Remember, the goal is to test your proposed solutions as efficiently as possible, not build something that’s bomb-proof. Nevertheless, you’ll want to be thoughtful about minimizing risks. A few tips:

1. Keep it simple. Test one or two hypotheses at a time, starting with the most critical.

1. Use volunteers. Don’t compel anyone to take part in your experiment.

1. Make it fun. Think of ways to gamify the experience.

1. Start in your own backyard. That will minimize the number of permissions you need and the risk that someone tells you to stop.

1. Run the new in parallel with the old. Don’t blow up the existing process until you’ve validated the new one.

1. Refine and retest. Create an expectation that this will be the first of many experiments.

1. Stay loyal to the problem. Don’t fall in love with your solution. If it doesn’t pan out, search for other testable hacks.

To help you get started, ask yourself the following:

• Assume you have a magic wand that makes everything your team does go perfectly. What do you hope will be different in two to three years compared to now?

• How would you want someone who works on an adjacent team to describe what your team does? What do you hope will be your team’s reputation in a few years? How far off is that from where things are today?

• What unique superpower(s) does your team have? When you’re at your best, how are you creating value? What would it look like for your team to be twice as good? Five times as good?

• If you had to create a quick litmus test that anyone could use to assess whether your team was doing a poor job, a mediocre job, or a kick-ass job, what would that litmus test be?

“REVERSE-ENGINEERING DOS AND DON’TS

• Don’t spend a lot of time up front analyzing everything you can; instead, use reverse

engineering to pinpoint only what you really need to know.

• Do frame a clear and important choice up front; make it real and significant.

• Do explore a wide range of where-to-play and how-to-win possibilities, rather than narrowing the list early on to those that feel realistic; unexpected possibilities often have interesting and helpful elements that can otherwise be dismissed out of hand. Learn from them.

• Do stay focused on the most important question (what would have to be true for this to be a winning possibility?), listing the conditions under which this possibility would be a really good one.

• Don’t forget to go back and eliminate any nice-to-have conditions; every condition should be truly binding—if it weren’t true, you wouldn’t pursue the possibility.

• Do encourage skeptics to express concerns at the specify-barriers stage; have them articulate the precise nature of their concerns about specific conditions.

• Don’t have proponents of a given possibility set and perform the tests; ask the

skeptics to do it. If the skeptics are satisfied in the end, everyone else will be too.

• Do test the biggest barrier first. Start with the condition the group feels is least likely to be true. If it isn’t true, the conditions required do not hold and you can stop testing.

• Do use a facilitator to run the reverse-engineering process; it helps to have someone to attend to process and group dynamics as you work through the thinking tasks.

As you prepare your pitch, whichever variety you choose, clarify your purpose and strategy by making sure you can answer these three questions:

After someone hears your pitch . . .

1. What do you want them to know?

1. What do you want them to feel?

1. What do you want them to do?

This discussions will be framed around the following questions:

• What are the five most important things about Amgen we should be sure to preserve and why?

• What are the top three things we need to change and why?

• What do you most hope I do?

• What are you most concerned I might do?

• What advice do you have for me?

• Anything else you would like to discuss or ask me?