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.A close mentoring relationship developed. Working with him ex-posed me to a whole new set of skills making compelling pitches,building a group, leading a small but complex organization.Tim isincredibly skilled at giving feedback and advice about things likedealing with the board.He said, My job is to help you. Ben enjoyed his side projects more than his day job, but hewasn t sure what to make of that.People close to him had opinions.My wife always thought I was mismatched with my job.She wasthe impartial voice saying, You should leave.You have more fundoing the outside things.Make that your job. She could see thatI was not happy.The outside work engaged me in a way acade-mia never did.And I knew I wasn t living up to my potential.With important deadlines looming for academic promotion,Ben had to dwell on the immediate future.He published a book onorganizational design, based on his doctoral research; this wonhim promotion to associate professor.Souring this good news, hewas told he had to focus.There were risks to his side projects, hissuperiors cautioned; if he wanted to make the next promotion, hehad to invest in traditional research.And his colleagues had plentyof things for him to do courses to teach, executive sessions tolead.Precious few of these assignments were in the nonprofit sec-tor, a hot but still marginal domain for a traditional businessschool focused on private industry.As Ben tried to think ahead to the next few years, he realizedhe had little energy or appetite for the next round.I had gone through the associate professor promotion to provethat I could do the research.But, three more years of making sac-rifices in what I wanted to do for the sake of tenure (the next 091-112 Ibarra CH5 3rd 9/24/02 11:26 AM Page 95crafting experiments95promotion hurdle) seemed too long.I kept thinking about whatelse I wanted to do.And I was tired of feeling guilty about spend-ing so many days out of the office.Many people said, Just staythere and focus on nonprofits. But that ignored all the otherstuff I had to do like teach introductory courses, participate onuniversity committees, and advise M.B.A.and doctoral students.It was a question of what was peripheral to my real interests andwhat was core.About the time of his promotion, one of Ben s biggest clients,Manworks, began to search for a COO.Ben considered pursuingit.But though the timing was good, the opportunity was not quiteright. Manworks had an inexperienced management team.Thatwas going to limit what I could learn from them.Since I did not havea track record in managing, the absence of role models felt like areal drawback. Deciding not to pursue this, though, made Benthink long and hard about what kind of offer he would say yes to.Meanwhile, the ideas he had been designing with Tim Turnerwere taking shape.They decided to create a separate organizationto build the nonprofit consulting practice.Ben was deeply in-volved in developing the business plan.When the fledgling Con-nector was granted nonprofit status, Ben became a cofounder andmanaging partner of the start-up.This time someone was holdingout a hand as Ben decided to step over to the other side: Tim waswilling to make a bet on me.He gave me the confidence that Iwould learn a lot from this opportunity.His presence made it eas-ier to take the leap. The Experimental MethodTo craft an experiment is to act in order to see where the actionleads.It is to ask the most basic question: What if? Experimentscome in many forms: Some are unintentional, others are conductedby design, some are exploratory, others, confirmatory.Scientistsuse the term natural experiment to refer to situations that occur 091-112 Ibarra CH5 3rd 9/24/02 11:26 AM Page 96oooworkingidentity96naturally, without experimental manipulation, yet allow a clean,comparative test.The fact that life events separate some but notall twins, for example, creates a natural experiment that can beused to sort out the effects of nature and nurture.But, in mostcases, the only way to learn what we want to know is to design atest ourselves.Exploration means taking action only to see what happens,without trying to make a prediction or test a hunch.An exploratoryexperiment is a probing, playful activity by which we get a feel forthings.1 Exploratory experiments succeed when we are able toformulate more specific questions, or when they lead us to a hy-pothesis or educated guess.Then comes a more rigorous test, aconfirmatory experiment, in which the objective is to learn whetherthe hypothesis is supported or refuted by the evidence.Let s take a closer look at Ben s experimental method.At thestart, in that familiar I m not looking to change but something smissing period, Ben pursued different interests and worked onvarious projects.He was not asking, What if I were to do this fora living? Not yet.But his experience revealed some patterns, con-firming, for example, that he enjoyed having a hands-on role in anorganization.His natural experiments were simple we talk with our feet tests of his true inclinations
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