Growth Times

At Growthroute, we believe that start-up leaders should encourage candid inputs on their company and products, and be open to discussing things that don’t work. They should welcome that feedback at least as well as they receive compliments on their successes.

Highlighting deficiencies in due time (and offering solutions) gives entrepreneurs an opportunity to address them before they really hurt, while surrounding oneself with yes-sayers is a well-known recipe for failure – and yet still as common today as it was millennia ago. So you don’t want to surround yourself with either yes- or nay-sayers, you want smart folks who tell it as it is. In the age of twitter,  getsatisfaction, yelp and blogs, being able to productively process their feedback - even when perceived as harsh - is more important today than ever before. Not doing it means not getting it.

It all starts within

In my experience, rowing in the right direction as a company requires a unique ability to invite, intelligently filter and incorporate constructive criticism. This ability must be built into your start-up culture and processes. It is absolutely critical not to prevent anyone -be it in your team or outside- from expressing substantiated concerns – and even less substantiated ones. And that starts with not punishing them when they do. Companies who don’t practice this miss critical market signals and drown in their own self-delusion.

It also starts at the top. The founders are usually the single biggest impediments to fostering a culture of constructive criticism. More than any other type, entrepreneurs tend to be driven by a strong love of freedom and independence, and we also like to be solely associated with the decisions that led our companies to success. While entrepreneurship pride helps us at many levels, unfortunately, it also makes it harder to open ourselves to criticism and learn from it quickly. 

Have you experienced start-ups that felt a lot like the Church of Scientology? Where you were “in” or “out”. Part of the tribe, or outcast. Where performance mattered less than “fit” with founders, something so fickle it leaves everyone with a differing thought wonder whether they will be around the next day. You know, organizations where real decisions are taken behind close doors, people who don’t contribute anything are still around because the founders like them, and turnover is high.

Too many start-up founders think that to row in the same direction, team members need to be somewhat constrained in their ability to think critically. They establish a culture encouraging groupthink and “following the leader” – while punishing anyone voicing a different opinion on fundamental leadership matters . There, “team-playing abilities” actually mean “blind submission to the top”. That kind of personality cult and indoctrination may feel good for the founder but it’s not doing any service to the company. Silencing people who sighted the icebergs might help momentarily calm the passengers (including investors, often a key reason for the opacity  – more than anyone, they should encourage a culture of transparency) but it doesn’t make danger disappear.

As entrepreneurs, please, let’s not require anyone to “believe”. Belief is not prescribed, it is earned. No one “believes” because you ask them to or pay them for, they believe because there is a good reason for them to. It’s our job to give them a reason. Don’t ask your people to “believe” in you and your ideas. Make them believe in your company by showing its capacity to fix mistakes, to correct trajectories and to produce great things as a result. Hire not followers, but people who showed they can accomplish great things and have a commitment not to you or even your vision, but to the success of the company.

At a company I previously was involved with, I highlighted – only after completing plenty of value-added projects as most there know well- that product development was well behind schedule (several release deadlines missed) and politely suggested that for a while, one of the founders might want to spend his time make the technology work as opposed to dealing with other matters. Most people in the team had the same concerns. Opening up my mouth was not in my direct interest, but in that of the company, and that’s why I did it. I also thought the founder would be clever enough to integrate that feedback productively instead of reacting to it instinctively.

Saying it publicly was interpreted as a lack of faith, and I was fired summarily. Keeping in line with the overall philosophy, at the time I was warned against talking publicly about my experience – the kind of things that makes you want to write a blog post about it. Much time has passed, but the company stagnates with a solution that, by all accounts, still doesn’t work and does not achieve traction. Many of my colleagues there, including my successor, have experienced the same fate and been ousted – scapegoats are obviously in demand. If that’s the culture you want to create, be ready for the results. Very sad, especially since it would be so easily fixable, and so much potential is lost by this approach.

Every company has problems. What differentiates the winners from the losers is the ability to recognize those issues and address them quickly and openly. Even a core deficiency can usually be fixed quite rapidly, once spotted. One just needs to be able to hear the signals.  Foster an atmosphere of truth. Chances are everyone will row in the same direction if they feel you are going in the right direction and that they contributed to choosing it. People naturally want to believe and to contribute.

Same goes for outside critics

Repeatedly, founders make the mistake of thinking that journalists, product reviewers, bloggers, and other messengers threaten a company’s momentum. They don’t. What does is how good the company’s solution is, and how the company reacts to their feedback.

In practice, I am sometimes contacted and asked to comment on new products, especially on my blog Semantics Incorporated. I also pick new solutions on which I want to offer my impressions. In two cases since the start of this year, entrepreneurs expressed discontent when as part of my review, I highlighted a few core deficiencies (quite often even next to an ocean of praises!). One even launched personal attacks on twitter as a result (see my blog if you want to know who did ;)

I am not alone. In the recent and less recent past, unfortunately, I have witnessed quite a few entrepreneurs being keen on receiving public accolades but quick to dismiss any constructive comments – and even go out of their way to attack the commenter instead of recognizing her help, thanking her, genuinely asking for clarifications and clinically considering the comments as valuable inputs – which would be the right thing to do, and would gain them lots of public goodwill. Other entrepreneurs, like Andraz Tori when I criticized the email version of his product Zemanta (whose blog version I praise extensively and continue to use avidly – see at the end of this post) have done just that and earned my highest respect.

Being told that your baby is ugly is tough as an entrepreneur. I know that first-hand. But the good news is that, unlike the biological kind (for now), you are not stuck with this baby as is, you can improve it. And while you may have heard that your product is ugly, the commenter may have just intended to say that it would have more potential with some minor changes.

I work quite hard at trying to provide unbiased and productive analysis, and as a result my comments often highlight weaknesses and shortcomings, next to strengths and praises. I always strive to provide corresponding solutions. That’s nothing personal. I don’t make exceptions to that rule, even with friends, and I don’t want anyone, even friends, to spare me the truth either.  Now, don’t take me wrong, there are some rules of engagement: not criticizing everything with little or no substance and without trying to offer solutions, not using overly aggressive language, and not doing it with a hidden agenda, for example. But when assessing whether someone has crossed those lines, remember that the common entrepreneur’s bias works towards magnifying those signals and minimizing the actual information that they channel. So, before you throw down the gauntlet, take a minute, think about what the person is trying to say, and reflect on what could be useful in the context of your company.

Let’s not be utopian, human nature is at work here. Ego gets in the way. As a rule, we tend to prefer those who support us. But ask yourself: who, really, supports us? The ones providing constant positive feedback, even if insincere? Or the ones highlighting a potential trap that may prevent you from reaching our objectives? Don’t be so quick at dismissing constructive criticism and qualifying your commenters as biased or unproductive whiners. More often than not, they are not. The main reason most of us comment on things is ultimately because we want them to work better for us. When human nature becomes highly counter-productive, override it.

Of course, I am not interested in any feedback you might have on this post ;) (well, if you really insist, you can place a comment, and I also just claimed a GetSatisfaction page for Growthroute at http://getsatisfaction.com/growthroute - it may take a few days before they approve it, apparently, so please be patient and do return to it!)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Managing Feedback (slideshare.net)
• A Risky Approach to Feedback (openmode.ca)
• Criticizing Your Friends is Hard (openmode.ca)

Develop, Scale blogs, constructive criticism, customer feedback, Entrepreneur, feedback, getsatisfaction, innovation, journalist, leadership, market feedback, product development, product review, Start Up, twitter, yelp