A TELEVISION PILOT IS A TEST EPISODE USED TO SELL A SHOW CONCEPT TO A NETWORK. Before the network purchases the entire series, they watch a sample and sometimes show it to an audience to gauge interest and estimate its financial viability. Television pilots get their name from the pilot light, a small flame that is used as an ignition source for a larger burner, like the central heating unit of a house or a hot-air balloon.
For our purposes, the primary goal of the Pilot phase is ignition and validation: generating ideas, testing those ideas, then taking small, smart risks to eventually inform bigger decisions about what’s next.
After identifying potential opportunities and ideas in the Scan stage, you will likely have several hypotheses about what to pursue. Instead of betting big on any one, it is best if you can pilot—reduce risk by conducting small tests—then expand upon what is working to launch in the most promising direction.
Newton’s first law states that an object in motion tends to stay in motion, while an object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by an external force. Piloting is critical because it gets your momentum snowball started. Small pilots will help you get unstuck, without the pressure of having to figure out all the answers up front.
Pivot is a state of mind, and the most agile impacters make a habit of continually learning and piloting. As a general rule, maintain an open, curious mindset, testing one hypothesis at a time, ideally several.
I can sense what some of you may be thinking: This sounds exhausting! Must I always be looking for the Next Big Thing?
Not necessarily. Pilots can be as simple as tweaks to your morning routine. They can be personally rewarding, such as spending time living in another country. Or they can be as ambitious as experimenting with a community-wide, nationwide, or global program within your company or business.
In his book The Voice of Knowledge, don Miguel Ruiz says, “Making assumptions and then taking them personally is the beginning of hell in this world.” We are likely to hit roadblocks when making assumptions about what should happen, rather than approaching our ideas with unattached curiosity. Piloting helps form open-ended hypotheses so we can test assumptions and make informed decisions about next steps.
Prepare to be wrong during the Pilot process. At times it may feel like you have taken two steps forward, immediately followed by two steps back. One reaction to this process might be, “I am an idiot and my ideas suck.” It is up to you to shift that to, “Awesome. There’s another one I can throw back into the refinery of my brain.”
Oftentimes that failure or missed mark provides the next important clue. Recall Thomas Edison’s famous quote, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward.”