I wrote separately about McKinsey & Company’s warning about the “social side of strategy” and how Prof. Roger Martin’s question “what would have to be true (WWHTBT)?” can mitigate its risks in driving rigorous, non-bias strategy development. (Please see my separate articles on these two topics). I’d like to further develop this approach using a really useful metaphor.

Jim Collins is a hugely influential author and consultant. His books, including “Good To Great”, have sold many millions of copies. Jeff Bezos contacted him in the early Amazon days to seek his advice about growing Amazon from a good company to a great one. And Steve Jobs contacted Collins in 2007 to seek advice about building Apple into a company that would remain great long after Jobs’ time as CEO.

Collins is a master of metaphor. One of my favourites is: “Fire bullets, then cannonballs”. Here’s why. When asking WWHTBT?, we build a list of things that would have to be true for a strategy choice to be successful. Some things will be true, some things will never be true, and some things could be true with effort. But how do we find out? By running “low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiments”. These are Collins’ bullets and are fired to test and calibrate aim. If/when all critical things have been shown to be true, i.e. aim has been fully calibrated, then a big bet investment must be made i.e. a cannon ball fired. (History teaches us that firms must make periodic big bets to drive continuous growth).

I’ve written separately about how Amazon continuously runs experiments to test new business ideas. Its innovation board uses experiments to test the size, profitability and sustainability of a potential new business as well as how differentiated the Amazon offer would be. Critically, these are not big bets where an executive ‘just knows’ it will be successful and makes somebody accountable for success. The experiments are run specifically to learn and support decision making: Fire more bullets, drop the idea, or fire the cannon ball? This is what Amazon did when it launched Amazon Web Services and it continues to do so when it launches new web site features and customer services.

So, when building your next growth business, make sure you fire lots of bullets and commit to firing that cannon ball once aim is calibrated.