Plus first

April 14, 2009April 13, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

In February I blogged about Randy Nelson’s, President of Pixar University, talk about the core skill of innovators being “failure recovery, not error avoidance.”

Before getting to this point, Randy talks about the environment that nurtures creativity at Pixar. One important element is having a culture where the expectation is that you will “plus” other people’s ideas. Randy explains this by talking about improvisational theatre, the core principle of which is that you have to accept any idea that’s thrown out by the other actor(s) on stage (you can also hear Emily Levine talk about this at TED) and then build on it.

For example, if you’re an improve actor and you say, “It’s a lovely day today” and the other actor says, “Yes, except for that 20 foot wave that’s crashing to shore,” you have to accept what that actor has said and work with it (so you could say, “Yes, which is why I have this inflatable suit on, just in case.”)

In many professional situations, there’s a real tendency to skip this step and instead jump to the contrary point, the little bit that could be improved, your small suggestion.

All of you smart, critically-minded people out there (you know who you are) ask yourself how often, when asked to give feedback of one sort or another, jump right in to all the little or big changes you think should be made. This is actually the easy way out: you feel like you’re being helpful, improving the output, and it makes you look smart to boot. And when you’re talking to someone you like and respect, you assume they know you think they’re smart/capable/etc. and that the thing they’ve just done (the practice presentation, the brainstormed idea) is pretty good.

Try plus-ing first instead. If something is mostly good, start with that. And don’t talk in general terms (“It’s really great.”) as this is neither credible nor useful. Give this part real attention and thought. Give it as much analysis as you give your (subsequent) critique. Tell the person what’s good. Be very specific about what you like.

This will accomplish three things: first, it will give the person just as much feedback about what works as about what doesn’t, so she has a chance to amplify and strengthen the best part of what she’s done. Second, the person will feel good and gain in confidence.

Perhaps most important, it gives you practice at giving positive feedback in an honest, genuine, and specific fashion – which is actually much harder than it looks.

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When you have to nail it

March 25, 2009March 24, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I used to commute by car to work, which reinforced my deep-seated loathing of being stuck in traffic. Never mind the fact that most traffic is caused by things that seem like they shouldn’t cause a slowdown (rubbernecking). I find it unbelievable that, with all the technology out there, we don’t consistently get traffic information to drivers in some way (GPS systems, cellphones, digital radio, you name it). It would be hugely efficient in terms of time and gas saved, and it would make drivers unbelievably happy if we could get this right.

Which is why I want to love Google maps. It’s free, it’s on my phone, it has traffic information. I’ll show those car companies who’s boss!!

Or will I?

In my experience, Google maps is plagued by both false positives (it says there’s traffic and their isn’t) and false negatives (it says there isn’t traffic and there is).

If I’m honest with myself, “plagued” might mean the 20% of the time that I notice, but these misses either cause me unnecessarily to leave the highway for local roads or to stay on course only to be stuck in 90 minutes of traffic. As far as I’m concerned this renders the product completely useless.

Google has a long tradition of beta testing products that aren’t quite done, and it most cases this works. Even Gmail is still in beta, officially. There are a lot of products where “mostly good enough” is OK. This isn’t one of them.

You need to know when being quick and getting it mostly right is good enough – and when it’s not. I’d be quick and mostly right with my blog not with my website. Quick and mostly right with email but not with a phone call. Quick and mostly right on a panel discussion but not for a radio interview. And never quick and mostly right when applying for a job.

So be quick most of the time, but know how to recognize the times that you either nail it or blow it.

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You are at the top of my list

March 6, 2009March 5, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

If you’re trying to get someone’s attention for the first time, it’s hard to stand out. People are flooded with information, emails, RSS feeds, tweets…how do you make yourself heard or seen?

Why not try being unbelievably responsive? If you meet someone for the first time and four days later send an email to say thanks and follow up, the timing of your note communicates, “The time I spent with you really wasn’t that important. Those things we said we’d do? Probably not going to happen.”

Even worse? Waiting four days and sending a lackluster note.

Everyone is in constant triage mode. But everyone, up to our BlackBerry-touting President of the United States, responds to some people right away and some people later on (or never). So you have a chance each and every time to stand out from the crowd by being fast. This says, “you are on the top of my list.”

This doesn’t apply to every email you receive – then you’re a slave to your Inbox. But for the people who are most important to you (you’d know who they are, don’t you?), you’d better be writing back in 24 hours or less (immediately is good too).

Last Sunday I spoke on two panels at the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference. I gave out almost an inch of business cards after my panels. I promise you I will think very differently about how to respond to the people I heard from a day or two after the conference and the person who, two months from now, is going to write to say, “we met back in March and…”

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How to Listen to your Critics

December 23, 2008 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Recently I took a short vacation at a well-known family resort. Before going, I had searched the Web looking for feedback about the hotel from other travelers who had been there. Mostly I found a lot of complaints about ‘terrible service.’

To my surprise, virtually every person working at the resort was incredibly polite and professional – the check-in woman who got us a room right when we arrived, 4 hours before check-in (after a 4:30am wakeup that morning); the woman who mercifully got a load of laundry done on a Sunday; the guys renting the giant water tricycles…you get the idea.

More surprising still, the day I was leaving I rode up the elevator with two women, one of whom was in the middle of a rant to her friend. “I’ve never, ever, been to a hotel with such unbelievably poor service! Never, in all my years!!!”

Who do you think is more likely to run home and share their opinions on a travel discussion board?

The point is, we all know intellectually that the people who stand up and give feedback are, in general, those who represent the most extreme views. They might be the angriest or the happiest, but they’re not average (and I do think people tend to speak up more when they’re unhappy). Even knowing this, it’s very easy to feel like the best way to listen is to respond to the people who talk the loudest.

Another example: I recently held a meeting for a group of 10 people to ask for their feedback on a new program. Over the course of the one-hour meeting, six people spoke freely, three made a few comments, and one person said nothing. After the meeting, we sent a note to the participants and were very specific and very direct that we really wanted feedback and further thoughts. Only then did the person who had been silent in the meeting write an incredibly thoughtful, two-page email in response.

There are two points here:

1. Listen to those who talk the loudest, and be honest with yourself in reflecting on the feedback you’re hearing. If there’s a kernel of truth, that person is a “canary in a coal mine” – someone who is speaking up early and probably represents a silent majority. But also be ready to hear the feedback, consider it, and discard it. This too is a form of leadership.

2. Make sure you ask for feedback lots of times in lots of ways. This is as much about creating a culture of feedback (within your organization and with your stakeholders) as it is about how you ask, being genuine when you ask, and asking a lot of times in lots of different ways.

To end, a quotation from the Buddha:

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it
or who has said it,
not even if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense.