Back in the day, I was on a team that was allergic to change. Every small process improvement or tweak was deeply resented by team members, and it was hard to make progress. Tracking our tasks? Standups? Scrum? Writing status updates asynchronously? Whatever it was, the team was reluctant to try it out.
The best manager I’ve ever had, tricked us with the experiment framework.
Let’s try standups, but only for a definite period of time, and at the end we can all vote it out. -Manager
The Experiment Framework
The experiment framework is a way for people to try out processes for a small period of time. For any given experiment, we’d wriet a hypothesis or goal, explain the “rules” of the experiment, and at the end of a definite period of time we would vote to keep, stop, or tweak.
The key part of this approach is the “definite period of time” - this allowed us to have psychological safety when trying out new things, knowing that in the end, we had the control to vote it out or keep it in depending on the outcomes. The manager also shows that they understand they can be wrong, and open to people hating it and not mandating it.
Example
Here’s how we applied the experiment framework to introduce async updates in a Slack channel:
Hypothesis: Async status updates will improve team visibility and reduce meeting overhead while accommodating different time zones.
Rules:
- Daily updates posted in #team-standup channel by 10 AM local time
- Each person shares: what they completed yesterday, what they’re working on today, and any blockers
- Use thread replies for discussions to keep the channel organized
- React with ✅ to show you’ve read others’ updates
Duration: 3 weeks
Outcome: After 3 weeks, we voted to tweak the async updates and added a weekly 15-minute sync call for complex discussions.
The framework worked because the team knew it wasn’t permanent, and they had control over the final decision. What started as resistance became buy-in once people experienced the benefits firsthand.
Anything can be endured temporarily in the name of improvement, which makes people more willing to experiment with new approaches.
Next time you need to introduce change, don’t mandate it - experiment with it.