The open 360

December 8, 2011December 8, 2011 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

I recently participated in a powerful, surprising, and very positive experience of open communication and feedback. The idea was simple and a bit terrifying: bring a team together and have, one-by-one, an in-person, open 360-degree feedback conversation about each member of the team.

Meaning: sitting in a room with 5 of my colleagues, they went one-by-one describing how we work together, what it’s like to work for me, examples of my strengths and their wishes for how I could grow as a professional. We then went on to the next person.

Going in, it felt scary. Most people are nervous both giving and receiving feedback; doing so publicly feels (at first blush) either like a way to turn the intensity up to a breaking point OR to run the risk of having the whole experience be so watered-down as to not be of much value to anyone.

It had neither of these pitfalls. A little skeptical going in, I found it motivating, supportive, constructive, and reinforcing of the team. As one person in our group said, describing the experience, “We all wear who we are on our foreheads, but we never create a space to really talk about this with each other.” Indeed, in nearly all cases the feedback about each person was honest, clear, and very consistent.

Having done this once, my guess is that this needs to be done in the right way to work. Here are guidelines we used, which I found very effective:

The goal is to give clear supportive and constructive feedback to each member of the team
We picked one person at a time to whom to give feedback
Each of the five people giving feedback had four minutes in which to give feedback (we used a timer and allowed ourselves to go over a little but not a lot)
Feedback consisted of:

Context of one’s working relationship with the person

General assessment of the person’s working style and performance, with at least two positive statements and specific examples.

At least one piece of developmental advice, phrased as, “My wish for you is….”

Once the full group has given feedback, the person receiving feedback is invited to ask questions, comment, etc. and have a short (10 minutes or less) discussion

With our group of six, it took about a half hour to give feedback to each person, plus time for discussion. So this is definitely a serious time commitment, and we broke it up into three sessions (with the most senior person in the team going first) so we’d have the emotional energy to get through the whole process.

The most surprising thing, to me, was the expression of a shared commitment to each others’ success. Person after person describing your strengths and where you shine is incredibly affirming – and it’s something we do too rarely. The “my wish for you” framing of developmental advice steered everyone clear of comments like “it’s bad when you do this because….” and created a sense of support and collective ownership of the wishes, while at the same time providing clarity about ways each of us could take steps to realize our full potential. I also suspect that going through this process as a group cracked the door open to more open conversations that will happen much more naturally and will flow much more easily now that we’ve gotten this experience under our belts.

This process may not be for everyone and may not work in all groups. You’d need a starting foundation of support and constructive conversation, and you’ll need, I suspect, at least one member of the group who is good at making these sorts of conversations successful and productive and who can model the kind of conversation you’re looking to have.

But if you’re even a little bit curious I’d encourage you to take the leap. As I said, going in I had a lot of doubts and I found the experience to break through a lot of the junk that keeps us from real and open dialogue; and it was about 100 times more real than the much more formal, constrained process I’m used to seeing as part of typical year-end performance reviews.

Give it a go, and let us know how it went.

Say it out loud

September 27, 2011September 26, 2011 ~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

That thing you dream of doing someday? That thing that you’re working on already, even if you’re just teething on the idea? Tell somebody about it.

Tell somebody, even if in a whisper, about that future and what it will look like: how the world will look; the person you will be; the dream.

“Somebody” is a person you trust, a person who matters to you and who matters to the idea. ”Somebody” will be touched by the idea and the brighter future the idea will create.

Even if it’s just one person, the act of saying the idea out loud puts it out there, makes it just a bit more real. The act of saying it out loud gives one person the chance to react to it, and when they don’t laugh out loud (because of course they won’t) you’ll believe just a bit more in something that seems impossible. And that might just give you that additional ounce of courage you need at the exact moment you need it.

Say it out loud.

(email counts too if that’s easier for you).

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“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’”

– Mary Anne Radmacher

The story-reality gap

April 12, 2011April 11, 2011 ~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

Whether or not you consider yourself a marketer or a salesperson, one way or another you’re telling stories all the time. It happened the moment you traded in your college rucksack for that nice Kenneth Cole leather briefcase; it happens each day when you talk (or don’t) in meetings, when you speak (or don’t) about topics that are a stretch for you, when you write an email (or don’t) in a voice that stands out from the crowd.

Your organization is also telling stories all the time, and the easiest, most obvious water-cooler scuttlebutt is about your story-reality gap: how the software suite that your company just touted in a $3 million, 30-second Superbowl ad is just a mash-up of so-so apps that were just rebundled and re-branded; how the ink wasn’t even dry on the financing plan when it was put in front of your Series B investors; how you don’t have everything just right yet, so how can your CEO be talking about the next phase of growth?

Here’s a dirty little secret: that gap is supposed to exist, it has to exist, it’s the gap between where you are now and where you’re going. And without this gap, you might never get there.

If your organization isn’t living this gap then it’s going too slowly, it’s dreaming too small, it’s getting too comfortable in its little sandbox. This doesn’t mean you always have to grow fast – in terms of revenues, employees, customers – but it means that you have the potential to teeter on the edge of exactly what you know you can deliver today and what you dream of delivering tomorrow. Daring to dream out loud is just the first step.

Never lie, and never ever make promises to your customers that you can’t keep (nothing spreads faster than stories about broken promises).

But the world understands that five-year plans are aspirational. You’ll never rally the troops with small dreams.

How change happens, really

April 7, 2010April 6, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

What I was taught in school and in the early days of my career:

analyze – plan – budget – convene – write fancy document – present – get approvals – get buy-in – hold some more meetings – adjust budget – communicate and roll out the plan.

How it really works:

sense – dare – dream – share your dream with a few people you trust – get the resources – ask for permission later

The challenge is, you can’t get good at the second approach if you’re spending all your time working on the first one.

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