Ask, don’t tell

Giving “less blah” and “more ah!” product feedback

As an entrepreneur-in-residence removed temporarily from the daily grind of startup life, I’ve been able to spend a bit more time providing product feedback to other entrepreneurs. While it’s been a lot of fun and hopefully useful for folks, it’s also given me time to reflect on the meta question of “how does one actually give helpful product feedback?”

I’ve participated in countless sessions in my career where I’ve played all types of roles — the wet-behind-the-ears junior product manager witnessing his team receive feedback, the senior product lead seeking his CEO’s direct feedback, the management team receiving feedback from the board, the manager providing the feedback, the outside advisor sharing a 3rd party perspective and the friend who simply wants to help. More often than not, feedback sessions have seemed like a good idea initially, but have fallen short of being truly helpful. And, in many of these cases, I’m sure I’ve been partially to blame.

Like a lot of things, the notions that “more is better” and “any feedback is good feedback” do not apply. Often, the meeting’s outcome is mind-numbingly prescriptive and emotionally deflating, which can leave even the best product managers, designers and engineers sapped of creative thoughts and energy to tackle the problem at hand.

A “great session” is rare, and you know it was great when everyone leaves feeling inspired and challenged. The process of creating products can be emotionally draining so ideally a feedback session leaves us recharged and inspired. That, however, doesn’t imply a bunch of back-patting and head-nodding. The feedback should be challenging — it’s the sign of an engaged conversation. It ideally results in a handful of insights or questions that cast the problem in a new light.

In most cases, regardless of your role (peer product manager, board member, CEO, team lead, friend), you’re often not being asked to fix or solve problems. If you are, that’s a separate issue. You’re primarily there to provide a perspective the team doesn’t have. All you do is wield a flashlight that helps shed light on things they missed — you point the flashlight, but it’s up to the team and you to process what you see and ultimately up to the team to decide what they do (or don’t).

This is all easier said than done. I’m still constantly trying to improve how I give feedback in product sessions. There are times when I feel helpful and other times where I know I’ve fallen prey to bad habits. Nowadays, I remind myself of a couple key grounding principles that help me “behave myself”:

• You don’t live and breathe this like they do. Respect the fact that they’ve thought about this way longer and harder than you have. Instead of jumping to conclusions or immediate reactions, ask questions that probe the logic behind decisions.
• Ask more questions than you declare statements. Questions are more likely to engage the mind and lead to creative riffs, whereas declarative statements can often be an uncomfortable dead-end.
• When asking questions, they should be of two types: 1) to clarify your understanding and 2) to challenge underlying thinking and reasons. Playing back what you hear and getting clarification can be incredibly illuminating, even if you aren’t “saying anything new”. If something doesn’t feel right, framing your thought as a question to dig into the underlying rationale will often be more instructive than prescribing a solution.
• Have a P.O.V. All the question asking isn’t meant to suggest you shouldn’t have an opinion. You’re presumably being asked for feedback because of your P.O.V. You can just be more effective at sharing it if you frame it with questions and you assume your P.O.V. can and should be shaped by their response.

Here are two examples (picked different levels of fidelity) where I’ve had to actively reframe the question to get at a point:

• In a higher-level product strategy discussion, I didn’t quite understand why the product was being positioned a certain way. Instead of saying, “you shouldn’t be focused on that part of the market, instead think about it this way”, I dug deeper by asking, “when your end customer uses this app, do you want them to think that it’s complementary or a substitute to these other X, Y, Z app experiences.” Framing it that way allowed for us to discuss the underlying intention and then back into a potentially new positioning.
• In a more detailed pixel-level UI review, I got a little confused by two competing calls to action. Instead of jumping to a specific solution, I bit my tongue and said, “OK, so I’m a little confused here by the design. What’s the most important thing that you want me to do on this screen?” From there, we had a baseline to brainstorm good solutions.

Giving great product feedback is one of the hardest parts of the creative process. I know I’m going to fall into a bad habit here or there, but every session is just another opportunity to get a little better and hopefully capture that rare and elusive “great session”.