The Smoke Screen of Success

How praise can demotivate your most talented team members

When creating a great product (or even a mediocre one) there’s an extensive need to both review and demo work. I would like to explain why it is so important to balance these two topics and how you can spot when they are out of equilibrium.

In the past couple of years (with different product teams) I have experienced talented developers get demotivated by being praised. We adjusted our way of working to prevent this from happening again. And no, we didn’t stop celebrating…

It all starts with the subtle difference between reviewing and demoing work.

1. Review: Please give me as much feedback as possible so I can improve. Examples are: “Dear user, how can I better solve your problem? Dear sales people, how can we make this more sellable? Dear co-worker, how can I improve?”. A review should happen frequently, should be focused on a specific topic and needs to happen in all product development stages. Whether it is an ugly wireframe, a new proposition or working software.
2. Demo: Please give me as much praise (and money) as possible so we can celebrate and continue our great work. Examples are: “Dear customer: look at what we have built based on your input! Dear sales people, let’s sell this greatly improved product! Dear stakeholder, please be happy and support us in our next step.” A demo should be a big deal. It should be well-organised and prepared in detail as it will influence the future of your product.

Balancing time spent on these two topics is extremely important and requires constant inspection and adaptation. Why? You don’t want to loose the most talented people in your team and screw up team dynamics.

Everyone appreciates a genuine compliment. Well, almost everyone. Especially intrinsically motivated and passionate people are sensitive to being complimented on a job well done. Digital product development is tough and can be technically complex. Acknowledging people’s skills, recognizing the effort they put in as a team (and as an individual) and understanding the complexity of the product is important: Support this by giving a genuine and non-conditional compliment once in a while.

The same is actually true for feedback. The best development teams I have worked with thrived on direct and unfiltered user feedback. They wanted all the details, even the nasty ones. Where did our user go wrong? What did he say “exactly”? A culture of detailed and honest feedback drives the quality of your product and the personal development of team members.

Identifying the smoke screen

When there is too much praise while honest feedback is missing people lose sight of reality. I like to call this the Smoke Screen of Success. Signals of this smoke screen are (and yes, I might be exaggerating):

• There are mainly internal stakeholders at product events. No customers. No sales people. Generally no one with a different or outside perspective.
• There is a lack of engagement and/or interaction during product events. People listen, nod and applaud politely while the people on stage praise one another.
• Peers rarely ask for informal feedback. This can be Product Managers who might be too insecure about their vision or engineers who are over-confident of their ability.
• Formal review sessions are organised like demo’s. Instead of asking for feedback and sharing doubts or problems, teams are showcasing their awesomeness.
• Product delivery is celebrated, not product performance.
• Small wins are celebrated like big wins. Celebratory drinks are organised because a new image has been uploaded on the website.
• There is no mention of user validation. Customer needs are rarely discussed, validation results are never shared and invalidation actually never happens.
• Team members are anonymously applauding their own product demo via an online feedback tool. True story…

Smoke screen impact

John Cutler has set up an extensive list on how the long-term potential of a team (and organisation) can be impacted by “Success Theater”. His observations are spot-on, but I’d rather call it a “Smoke Screen” because of the blinding and suffocating effects this culture can have on velocity and team dynamics in the long run.

So how did the smoke screen impact my team? I’ll share a musing of my own:

Following a great product demo (applause, verbal praise, couple of questions, celebratory beers) my team felt a bit uneasy. Yes, the demo was great. Yes, we think the product is great too. Yes, we are happy with the first user feedback and metrics. But something was missing.

During the retrospective we explored this feeling. The team was, in fact, not questioning the quality of the product or demo itself but the quality and knowledge of the audience. They felt our stakeholders barely understood what we were doing and why. From a user perspective, but especially from a technical perspective. Therefore, their compliments on a job well done felt fake.

Wether the team was right or not is trivial. The question is what could we have done differently to prevent this? And what will we change in the future?

What we agreed on is that we should spend more time asking for feedback and explaining stuff in the weeks / days preceding the demo. Small, informal feedback sessions (maybe one-on one conversations is a better word to describe it?) to highlight the specific technicalities and complexities of the product.

The thing is, this should never be limited to a certain period. Do it all the time and anytime. But when you do, keep it short and focused.

How do you secure a healthy balance between reviewing and demoing? How have you embedded it in your way of working?