Fools rush in through the door; for folly is always bold... Step cautiously where you suspect depth. Sagacity goes cautiously forward while precaution covers the ground.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Boldness is cheap at the entrance and expensive afterwards; that asymmetry is the whole argument for scouting. Before any serious undertaking there is nearly always a small, inexpensive version of it available: the pilot, the trial order, the weekend test, the one conversation with someone who has already been inside. The fool skips these because they feel slow and unglamorous. The prudent use them precisely because being wrong at the trial stage costs a week, while being wrong at the commitment stage costs years. Cast the lead at every step, the quote says: sailors measured depth before sailing into it, and so can you.
Practice
- For every big plan, design its smallest honest test first: the version that can fail cheaply and teach fully.
- Talk to two people who attempted the same thing, one who succeeded and one who did not; the second conversation is usually worth more.
- Set the commitment point in advance: the test result that means go, and the one that means stop. Decide both before the test.
Use this when
- Use this before the second-career leap, the franchise, the big renovation, the partnership; all of them offer cheap trials to those who ask.
- Use it on other people's proposals too: someone rushing you past the pilot stage has a reason to fear the pilot.
Ignore this when
- Don't scout forever; the trial exists to end in a decision, and testing without a commitment point is fear with a clipboard (maxim 72 breaks the dam).
- Don't demand pilots for the truly small; reversible things are their own test.
A picture of it
A school cook, famous in her lane for her sweets, is urged by everyone to open a shop. Instead she takes a stall at the Sunday market for two months: same recipes, real customers, real accounts. The stall teaches her what no encouragement could: the sweets sell out, the savouries do not, mornings beat evenings, and her price was wrong by a third. The shop she opens in month four is built on eight Sundays of evidence. Her cousin opened his shop on compliments. It lasted seven months.
Courage is for the crossing. The lead line is for before you set sail.