationships or jobs, we should be figuring out what works best for us, what we value and importantly what we really don’t want. Looking at ourselves we can decide which parts serve us and which we might develop.

Tip 2 - AVOID 🚩

Trying to design the masterpiece from the start. Evolution can help build your success if you let it – keeping the bits that work and losing the rest, is a potent strategy for performance.

Tip 3 - ACTION 💪

What might benefit from an iterative process in your business or life? How might you systemise this (i.e. keep the good stuff and lose the rest), so you aren’t just going round in circles?

“Trial and error are the parents of progress.”

Gil Gonzales