Like many people, I went to a high school with a truly great head football* coach. Coach Jerry Sharp had a big sign painted and hung up in the boys’** locker room: Proper Preparation Prevents P*ss Poor Performance.

I wish I could drag that sign to every stakeholder meeting I have.

That way, when people ask me “Why should we talk to customers or employees when we can just survey them?” or “We’re in start-up mode; we believe in ‘move fast and break things!”, I could just point to the sign.

Proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.

In product and service design, we call our preparation phase the “Discovery phase”. In it, we learn about our customers and our problem space, just like attorneys do when they’re preparing a case. We also go beyond customer listening by actually talking to customers, which means including but not being limited to surveys and historical data.

In terms of cost, the Discovery phase is incredibly cheap, especially when the overall goal is getting a new or improved product, service, program, or system stood up, out the door, and successfully, sustainably functioning in a matter of months.

In terms of materials, the process requires no specialized software. In terms of labor, existing personnel can accomplish it with the help of a single consulting expert. In terms of time, I have never built a discovery phase longer than 12 weeks, including desk research. For projects with internal customers, that timeline is usually more like 6 weeks.

At the end of the day, that’s a low cost for a great product.

Recently, I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people about how to integrate AI workflows into their orgs. In these conversations, I always say “Start with discovery; go talk to your teams. Find out how they’re already using AI, because they are. Find out what they want; find out what they fear. Talk to your data teams; find out the true state of your data landscape, ditches, gullies, and mountains.”

Only when you know your AI use and data landscapes can you successfully launch AI workflows—no matter what vertical your organization works in. And this phase of work will save you unknown quantities of time and effort plugging holes and gaps after launch.

Proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.

Properly prepare for strategic builds in AI or any offering by understanding your customers. Gain that understanding through a quick Discovery phase. You’ll do more than just build the right workflow at the right scale; you’ll be map next steps in scaling the project, too.

There’s a lot to be said for proper preparation. Jerry Sharp and about a billion other sports coaches aren’t wrong.

*This is US football, but the sports metaphor in this essay works with any sport. **First of all, I know this because my brother told me about it. I didn’t go into smelly boys’ locker rooms. Secondly, I did hold it against the coaches that the girls’ locker room didn’t get this signage, but I couldn’t do anything about it at the time, and it’s probably been remedied by now.