ness has grown its delivery capabilities off the back of the pandemic, as well as the unique way the business tests new technologies.  Here, we’ve compiled three tips Gillespie shared.  You can watch the full Masterclass, sponsored by Adobe, here. Changing a business, without overwhelming it According to Gillespie, Domino’s has been focused on improving its delivery since well before the pandemic hit. However, what was expected to be an orderly rollout of new features was expedited when lockdowns turned delivery into the business’ biggest channel.  In addition, the health implications of an airborne virus largely spread through human contact meant that Domino’s had to rethink the way it delivered its pizzas without putting anyone at risk.  As with all major changes in business, new processes needed to be put in place. “We had to implement whole new service methods during Covid, contactless pickup and contactless delivery, and train our customers and our staff on them,” Gillespie said. “Before Covid-19, if you asked customers if they were comfortable having their food left outside and not seeing the person that dropped it off, I’m pretty sure most people would [say no].” The pandemic changed that dynamic, but the business still needed to find a way to implement these changes without overwhelming staff or customers, Gillespie said, and not interfere with the day-to-day operations in its stores.  “In isolation, it’s very easy to add one extra process, but if you add it onto a store that already has 100 processes, that extra one just builds on that and every incremental change is more impactful than the previous one,” Gillespie said.  “That compounding effect was paramount in our mind during that time.” So, how did the business do it? Test and learn Gillespie is a firm believer in the concept of ‘pretotyping’, which is a way to test a product idea quickly and inexpensively by creating extremely simplified versions of that product and judging its merit. Essentially, it boils down to testing new concepts, and running small-scale trials of new concepts to see how they can work in a real-world environment. Then, should the concept show some promise, it can be scaled up with the knowledge that it isn’t likely to be a waste of time and capital. Gillespie noted that one way Domino’s validates new product ideas is to add a new pizza concept to the business’ online menu, and track how many people are interested in ordering it before actually rolling it out. Customers that try to order the new pizza will get a voucher for their trouble, and Domino’s will discover if there is a market for the concept before spending money, time, and resources to get it out to franchisees.  Or, in the case of contactless delivery and pickup, the business can offer it through a smaller number of stores, inject the least amount of capital into it in order to validate customer needs, and then expand the concept across its store network. “Sometimes it’s easy to see a spectrum of ideas that are unlimited, which can put an undue amount of pressure on the team to go beyond… and fragmenting,” Gillespie said.  “Rather, we keep two or three main focuses each quarter, and spend our time doubling down on ideas in each of those blocks [after pretotyping]. And that’s allowing us to unlock, I would say, better variations of ideas.” Failure isn’t a failure One thing that Gillespie stressed was that the concept of pretotyping only works if you engender a compatible attitude in the workplace: one that doesn’t see failure as a negative.  “I’m getting tired of the word failure,” Gillespie said.  “I hear it come up a lot, and [everyone] has had a leader that thinks failure is a bad word, or a deficiency. It’s not. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not pushing hard enough.” The key, Gillespie said, is to turn mistakes into opportunities to learn, and to improve the overall offer as a result – learn fast, not fail fast. This attitude is so important to Gillespie that in interviews he’ll ask prospective staff about their greatest failures, and what they were able to take from them, to find out if they’re a good fit for the Domino’s team.