Ambiguity kills feedback

Posted by John Foster on August 5th, 2009

I hear from lots of people that it’s hard to get feedback. The top five reasons I’ve gathered:

  1. They don’t have time
  2. They don’t want to hurt my feelings
  3. They weren’t paying close enough attention to give me details
  4. They’re afraid to be seen as a critic (or bitchy) (or mean)
  5. They don’t respond to my request (usually by email)

Sound familiar?  Seems right to me… why would anyone want to give you feedback with all of those great excuses?  The risks involved for people to help are pretty big because most requests for feedback involve a great deal of ambiguity.   Ambiguity means that the potential downsides to getting involved with you outweigh the benefits of helping you, and their social radar starts going off, “avoid, avoid, avoid!”

People are more likely to give you feedback if you remove ambiguity from the situation by doing two things:

1. Share your intentions. This is about being transparent, but also about being super clear.  For more on this distinction, check out John Maeda’s post at Harvardbusiness.org. What were you hoping to accomplish in the action you are asking about?  Say something like, “I was hoping to get everybody on board for this project today.  Do you think I was successful?  What worked?  What didn’t?”  This gives your feedback partner an invitation and a point of focus for a useful response. Sharing your intentions allows them to be short and sweet, and dispels fears of being out of tune with your needs, or thinking too hard, or getting bogged down in a long emotional debrief.

photo by Andreas Sundgren on Flickr

photo by Andreas Sundgren on Flickr

2. Ask for help, but be specific.  Being seen as a helpful person is good for someone’s reputation.  But according to social proof theory, people are more likely to respond if you ask them individually, in a specific way.  Otherwise, they will wait and see if someone else will give help, leaving you with no help.  Studies show that people will walk by a seriously injured person on the street simply because others are walking past him.  The ambiguity of the situation stuns them into no response.

“Is he a homeless man sleeping?”  “Is this man dead?”  “Is this man injured?” (I really can’t get involved with this!)

When the injured person breaks the pattern by pointing to a specific passer-by and saying something like, “Hey you, my leg is broken, can you call 911?”  The response rate is above 90%.  Again the source of confusion for potential helpers and their lack of response is ambiguity.  When there is not a clear call for help, people will general take cues from others around them before risking a response.  When nobody is helping, nobody will help.

Use these two tips together and you make it much easier for someone else to give you valuable feedback by removing ambiguity from the situation.

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Free advice for GM…er Penske #4

Posted by John Foster on July 31st, 2009

We’re moving downstream of the GM break-up so this post is obviously not going to help GM explicitly, so listen up folks at Penske!  This is about how to imagine SATURN as a (really) different kind of car company.  The brand heritage points us in this direction, but the operations history never quite got there.  While establishing itself as a new car brand, the most significant difference in their approach to running the company was the creation of a new dealer network from scratch, and calling it a retail network to indicate a stronger belief in customer service as a competitive advantage.

Using the organization ecosystem model from the first post in this series, I would place Saturn in the “independent” corner and really push the envelope on how to design, build, and market a car using an open source model, borrowed from the software industry.  As you know this model has produced some amazing products like the browser Firefox from Mozilla.

In fact, some of these ideas are already in rough formation.  From Wikipedia I’ve learned that Penske will not be buying the GM factories and will eventually have other car companies build cars sold as Saturns. At this point, GM will build the Aura, Vue, and Outlook for Penske for two years. To replace GM as the brand’s manufacturer, Penske is in discussions with several global automakers, including Renault Samsung Motors of Korea.

Pit Crews have focus and pride

Pit Crews have focus and pride

What if they really push for something different and create an open source project for each model?  With the Penske passion for cars and the SATURN commitment to customer service, it’s not hard to imagine a really cool hometown facility that attracts car nuts with prototype vehicles, computer workshops, and a heavy dose of car culture.  Rather than staffing these “stores” with sales people, SATURN could staff them with car designers and engineers that help guide the process and manage the inputs via the open source process.  Interested players could be organized in “pit crews” who develop relationships with each other over time and work on specific elements of the car prototype.  Perhaps stores could work in regional “car craft” networks that involve small scale manufacturing and parts suppliers in the creation of regionally specific models.

Once the prototypes are in final form and are on the road being tested, contracts with larger manufacturing companies could be established to put the vehicles into limited production.  The viral connection to each model would be a grassroots sales force that would bring back the days of localized automotive pride, only it would be distributed throughout the country instead of centered on Detroit.

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What’s really wrong with performance reviews

Posted by John Foster on July 30th, 2009

I’m sure many of you have seen the recent column by Jeff Pfeffer in BusinessWeek.  It’s a very nice analysis of the flaws in corporate performance reviews.  I respect and agree with everything he says in that article. And, I think there’s a more fundamental issue underlying the failure of performance reviews.  The whole concept is backwards.

Photo by Charlie//Alexandra White on Flickr

Photo by Charlie//Alexandra White on Flickr

It’s designed to manage performance as if it could actually be managed.  In order to actually manage performance, a manager would have to be present while the employee works a great deal of the time.  When a person starts to veer off “best practices,” the manager could then intervene with helpful comments and suggestions, or in extreme cases simply whack the person with a ruler to keep him in line.

Sounds crazy doesn’t it?  Managers can’t do that, they’ve got better managerial things to do.  Performance reviews are designed as if people were machines that need annual maintenance to fix broken parts or an upgrade to new software.

In a human-centered model, we’d assume that an adult worker of normal abilities would be able to understand the task at hand, and apply skill and judgment to meet work goals.  In this system, we’d assume that the person would be motivated to do a good job and be curious about how to do it better.  This might be a stretch too, but given the choices, I think this approach has more potential.

Yes, it’s a major shift in paradigm, but it’s one that aligns with the people who are already doing well, not with the people who are not.  That is, people who are successful at work and in life tend to ask questions, learn, and grow. Why don’t we design processes, tools, and practices that support the more successful people, not prop up the weakest links?  Call me Darwin if you will, but I believe this approach will help those who aren’t behaving in the most successful strategies shift towards them (not get left behind).

For a great example of this approach (helping successful people do what they already do better) is Rypple.  It’s a platform for asking questions and giving feedback that’s driven by the only person who really cares about your performance… you.

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The economics of discomfort

Posted by John Foster on July 20th, 2009

There’s a great post on CNET about the Future of Capitalism.  I won’t retell the whole thing here, but it provides a great answer to my previous post, If feedback is so great, why is it so hard? It’s not a direct answer, but see if this makes sense:  feedback is hard because it acknowledges that control of your future involves lots of other people. And this feels scary, arbitrary, and unpredictable.

source: wikipedia

source: wikipedia

If you are working in a job with a boss, you can work with that one person to agree on your future.  If you have a bad boss, this isn’t so great, but you can go find another more agreeable one and move on up.  This is the source of much of the negative political behavior in today’s stereotypical corporate environment.

If the future of capitalism involves recapitalizing assets that have been undervalued, then behavior strategies popularized by characters like Michael Scott of The Office are doomed.

Your talent represents a great asset… something you can trade, hedge, remix, or share to generate value that others will buy.  So you can use your talent to work in Chris Anderson’s “Free Economy” to earn a living.  But you have to invest with your asset and add value to the abundant, free resources through aggregation, synthesis, distribution, and other means of improvement.  You must use your knowledge, skill, attributes, and experience as a unique lever to create new things like a service experience, an insightful article, an assembled computer, or beautiful music.

In the days when a person worked a lifetime for a company (or a land-owner), the responsibility to take care of your talent belonged to them.  And all benefits of using your talent went to them.  In this emerging new economy, technology has enabled you to benefit directly from your talent like never before.  I won’t get into all the political scenarios being mentioned out there, but the bottom line is that individuals have increasing freedom to make something happen in their lives if they aren’t happy with the more traditional approaches to work.

But freedom comes with responsibility (darn).  And this is where the answer on feedback comes in…  markets are really good at finding stuff that works, and even better at culling out stuff that doesn’t.  Feedback is hard because it involves finding out what parts of your offer are not working for others, and often represents resistance to your aspirations.  And it’s not only your opinion that counts, it’s the opinions of the social group around you that assemble into a shared reality-of-you that count.  And feedback is the only way to discover and make sense of those opinions.

Investing with your talent in this kind of economy can be extremely uncomfortable.  As the saying goes, The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.

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If feedback is so great, why is it so hard?

Posted by John Foster on July 17th, 2009
photo: NUT by .Luca-Italy, Flickr

photo: NUT by .Luca-Italy, Flickr

Is it just me or does this strike you as odd?  I have a Google feed that sends me a daily digest of messages that include the term feedback.  I get hundreds of them!  Many people have suggestions for how to ask for and give feedback (including me) and many people talk about why it’s so important (like this post).  I’m curious why it’s such a hot topic, yet why it’s so infrequently discussed in a positive light.  So, I’ve been trying to apply design thinking to this nut to see if I can crack open some new insights and ideas.  Here’s some of what I’m gathering.  Feel free to join in, and I’ll keep you posted as it moves along.

Observations:

  • I have a friend who shares completely about what she’s thinking and seems to be very provocative in how she “pushes people’s buttons.”  For example, she has her young son get his toenails painted and lets everyone know that it’s important to do so… She rarely asks what other people think, mostly she tells stories.
  • I work with someone who rarely states his opinion, but asks amazing questions to get people to explain more about their initial comments.  When he starts to form an opinion about something he often presents it as a question (but not in an annoying, “what I hear you saying is…” kind of way).

Patterns:

  • Feedback is all around us, from facial expressions, to body posture, to words (and sounds).
  • People shy away from telling “the full truth” about their opinions.
  • Some people are tuned-in to other people’s reactions, suggestions, behaviors.
  • Some people seem oblivious to how they affect other people.

Experiments:

  • I put some post-it notes on our door at work to get people to ask questions about things I care about.  It seemed to work, and be fun.  It seems that not overstating something is more inviting to others than presenting a complete or definitive thought.
  • I’ve used Rypple to ask others questions before a meeting to help me understand what they care about and expect.  It was very easy and helped me create the agenda.

To improve my diversity of input and thinking, I’ve been reaching out to other people interested in exploring this topic, and have started a new “learning collaborative” with my friends at Rypple.  We are hosting our first design session in August and have gotten some great people from some great companies to join us.  At the first session, we’ll have folks from IDEO, Mozilla, Pixar, Method Home, the Federal Reserve Bank, Electronic Arts, Kiva.org, and more.  I hope this amazing collection of people working in a design process can helps get some real traction on feedback.

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United Breaks Guitars

Posted by John Foster on July 8th, 2009

United Breaks GuitarsNow this is how to leverage the web!  Check out a new song by Dave Carroll called United Breaks Guitars.  And for more on the story behind the song visit Dave Caroll Music.  We’ve all had frustrating experiences with poor service and it’s really amazing that such a scene can actually occur.  I myself had a small tiff with a stewardess… I mean flight attendant… on United recently.  She wanted my 2 year-old son to leave the seatback phone in the holder and I thought the relative value of the inflight phone service (nearing zero) and the distinct advantage of having a 2 year-old entertained while the flight boards (priceless) were a good trade off.  My wife was worried I’d get us kicked off the plane for an FAA safety violation (see Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents) but I backed down.

It is quite fun to poke at these people for being so mean, difficult, or otherwise ornery.  But the real issue isn’t the person involved, these incidents are symptoms of a much larger core issue.  Bad service comes from companies that don’t take care of people.  United isn’t about “destination management” they are about airplane management, so they emphasize mechanical and safety issues, not human ones.  Sure, they say they are there for “your safety” but really they are there to control things. When Southwest Airlines hit the scene with an emphasis on people and the customer experience, they immediately became the most profitable airline around.

Another example is the battle between Microsoft and Apple.  While Microsoft has a clear advantage in revenue and profitability (so far), it is clear that customers prefer the Apple experience.  When a single business can dominate an industry so fully like Microsoft or United, they can get away with poor service because customers can’t vote with their wallets.  But as soon as that advantage is removed, the crash and burn is inevitable (and fast)… as in Kmart versus Walmart.

I think this is so obvious I can’t imagine why other businesses don’t pull it off.  But just in case it’s not that clear to everyone, here’s a few reasons it works:

1. People make buying decisions, so treating people well leads to more favorable buying decisions.

2. The loyalty effect is an important driver of sustained profitability.

3. If you want your customers to be treated well, you MUST treat your employees well.  See the Service Profit Chain for more on how this works.

Got any more points to add?

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Transparency beats asymmetries

Posted by John Foster on June 26th, 2009

As I begin this post I’m realizing transparency is a big topic, but it’s coming up all over the place in business, personal, and social situations, so I want to start picking it apart.  I noticed Seth Godin’s post earlier this week, and liked his statement that the issue is not to be viewed as a moral right, but a business tactic, tool or threat.  So this post is about sharing information as a business tactic to win complex games.

I’ve had many discussions with friends about putting things on the Web and how fearful they are about things being used against them.  I hear comments about invasion of privacy, loss of employment, Gattaca and Big Brother.   One of my best friends refuses to participate in social networking sites so he won’t make it any easier for anyone to find out stuff about him.  He’s a very sharp guy, and I think he is playing a good poker game.  And, as Seth points out, poker is not much fun if you can see everyone’s cards.

Ostrich head in sandFor me the issue here is not about transparency, but what game you are playing.  Poker is a small scale strategy game pitting one person against another.  Transparency is the exact wrong thing to do in that game.  But most “games” in life and business are far more complex, and given our 21st Century context (see Thomas Friedman), I think it’s dangerous to live life with a poker face.  It’s more like having one’s head in the sand.

In a complex system, transparency is important as it relates to information asymmetries.  This is when one “side” in a transaction knows more than another.  In such cases, people tend to undervalue an opportunity to avoid risks based on gaps in knowledge. It has been shown in economic theory that the overall value of a system is increased when everyone has access to the same information.

In markets, individuals benefit greatly by sharing their information with others to allow for fair exchanges.  This sharing brings the added bonus of systemic aggregation of information (the Internet enables this like never before).  Aggregation allows people to discover patterns that provide opportunities to adjust tactics and “win” more often.

So here’s some “games of life” to think of as markets instead of as poker:

  • Job interviews/hiring decisions… what if employers and employees knew more about jobs and candidates? Better alignment of jobs and people lead to greater engagement and less turnover.
  • Health… what if people were able to share their health information more fully? They could see trends and patterns and share them with medical professionals to get earlier and better treatment.
  • Business… what if employers shared their performance goals and metrics more fully (even when it’s bad news)?  Employees could intervene earlier and with greater permission to prevent negative trends.
  • Dating… more disclosure about values and interests leads to better match making and longer lasting relationships.

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More learning to blog

Posted by John Foster on June 24th, 2009

It’s been about month since I started this blog and I’m having fun with it.  Here are some more tips I’ve gotten and things I’ve learned so far:

  • Try the 10×10 exercise: Jay Goldman suggested I think of 10 categories and then 10 posts for each of the categories before I even started.  This has proven to be great advice, I get plenty of new ideas every day (so far) but having the 10×10 framework really helps structure this space and keep my posts on target.
  • Try a series: I was inspired by Diego Rodriguez and his series on innovation.  I don’t have to post a sequel everyday, but if I’m stuck I’ve got an easy back up idea.  It also helps to think about this ahead of time and be on the look out for things that make the posts in the series more timely, tangible and relevant.
  • Readers love lists: Dan Debow suggested using bullets or numbers to help readers quickly digest content.
  • Link to others: I’m still struggling with “track backs” but I’ve found it very easy to use posts from other people to make my posts more interesting.  I connected to a comment from Diego on Twitter and he then tweeted about my post.  Got the highest volume of traffic to my blog yet!

More to come as I stumble along.

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Free advice for GM #3-Put SAAB back on the edge

Posted by John Foster on June 23rd, 2009

I was going to go with Saturn next, but a tweet from Diego on Metacool got me motivated to play with SAAB.  He says, SAAB should get back into rallying, which lends support to my understanding of this brand.

Rally to the edge

Rally to the edge

Technology, cool, edgy, unique.   Born from jets.  Svenska Aeroplan Aktie Bolaget is Swedish Airplane Company in Swedish.  Somewhere it all fell apart and they ended up another mediocre GM-mobile that had no style, no technology, and poor quality.

The organization behind an edgy car has to be edgy.  This is called brand integration (the outside and the inside have to align).  To create edgy things, people have to take risks and push the envelope.  Edge is by definition NOT THE MAINSTREAM.  Okay, I’m ranting… but it’s amazing to me how something edgy can get so rounded off to fit into a corporate model, that it’s no longer viable.

The interdependent organization archetype is a great model for SAAB because it could bring together an array of people and companies from many centers of excellence to work on the coolest automotive technology in the world.  There would need to be lots of experimentation (and failure) going on to find out what new ideas work and what theories don’t hold water.  You just can’t pull this kind of behavior off, if you are trying to please heads of engineering and design at the top of a corporate pyramid.

Key traits of the new SAAB organization:

1. Ad hoc reciprocal structure- each car should be viewed as a project, with full design-build responsibilities.  The designs should connect to the heritage of SAAB (e.g. efficient drag coefficient) but the technology should represent the best of what’s possible in the current market.  These teams should work under temporary agreements with other companies to bring resources necessary for manufacturing.

2. Each model is an experiment- transparency while prototyping (instead of secrecy) promotes involvement from others and improves quality.  Check out Martin Eberhard’s post on how blogs helped at Tesla Motors.  Instead of a long line of reductionist designs, hidden in secrecy while the companies round off the edges to save money, the clean slate approach gives the model team a chance to be truly innovative.  An open process pushes everyone to solve the complex tensions between viability, feasibility, and desirability.  The prototypes should be rallying all over the world to show off and test the new ideas.

3. Entrepreneurial leaders- leadership in today’s auto market is coming from disruptors like Tesla and Fiskar Automotive.  These are entrepreneurial ventures with something to prove and lots of backing to get there.  Each model should be considered and investment and live up to a market based promise of innovation.  Leadership teams should have to start over again with each model to prove this new idea is worth making (and buying).

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Accurate Self Awareness

Posted by John Foster on June 16th, 2009

I spend a lot of time talking to people about getting good feedback.  Usually, they’ve picked up somehow that everything is not going along as well as they’d like.  It could be a friend saying, “you should go talk with so-and-so, I think you two are not on the same page.”  Or, maybe it’s a boss telling you to shape up in a particular area.  Or, maybe you’ve noticed nobody will sit next to you in the cafeteria.

Humans are social animals
The human desire to achieve is outdone only by the human desire to fit in, so these kind of scenarios are usually unsettling at the core of your emotional well-being.  The “reptilian brain stem” portion of your brain starts sending signals to your body that you are in danger and you feel stress and anxiety.

Downward spiral

Downward spiral

Avoid the downward spiral
Over time, this is really bad for your body if you don’t deal with it. In the short term, this is really bad for your job because a lot of your energy is tied up in worry, defensiveness, etc.   Lots of people begin to “ping” those around them to see if this perceived threat is real.  Unfortunately, if this is not done well it feeds the problem and the spiral takes you down and then out to the market for a new job.

Tips for getting an accurate self assessment:

1. Ask better questions. A generic “how am I doing?” question usually leads to a neutral, safe response like, “fine.”  This gives you a false impression and accelerates the negative spiral by reinforcing your positive self image in the face of some legitimate concerns.  Instead of the generic, open-ended approach, ask a specific question about a specific concern you have.   See my “that’s a good question” post for some tips on this.

2. Ask the right people. In a panic situation, we tend to go to our closest allies for guidance and support.  But you need to build perspective when you are unsure, so extend your reach and ask some people you know will be more critical (helpful) and less inclined to protect you.  Having your feedback biased to your closer colleagues means your awareness is biased too.

3. Reduce risk for truthful input. Recognize that most people are not going to tell you their full critical opinion

Scaredy Cats

Scaredy Cats

because it is “risky” to do so.  They may not want to hurt your feelings, may feel their opinion is not important, may believe it’s not their place to be critical of you, or be afraid that they’ll get a reputation for being harsh or unforgiving.  Try these two ways to get the full story from others:

  • Build trust and be persistent.  Think of this like coaxing a cat out from under the bed.  Here kitty, kitty…
  • Provide an anonymous channel to you.  You can ask a friend to gather some input for you, or you can use a tool like Rypple to do it yourself.

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