How to use what is not there to improve what is there

Photo by Dano

Yesterday I was reading an intriguing Chnagethis manifesto by Matthew E. May called: Creative Elegance – The Power of Incomplete Ideas. May argues the there is a great power in leaving things out. A concept he calls “the missing piece”:

What isn’t there can often trump what is.

May gives examples from art, TV, film and business to demonstrate that sometimes, creativity can be achieved not by creating something new, but by deliberately taking something out or leaving missing pieces. And these inspiring examples got me thinking of other examples where this idea could be used.

Example one – the missing piece in the feedback process

When I teach and evaluate feedback skills I always emphasize to people the importance of asking and listening first and only then deciding on a course of action. I am constantly surprised to see smart people go into a conversation without first understanding the other side problem – is it lack of knowledge, is it misunderstanding or is a shortage of ability. Until you understand that, you cannot really contribute anything to the other person. I just realized that what I am talking about is how the missing piece changes the conversation. How without this information, the conversation is a totally different one.

Next time I am going to give this class I am planning to use the example from the manifesto (which I am not going to ruin for you) to show how powerful the missing piece is and what happens the minute we discover it.

Example two – the unnoticed employees

Similarly, I remember when I was a course commander in the Israeli Air force I was leading a course which was comprised of participants who lacked motivation and had a lot of discipline problems. Usually, we spent a lot of time dealing with and giving attention to the people who were undisciplined.

Until one day we noticed something. When we do that, the phenomenon spreads across the course participants. By ignoring the “regular” soldiers, those who did not give us any problems and focusing on the trouble makers, we were not only unable to take care of troublemakers, we created more trouble makers. We were pushing those who did not act up to act up, as they, like any normal human being, wanted the attention and recognition for a job well done.

I think this relates easily to the workplace. How is your time divided? How much time you spend with you under-performing employees compared to others? How many times to you recognize, award or give feedback to the employees that are not overachievers or underachievers, but are simply doing their job. If, as Woody Allen says: “80 percent of success is just showing up“, don’t we need to make sure we do not ignore those people who are doing everything that is expected of them?

Example three – lack of friction

Lastly, it made me think of a post by Bob Sutton that I read a while back and left a lasting impression on me. The post was called on noticing what you don’t notice, and this is what he wrote:

It is one of those phrases that applies to all sorts of things, great customer experiences where good things happen and your feel no friction, organizational practices that are seamless and painless, and even government services that seem designed to reduce the burden on you.

Sometimes, Sutton claims, the really great services, are the ones that are transparent, that we don’t notice they are there. Or in other words: the missing pieces.

So, how can you use the idea of the missing piece to improve your business, teamwork or personal life?

Elad

Two of the most important concepts of feedback

Two days ago I wrote about an interview with Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s CEO, focusing on one of the quotes in the interview that got me really angry. But, as mad as I was, I must admit that most of interview made a lot of sense and there were two quotes that I found really interesting. I want to discuss one of them today. Here it is:

Q. And how do you give feedback?

A. I have the puppy theory. When the puppy pees on the carpet, you say something right then because you don’t say six months later, “Remember that day, January 12th, when you peed on the carpet?” That doesn’t make any sense. “This is what’s on my mind. This is quick feedback.” And then I’m on to the next thing.

If I had my way I wouldn’t do annual reviews, if I felt that everybody would be more honest about positive and negative feedback along the way. I think the annual review process is so antiquated. I almost would rather ask each employee to tell us if they’ve had a meaningful conversation with their manager this quarter. Yes or no. And if they say no, they ought to have one. I don’t even need to know what it is. But if you viewed it as meaningful, then that’s all that counts.

Two important concepts of giving feedback are revealed in this quote.

Promptness – the closer the feedback to the event the more effective it is for both parties (the giver and the receiver). We see so many things during a day that we want to communicate to our peers, but we hold them back. While I do agree that you should not always say everything immediately, the longer you wait the less effective the feedback will be. It looks something like this:

  

When you look at this graph you immediately understand what the problem with quarterly evaluations is. The feedback on the beginning of the quarter is just not effective and might actually be a waste of time for both sides.

Consistency – feedback should be given all the time. Not at a predetermined time once a quarter. But all along the year. This is where I disagree with Bratz. The question is not whether you had one meaningful conversation with your manager once a quarter. The question is how often during the quarter did you have meaningful conversations with your manager. Conversations that create value for you and are not done just to fill some kind of form or requirement from HR. If constructive feedback is given consistently, the answer will be all the time. And if it is done all the time, there is a high probability that we are dealing with a good boss.

 Elad

More on the art of giving praise

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I love this blog post, “The art of giving praise”, by Steven DeMaio on the Harvard Business Review blog. As someone who has been teaching the art of feedback and is a firm believer in the importance of positive recognition, I still face some hurdles when I give positive feedback and I think DeMaio’s post confronted some of these hurdles.

People sometimes find it harder to give positive feedback then negative feedback. Especially to people who are humble and are eager to learn, because they feel a little bit shy while listening to how good they performed. And the person giving the feedback feels a little, well, stupid, saying to the other guy how good he was. It’s awkward and it seems like a waste of time. After all, they guy did it well. I know. I have been there.

That is why I think the first tip given by DeMaio is really important:

Be truly specific. General compliments like “Great job!” or “Excellent presentation!” surely have their place, especially as you hurry to your next meeting. But precise feedback does much more, both for the ego of the recipient and for the quality of her future work. And guess what? “You were so inspiring” or “I loved your final pitch” isn’t specific enough. Tell Carmen that her well-organized tables in part 2 helped you realize that the team’s new project is actually an extension of the previous one (contrary to how others have framed the new venture) and that key components can be imported to save time. She might be able to build on the point at the next team meeting. At the very least, you’ve helped her identify a takeaway message that she delivered successfully.

If you concentrate your feedback not only on what was done well, but also on the ramifications of it, both tangible and intangible, your allow the listener to get a better insight of the implications of his positive behaviour. Sometimes, this person is aware that he is good at something, but does not understand all the effects his positive performance had. Feedback is about providing information that the performer cannot see or hear by himself. It is an attempt to put a real-time mirror that will enable the listener to see himself fully. We need to remember that that feedback giver sees things that the receiver doesn’t and we should be careful from assuming otherwise. Thus, the more information we give, the more valuable it will be for the listener.

But, focusing on positive feedback is even more important. I have seen many people who are truly eager to learn and improve and their enthusiasm leads them to ignore the positive feedback and focus only on the negative feedback. “OK”, they say, “just tell me what I need to improve”.

While learning from your mistakes and improving aspects of your performance is important, an enormous untapped potential lies in recognizing ones strengths and leveraging them to future better performance.  That is why I think DeMaio’s tip #3: “Praise with action, not just words” is an important one. It holds an understanding about the importance of a person’s strengths and the fact that leveraging your strength might produce superior results to improving your weakness.

Like DeMaio, I don’t think we should give positive feedback just because it is the polite thing to do or in order to mitigate the negative feedback. This actually can hinder the effectiveness of the feedback process. But as soon as we recognize the importance of positive feedback and spend time making it count, the recipients of our feedback will not only appreciate it, but will learn to use it in order to advance their next performance and overcome their weakness.

Elad

What to do with feedback?

photo by Shadowalker

Today on the Freakonomics blog, Stephen J. Dubner writes a very interesting post titled:  ”The Downside of Feedback“. As somebody who is very interested in feedback, I was immediately drawn to it. What? Is there a downside for feedback?

But when I started reading it, I realized, Dubner was not dealing with the kind of feedback I was thinking about. His post was inspired by an article in The Washington Post written by Hank Stuever dealing with the effects fans have on movie production, in this case the new Star-Trek movie. Here is the main idea:

Has our quibbling worked? Yes, if you believe in the collective force of fans and the “wiki” social ideal — that group input only improves the result, guiding by peer pressure if nothing else. No, if you think filmmakers are too beholden to fans. Quibbling does not produce a Heath Ledger-style Joker; that is the result of an actor and a writer and a director coming unhinged from the original material. Quibbling produces a Watchmen movie, which tenderly reproduced the 1988 graphic novel panel-for-panel and still failed — pleasing fans, perhaps, but excluding newcomers.

And Dunber adds:

It’s an interesting and timeless point that Stuever raises. Creators who wish to honor the fans’ concerns may wring out the originality that can make art compelling; and creators who ignore the fans’ concerns risk alienating them

This made me think about feedback in general:

1. We should never ignore feedback. We should always try to get some. Feedback is just a mirror. You look in the mirror almost every day. Why? Because it is the best way to know how you and what your state is. And because you see things in the mirror that you would never be able to see otherwise. In a business, professional or even a personal setting, these mirrors don’t always exist. This is what feedback is for.

 2. If we think about costumer feedback we need to think about what our customers want and listen to them. This is a given. But we need not forget two things. One:  the costumers don’t always know what they want. As Malcolm Gladwell tries to claim in his famous Sgpagethi Sauce talk at TED, we sometime need to create the market for costumers, one that they did not even think about asking for. Second: our non- customers are just, or maybe as important as our existing customers. A short quote from a manifesto called: “Uncovering Business Breakthroughs: Are you Tuned In or Tuned Out?“:

Existing customers represent a small percentage of the market opportunity for most businesses, so basing a product development strategy solely on what your existing customers want is flawed. Worse, existing customers have different market problems than noncustomers (buyers who don’t yet do business with you), and only frame their view of your future based on incremental improvements to their past experiences.

3. In business feedback, as in personal feedback, it is ultimately up to you to decide what you change and what you don’t change. Sometime, the feedback just isn’t suitable for you. Some time, the feedback does not understand your message. And sometime, the givers of the feedback just don’t know what they are talking about. But all of this does not mean that you do not have to listen, assess and re-examine your assumptions. It is up to you to use your judgment. Don’t forget that feedback is a tool.

So, how have you used feedback that you have been getting lately?

Elad

Manager? What do you mean by that?

Photo by Abulic Monkey

When you hear the word “manager”, what do you think about? Which role do you imagine?

Yesterday, I was presented with the following question in class:

“From your experience, what specific qualities does it take to be an effective manager?”

Now, I have my own answers, like the ability to listen, to identify strengths and weakness in others and the ability to give specific, constructive and practical feedback. But then someone in our class said: “entrepreneurism”. For a minute I was shocked. I value entrepreneurism, but what that has to do with managing people?

Then it hit me. He was not talking about managing people; he probably had a different picture of a manager in mind. Because, if you are a product manager or a customer service manager or any other type of role that comes with the word “manager” attached to it, you don’t necessarily manage other people. You might even work alone or directly with clients but with no subordinates under your direct supervision. You might work in as a part of team of very independent people who work as equals.

And if any of those descriptions fit your role, it means that this role requires different “specific qualities” in order to be effective. For example, you might need to have enough confidence to admit that you don’t know everything. Or you might need to ability to make hard decisions in short times. Or you might need to have leadership qualities.  And sometimes you might need to have entrepreneurship qualities. But not always. It depends on your role. Because the fact that you have the word ”manager” in your title or on your business card does not mean anything.

So, what is the bottom line? I think that when we discuss the word “manager” or think of hiring someone for a “managerial” role, it is very important to understand and to communicate” what exactly this manager is? Because the word “manager” triggers the imagination of people differently and it had become too generic to be understood by its own.

Elad

Relationships or communication?

Today, I read a very interesting manifesto called: “Today’s Trojan Horse” by Diana McLain Smith. The manifesto talks about the importance of relationships. Smith claims that people disregard relationships and treat them like nonimportant soft-skills due to mistaken beliefs about our ability to influence and utilize them.

As I was reading this, I thought to myself that although the focus on relationships is important and interesting and might be even useful, what is really needed is a change in the way people in organizations communicate. The problems people experience in professional relationships are just a manifestation of their inability to communicate. The problem is that ironically, most organizations today operate in a way that hinders effective communication. If you will come into a team in an existing organization and try to talk about your feelings and putting everything on the table, in the way the manifesto suggests, you will run into great difficulties. Not only people will refuse, openly or not, to cooperate with you, but actually the infrastructure of communication in the organization does not support these attempts. There is no time for such communication in meetings. There are no regular feedbacks sessions that help people communicate what they are really thinking. There are no meeting between high management and the low-end workers. There is no flow of information.

I am not saying you should not take the advice the manifesto expenses and try it out. On the contrary, I think most of it is parallel to “communicate” concept I lay out in my E-book, “Playing It to Excellence and Happiness in Real Life – Five Concepts I Learned by Playing Basketball, Working and just Living”. I am just saying that there needs to be a deeper change in the infrastructure and organizational culture of most organizations in order to allow communication or relationships to flourish. This is a process that will take time and effort, resources that will only be allocated as soon as senior management begins to understand the long term effects of these concepts.

Elad

Why don’t they give us some feedback?

A few weeks ago I took a fast reading course (actually, a 3D reading course). The course only gives you the basic concepts, and then you have to practice the skills for about a month. So the last few days I have been reading a book a day. I started with easier books and found myself reading a number of business books.

Almost every time I read such a book, I am amazed how much of its content is dedicated to fields like training, human and leadership development and feedback. Almost every book I read has an episode dedicated to these subjects, emphasizing its importance and giving tips how to become a more efficient leader and manager by being a coacher and by giving and receiving sound feedback.

Off course, this does not surprise me. I have known for quite some time that in order to be a truly successful manager and team leader, you have to sharpen your “soft skills”. The real wonder is why do so many people and organizations ignore these soft skills and try to manage people with communicating with them.

In the last few years since I graduated and my friends started to work in “real jobs” (by which I mean not student jobs) I find myself talking to people in different positions and in different companies. The number one complaint of people is the lack of soft skills by their managers. They get no feedback and they feel like no body listens to them. I know this by personal experience. When I worked as a lawyer (not to mention an intern in a law office) feedback was scarce, to say the least. The management of the firm was not really interested in what we had to say. Even when I came with initiatives to improve the training process of interns it was disregarded. Now, when you an employee who wants to initiate, the only thing you can do worse than turning him down, is ignoring him. But the problem was that there was no clear communications between the “management” of the firm and the “regular” workers.

This really surprises me. The people running that firm were very intelligent people. As I am sure where the people who were the bosses of friends, I am sure, that if you ask them, they will explain how important communication and feedback are. So why, don’t they practice it. In two off the books I read, the authors pointed out that most Americans who quit their job does not do it because of their salary, but because they feel they are not appreciated enough or because they don’t like their boss. Those books are filled with examples of business doing just that. Businesses are losing great people because there is no coherent communications and feedback system.

Why is it so hard to create a system where there is ample room for feedback in both directions? What makes this a great challenge for a manager? What is it about the feedback and other “soft skills” that makes people run away and focus on numbers or on giving orders?

These are questions I ask myself all the time and that I will try to answer in this blog. I would appreciate comments and ideas…

 

Elad