Useful vs. Useless Feedback

Below is a short talk I gave to the team at Mattermark a few weeks ago. As I was sitting on a plane tonight reflecting, I thought it might be helpful to publish & share. It isn’t meant to be advice, but rather it’s another great opportunity to share a little bit about how we work at Mattermark. I’m looking forward to feedback.

“Seek and share the truth.” We chose that as one of our values because it’s something that we’ve done since day one of this company. It’s something that comes naturally to Danielle, Kevin, myself, and many of you, but despite that it’s still really hard. Today I want to share a truth.

Our team has grown by almost twenty since the start of the year. There are now 41 people at our company, and we’re going to keep growing. We are all driven, hard-working, passionate, smart people, and we’re all here because of that. I respect each of you because of that. Now, the company we have is the company that each and every one of us has built together. Some parts we built deliberately and other parts just happen. Some parts we love, and there are other parts we don’t.

I’d like to talk about the feedback that is not useful. Useful feedback is when there is at least one thing the recipient of that feedback can act on to address the issue. When a person gets feedback — positive or negative — they both feel something and then they want to do something. This happens regardless of whether you want it to, so it’s wise to take that into account.

Here’s an example of feedback that isn’t useful. Imagine you’re a plumber, and someone calls you to tell you, “Somewhere in San Francisco there is a leaky faucet.” That’s not very helpful. There isn’t enough information. There is only enough information for you, as a plumber, to know that some one has a problem some where.

I get feedback like this every week at Mattermark. Here’s a real example from the last year: someone at the company sat down with me to tell me “Some people are interviewing elsewhere right now, but I can’t tell you who. I just thought you should know.” I probably spent 10+ hours trying to fix that afterward. I didn’t know who was looking to leave, so I had to guess. I think I did 1:1s with almost everyone at the company trying to find out who was unhappy. I felt powerless to solve this problem. I felt sad that people weren’t happy here. I felt scared that something in our company was broken. It was emotionally painful. I don’t think they wanted me to feel those things, and I don’t think they wanted me to run around like a crazy person trying to fix a problem I couldn’t see, but I did.

I hope you all believe me when I say that I want nothing more than to build a company where people can be sincerely happy, fulfilled, and challenged. It’s important for you all to really deeply know this, because doing so is going to be incredibly hard. Throughout our company’s history, I’ve tried — with varying degrees of success — to create an environment where everyone here has a voice that means something. I get a lot of feedback on how we’re doing, where we’re going, and what’s happening at the company. Some of it is written, some of it is verbal, some of it is anonymous. Some of it is useful and some of it is not.

I wanted to help, but I didn’t have enough detail for that feedback to be useful. Useful feedback would have sounded like, “I thought you should know that I sat down with Carl, he’s really frustrated about not having clear goals, and he’s struggling working with his manager.”

I want to be clear, I’m not asking anyone to tell me something they heard in confidence. People have a right to privacy, and if someone tells you something in confidence, please do not tell me. If you feel like you can protect a person and still tell me something that is actionable, then I’d love to listen.

• Bad example: Carl told me he’s angry about our lack of a ping pong table. He didn’t want me to tell you, but I think you should know.
• Good example: Someone at the company is really upset about our lack of a ping pong table.
• Really bad example: Someone at the company is upset but I can’t tell you who or why.

The second example is good because I still have enough information to do something. The third example is a massive face palm. I really want to help solve problems here, but without some level of detail I can’t — and I hate not being able to fix something when I know something is broken. If you want to torture me, this is how.

This isn’t just about feedback. Feedback as a word can imply some kind of positivity, or that you know what should be happening instead of something that is. I want you all to know that it is okay to come to me with complaints. A complaint means someone stands for something, and I respect that.

I want to give you another real world Mattermark example of frustrating feedback. Each month in our employee NPS, we ask, “While there are always a lot of things to improve, what’s ONE SINGLE thing you would suggest improving about Mattermark to make it a better place to work?” One particular responder gave us a 9 and answered with one word: “communication.”

I agree we have a lot to work on regarding communication, but this particular piece of feedback is useless. I don’t actually have any idea about what this person thinks we can improve on. It’s pretty ironic, because this person recognized we have a communication problem, but isn’t helping solve it. To be clear, I am not trying to make this person feel bad. I am just trying to call attention to something that’s happening so we can all be aware of it.

This is an example of seeking and sharing the truth. We will get what we tolerate. If we want to improve our communication, which I believe we should, we need to make sure we’re actually communicating and not just saying words.

So to summarize:

• Useful feedback is when there is at least one thing the recipient of that feedback can act on to address the issue.
• Think about how someone will feel after you give them feedback, regardless of whether it’s about them, their team, or the company
• Think about what you want that person to do once they know what you think
• Next time you give me or someone else feedback, ask yourself: are they going to be able to do something with this information?

Published in Startups, Wanderlust, and Life Hacking

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