“Doing the last experiment first” is one of my favourite
levers of building margin of safety. We have mentioned the concept in our book
“8 steps to innovation” and we borrowed the term from A. G. Lafley, ex-CEO of
P&G. Doing the last experiment first involves validating the leap-of-faith
assumption associated with an idea. What is a leap-of-faith assumption? An
assumption that is (a) critical to the success of the idea, and (b) there is
very little evidence available to support it. How does Alex Honnold’s El
Capitan free-solo illustrate this concept? Let’s look at it next.
Alex
Honnold is an American rock-climber. In 2017, he became the first rock
climber in the world to free solo 3000-foot wall of El Capitan in California. If
you want to get a feel of what that means, check out this 5-minutes video
showing Alex’s free-solo
climbing scenes. To us Alex’s endeavour appears almost like a suicide
attempt. And Alex says the same thing in his TED talk, “Seems scary?
Yeah, it is” (1:13). However, he says something strange immediately after, “But
on the day that video was taken (i.e. his free-solo), it didn’t feel scary at
all. It felt as comfortable and natural as a walk in the park.” Walk in the
park? Was Alex serious or joking?
Alex explains in the TED talk his years of systematic effort
in preparing for such a climb. But the part that is of interest to us is
related to what Alex calls the most difficult part of the climb – the Boulder
problem (8:06). “It was about 2000-feet
off the ground and consisted of the hardest physical moves of the whole route. (It
involved) long pulls between poor handholds and with very small, slippery
feet.” This manoeuvre culminated in a karate kick with left foot over to the
inside of an adjacent corner. This required “high degree of precision and
flexibility”. Alex had been doing a nightly stretching routine for this move
for over a year (8:35).
Ability to navigate the boulder problem including the karate
kick comfortably is an example of the leap-of-faith assumption in Alex’s climb.
If he didn’t want to be a lucky climber, then he had to master the solution of
the boulder problem. In this video, “What if he falls? The
terrifying reality behind filming free-solo”, we see Alex practicing on the
Boulder problem (6:00). And we see him practicing with a rope and actually
falling in the process (6:07). What that means is that Alex would have experimented
with his ideas to navigate the Boulder problem with rope first. And he would
have failed in many of these attempts and learned valuable lessons on what may
work. This is an example of doing the last experiment first.
Can Boulder problem be re-created in an indoor environment? Yes.
You can see how an indoor wall climbing center VauxWall recreated the Boulder
problem in this video.
And see how Alex’s climb feels like a graceful dance on the wall here (10:50). I
don’t know if Alex actually practiced in an indoor setup like this. But the point
is it is possible to re-create a difficult situation in a controlled
environment so that one can practice more easily, more often and at lower cost.
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