Why Every Fast-Growing Organization Needs a Reverse Piloting Program (ASAP)

Here’s a feeling we’re all-too familiar with: overwhelm.

If you’re in a fast-growing organization, you and your team are constantly testing new ideas and juggling multiple initiatives. You try to reorganize and reprioritize but the hypothetical plate always feels full.

But here’s a question: when was the last time you cut things out? When was the last time you sat down and discussed what you should stop doing?

That’s where reverse piloting comes in. I want to show you why having a reverse piloting program in your organization can be one of the most effective methods for streamlining your workflow.

What is reverse piloting?

We’re all used to piloting new stuff.

In fast growing organizations, new initiatives regularly get piloted with the hypothesis that these initiatives will drive growth or some specific results.

Reverse piloting is the opposite. When you reverse pilot an initiative, you stop doing it for a period of time to test the hypothesis that it will reduce complexity and improve efficiency without having a significant impact on results.

In the book ‘Essentialism’ (in my top 50 books for marketers to read), author Greg Mckeown describes reverse piloting in this way –

“In a reverse pilot you test whether removing an initiative or activity will have any negative consequences.” – Greg Mckeown

Now let’s talk about what initiatives you should be reverse piloting.

What to reverse pilot

In his great article titled Great Managers Prune as Well as Plant, LinkedIn COO Daniel Shapero talks about ‘marginal initiatives’ –

“Consider all of the products, processes, analyses, and tools that your company uses which are somewhat positive but just don’t make a huge impact, and probably create more noise than they’re worth. During the life of a company, these “marginal initiatives” amass, tend to slowly grow over time, and are incredibly hard to shake off … and yet, they create complexity and keep the organization from focusing on the levers that truly make a difference.” – Daniel Shapero

I love the term ‘marginal initiatives’ and it’s really important for you to be aware of how these manifest in your team and organization.

As Daniel explains, over the life of a fast-growing organization, countless new initiatives are put in place – new growth ideas, processes, trackers, etc.

A few of these are big winners that drive fantastic results and add tremendous value to the organization – these you put more resources behind. Many are flops from the very start – these get cut early.

But the large majority of initiatives feel like winners but realistically only deliver slight improvements. These are the marginal initiatives that can be the silent killers that build up over time, creating complexity and capacity issues.

These are the ones that need reverse piloting.

When to reverse pilot

Reverse piloting is important, but rarely urgent.

More often than not, it doesn’t even come up until individuals on the team are at a breaking point with way too many things on their plate. Not ideal.

So when should you reverse pilot?

The most effective way to run a reverse pilot program with your team is on a recurring basis – ideally quarterly or semi-annually. If you’ve got a large team with a high volume of initiatives, even monthly could make sense.

I personally like to run through a quarterly reverse piloting exercise because we tend to initiate new pilots at the start of every quarter.

How to reverse pilot effectively

Once you choose to prioritize reverse piloting, you’ll realize it’s much easier to reverse pilot an initiative than to pilot it.

After all, all you have to do is stop doing it.

Here’s a process you can use to reverse pilot a set of initiatives:

1. Make a list of all the initiatives that feel marginal – consider everything that doesn’t add significant value to the team or organization.
2. Identify which marginal initiatives you want to pause.
3. Determine the length of time that’s feasible for a reverse pilot – anywhere from 4-12 weeks is a good starting point.
4. Determine what success looks like – identify what negative consequences would have to happen to force you to bring the initiative back. Set your thresholds.
5. Run the reverse pilot as planned.
6. Analyze the reverse pilot – after your reverse pilot program is done, bring it back to the team. What did you learn? Do you need to bring it back or is this something you can cut out completely?

Let’s look at an example –

Say you’re working on the marketing team of a fast-growing organization as a content marketer and one of the growth initiatives is writing and publishing a new blog post every Wednesday.

You come together as a team and agree this is an initiative that feels marginal based on recent results. You agree that the time it takes to research, write, and publish a blog post could be used for higher leverage activities.

You hypothesize that publishing one blog post per month would be adequate and you’ve determined a 12 week reverse pilot program is sufficient.

You’ve decided to keep an eye on organic traffic and overall SERP positioning and you’ve set thresholds that, if crossed, will trigger you to cancel the reverse pilot and bring the initiative back because it was, after all, delivering value.

After 12 weeks, you sit down as a team to review the results.

You see that SERP position for your primary keywords and overall organic traffic fluctuated a bit, but never dipped below the threshold. The blog posts you did publish ended up better because you used a bit of that extra time to create better content. Finally, you felt less overwhelmed and was able to put that extra time to testing a new content initiative.

Overall, it was an effective reverse pilot.

Bonus: a solo reverse pilot

While reverse piloting is an effective team exercise, it also comes in very handy for individuals with autonomy. Even if your team doesn’t have a reverse pilot program, you should be reverse piloting your initiatives regularly.

The best place to start is with recurring tasks.

What tasks are you still doing now that you were doing last quarter or last year? What repetitive activities feel marginal and drive little value?

It’s easy for these tasks – even little ones – to amass over time. If you’re never questioning or challenging them, you’re not being as effective as you can be.

You can follow a similar process: identify your marginal tasks, decide how long you want to reverse pilot for, and identify the thresholds to pay attention to.

After the reverse pilot, ask yourself these questions:

Did it prevent you from getting other (important) work done?
Were you able to use that time for higher leverage activities?
Did anyone even ask about it?
Did you feel more productive overall?

The answers to these questions will tell you whether the activity is worth bringing back into your queue or cutting out completely.

In Summary

Whether you’re a team, manager, or an autonomous individual, implementing a reverse piloting program can help you become more effective.

Remember what being effective is all about: getting the right things done. If you don’t take time to reverse pilot the wrong things – the things that don’t drive meaningful value – then you won’t have the capacity to do the right things well.

If you want to be effective, you can’t let the marginal initiatives clog up your limited resources. Identify them, reverse pilot them, and see the difference.

Start cutting.

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