When you think of an organization with mature experimentation practices, what comes to mind? If you’re like most executives, you probably picture teams running hundreds of tests, impressive-looking dashboards full of metrics, and maybe a company that just won an award for “experimentation culture”
You’d be wrong.
Experimentation teams have failed at making learning valuable. Experimentation’s most pervasive hypocrisy: publicly celebrating learning while privately focussing on wins and conversion rate uplifts.
Organizations don’t lack experimentation driven insights & knowledge—it’s that they’ve made it inaccessible, incomprehensible, and therefore irrelevant to the people who need it most.
The experimentation industry has a truth problem. The dirty secret of modern experimentation is that we’ve optimized for theatrical success rather than strategic truth, and the language we use perpetuates this dangerous charade.
Experimentation programs lack a fundamental governance tool: an objective experiment scorecard that measures quality and reliability, not just statistical outcomes. Without such a scorecard, your experimentation program is flying blind, mistaking statistical significance for strategic value.
Vanity metrics create a dangerous illusion of progress while masking the fundamental question: Is your experimentation program actually driving better business decisions, or is it just generating activity?
Your board expects results, your teams need direction, and most critically, you need to prove that experimentation deserves a seat at the strategic planning table. The difference between programs that influence strategy and those that merely execute tests comes down to one crucial element: governance.
Organizations have invested heavily in testing tools, built dedicated teams, and run hundreds of experiments annually. Yet despite this significant investment, many still struggle to connect promising test results to reliable business outcomes. This disconnect is what we call the “Trust Gap” – the critical space between experimental findings and strategic decision confidence.
