Crafting Code Podcast

[00:00:16] Allan Stewart: Welcome to the Crafting Code Podcast, where we discuss the importance of doing the right thing at the right time with the right tools. I'm Allan Stewart, a software architect, and lately I've been thinking about decisions where the consequences are both delayed and severe.

[00:00:31] Dave Adsit: I'm Dave Adsit, a VP of engineering, and I have been thinking a lot about preparing for winter.

[00:00:37] Allan Stewart: Our topic for this episode is fast feedback for humans. Now, I think we may have talked in the past about the need for fast feedback loops regarding like when you're writing code or you're doing code reviews, you have automated unit tests, production usage of your features, that sort of thing. But today's topic is focusing more on the social side of the socio-technical system. And what kind of feedback do we get between humans?

[00:01:05] Dave Adsit: Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this recently in terms of managing teams and giving feedback to people that is helpful and useful, but also feedback to between peers. And it's been an important topic of conversation among members of my leadership team. You know, why is feedback important? Well, I think for one thing, everybody that I've worked with, every engineer that I've worked with has wanted to make a positive impact on the system and the people around them. And we don't always know when we are doing a good or bad job at that. You know, most of us think we're doing a pretty good job most of the time at most of the things we do. Or, counterpoint, some of us think we're doing a bad job at most of the things we're doing most of the time. And feedback can help us correct that perception. And be more aligned with reality in terms of our contribution versus how it is being perceived.

[00:02:06] Allan Stewart: Yeah, I like to consider the concept of feedback and kind of as a thought experiment, think about, well, what would things be like if you had no feedback? When we think about just like day-to-day interactions with the world, well, then it would be terrible, right? It's like, oh, I move through my house. But my eyes are still seeing the image that I woke up with, right? Like that would not be useful feedback. Or maybe you only get it, you know, once every 10 minutes or something like that. And you just see that same still. It's like, and we've experienced this a little bit in like certain video games or like a streaming video that just keeps buffering and won't load or, you know, things like that. Where we have delays and lag and you just can't see the result of what you're doing. And so if you're kind of trying to solve a puzzle, but you can't see the puzzle and you're just moving stuff around with your hands and hoping that it's going to be okay. It's really hard to ever accomplish the goal that you've set out for. And socially, it's the same thing.

[00:03:12] Dave Adsit: Just yesterday, I was having a conversation with one of our mutual friends and his internet was really, really, really laggy. And so I would say something and then I would see he would start to say. Something, but then everything would just pixelate and stop and freeze. And I couldn't keep the conversation going because there was only, it was one-sided, you know, it was all, it was all me saying things and then not ever hearing his response in order to update my perceptions, update my view of the world and like continue that conversation. So no feedback is, is rough. Feedback itself can also be challenging. Right? Some feedback is helpful and useful. I'm thinking if you're walking on ice, the feedback you're getting is that this is very slippery. I have no, I have insufficient friction to move effectively, but then when you're walking up, you know, concrete, that's good. You know, dry concrete, good friction. You're able to move forward. You're getting feedback from the ground that you're moving in the direction you want. You're seeing it coming, you know, but then that can be helpful. But then if you run headlong into a brick wall. That. Solid immovable wall is a form of feedback that you should not have been going in this direction at that speed. And sometimes friction or sometimes feedback can be gentle and corrective and helpful. And sometimes it can be very abrupt and destructive or, you know, some, some way damaging. And so I think that. We've probably all experienced different levels and intensities of feedback and different. Different intensities of feedback. Of how much feedback we're getting and how strong the feedback is that we're getting. And some of that is more or less appropriate in the workplace.

[00:05:04] Allan Stewart: Jasonumu Bobind shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting ! Jasonumu ! or focused on a particular topic, or, oh, this is just how I feel like something needs to be. And if people don't speak up, then I don't know what to feel about that. I don't know if I want to say, oh, well, they're all with me. They also are zealous for this thing, which I think is so important. And that's why I'm not getting any feedback, because they're just quietly nodding their heads. But actually, if that were the case, I'd really want it to be a little bit more energetic and a little bit more explicit in their feedback that, yes, we like this. Because my fear is that, no, they don't like what I'm doing, but they just don't want to say it. They don't want to have a confrontation, and that I'm actually making their lives more miserable,

[00:06:14] Dave Adsit: unintentionally, but nonetheless miserable. Yeah, I think it's critical for us to both give and receive feedback in our professional settings so that we can all improve our performance and deliver at the highest possible level. I'm reminded of the experience that I have with my daughter, who I think I've mentioned is in competitive horse rider. And in her team, there are some riders that get a lot of feedback and correction, and they appreciate it. And some riders get a lot of feedback and correction, and they don't want to hear it. And there are some riders that get very little feedback and correction, and they want more, right? And so we pay a professional coach to help her understand where her deficiencies are and how to deliver and perform at a higher level. And if she were to ignore the coach, we would, as parents, would be very upset because paying for her to improve, and if she doesn't want we are wasting our time, right? But there are parents who pay for a coach in the hopes that the coach will tell them how great their kid is, I think. And you think, well, you've got opportunity to improve. And getting feedback helps you improve. And in that kind of a scenario, that is, it's during a lesson, so it's very targeted, specific, and timely feedback, right? And so those are things that I think about being super valuable. Like, hey, you're holding you're holding your hand wrong, change the way you're holding your hand. Oh, I do that, and now things are going better. The same thing can happen to us in our work. My experience in work is that we tend to be not as good at giving feedback to our peers who are supposed to be operating at a similar level to us, right? We're all professional engineers, we're working in a professional environment. I shouldn't have to give you feedback. I don't want to give you feedback. Maybe you're not going to receive the feedback well, I don't know. And so I feel like we don't do as good of a job in a professional setting, typically, of providing feedback that allows people to improve,

[00:08:25] Allan Stewart: or receiving feedback that allows us to improve. Yeah, I've found that I have to be very intentional about it, or it has a tendency to not happen, especially at that peer level. And I think part of it is just a social dynamic. When you're talking with your boss, you know, your direct supervisor, or even potentially other people that, you know, at higher or lower ranks, as it were, I feel like in those scenarios, it's easier to think about feedback, because there's this sense of responsibility, right? So the manager has a responsibility to give feedback to the employee, the employee has a responsibility to tell their manager how things are going and let them know what's going on. But at the peer relationship, it's a little bit trickier, because there's not an automatic appeal to authority there. You have to kind of give some give and difficult. And then the person that you give to the manager is going to be a little bit more difficult. Right? I mean, there's a there's a whole question of whether it will be received well. And we'll talk probably in a minute about, you know, the emotional side of feedback. But also, there's just kind of like this other logistical side of it, where if I give somebody some feedback, and they say, Hmm, and then never do anything about it, the feedback was received, but nothing changed. Well, then I don't know what to do. Nick Leary 1 Because like, I've said my piece, but I have no ability to enforce that I have no ability to make them think that it is important. And sometimes they'll have a different worldview, right? They'll have a different way of thinking about that same topic that may not align with how I think about it. And so we, you can kind of get in this weird place where you're stuck, not knowing, why didn't they act on that feedback? Do they agree? Do they not agree? Do they not care? Is it just there's nobody pushing for that thing to happen. And so that can be difficult. And so like I said, I feel like I have to be very intentional and say, Hey, I want to get feedback. And so I will solicit it, I'll ask, Hey, I want to know. And it's difficult, because it requires a lot of self awareness. And, and then also giving feedback and kind of the same thing, you have to put say, Hey, I think this is important enough that I want to say it and not just drift into mediocrity.

[00:10:54] Dave Adsit: I think one of the things that becomes very important in a scenario like that, whether giving or receiving is specificity. I want you to give me feedback about this experience about this situation about how I performed in this moment about I want specific feedback about this thing. Because if you ask for general feedback, people are going to say, Oh, you're great. It's like the PR review looks good thumbs up approved. Right? Because people do struggle to give specific feedback. But if you narrow the scope to, I want feedback about this thing, or I am going to give you feedback about this situation. You're not a terrible person, you are behaving terribly. Like this is a conversation I have with my eight year old often. Like you, your behavior in this moment is unacceptable. You hate me. No, your behavior in this moment is unacceptable. You are doing x, y, and z, and you should not be doing x, y, z. You know this, I know this, I observe it. We're all on the same page here. I think that specificity is your friend. It also helps take the sting out because you're not telling somebody they are bad. You're telling them this behavior, this outcome, this whatever was not within expected operating parameters.

[00:12:11] Allan Stewart: Yeah. And for me, I think one of the things that has really helped reading crucial conversations. I know what we'll talk about this a little bit more in a minute, but one of the things that really spoke to me out of that book was this idea of telling people how you experienced the situation and avoiding labeling or blame calling. But you're just saying, hey, this was what it was like for me. And trying to really pull back some of that emotion and just say, hey, no, this is what I experienced can help. Yeah, help with that specificity and help say, hey, well, this is why I feel the way that I do. And I'm not calling you a bad person. This is just the effect that your action had, which may have had a bad effect on somebody else. But that doesn't mean that we thought you were maliciously trying to do a bad thing.

[00:12:59] Dave Adsit: Yeah, that reminds me of the concept of SBT, Situation Behavior Impact, or SBI. I think it's SBI. Situation Behavior Impact. Here's a situation. Let me describe it. Here's the behavior. Let me describe it. Here's the impact. Let me describe it. And that helps us clarify what specifically we're talking about. I will say it's sounds a little bit like we're talking mostly about negative feedback. And that is, in fact, consistent with a lot of my experience in the work setting. I have found that people very rarely get positive feedback, get or give positive feedback in a work setting. So much so that the first company I worked at that had formalized one-on-one practice, where the manager would schedule a weekly 30-minute sit down with every employee and just talk about how things are going and what could be improved. And it was a very positive experience. And I think that's a very positive practice that was implemented in this organization. And it was the very first time I had ever experienced it. And so when I saw a meeting pop onto my calendar with my manager, I was certain I was in trouble. And I was walking to this meeting dreading, what did I do? How did I mess up? I really like working here. I really like my team. How can I fix this? I don't know what to do in this situation. I walk in and it was a very positive experience. And I think that's a very positive experience where I received mostly positive feedback for the work I had been doing and how the team was happy that I was trying so hard and this, that, and the other, because I was still new, right? Many of us have only gotten negative feedback in work settings. And I feel like that's a problem because, you know, most of us are trying hard. We want to have a positive impact. We've talked about that many, many, many times. And surely we are having a positive impact occasionally, if not regularly, and we should be getting and giving feedback about those thing is reinforcing those positive behaviors, not just trying to correct the negative ones.

[00:14:53] Allan Stewart: Agreed. And I think that that, again, especially at the peer level, that can sometimes be hard because you'd really do have to have that intentionality about it. You have to, you almost have to remind yourself or put us alarm somewhere, Slack reminders. Hey, don't forget to tell people that they're actually doing well because you can kind of take things for granted very easily. Especially if, if you have good camaraderie with your team and you're feeling like, oh, yeah, we're doing the thing. We're in it together. We're happy, maybe even friends together. And it's easy to forget. It's like, oh, well, even then you want to remind them about the things that are going well, the things that you want to continue to improve. One of the retrospective practices that I really like involves just that is not just saying, hey, Let's not just vent about all the bad things, but let's intentionally talk about some of the good things as well. What are the things that we want to keep doing? Or Woody Zool talks about dial up the good, right? What are those good things that we are doing and do more of that? And I think from the people perspective, we need that too, right? Tell somebody it's like, hey, I really like what

[00:16:09] Dave Adsit: you're doing here. Keep up the good work. Yeah. Stepping outside of the realm of the workplace for most of us, I think. In order to have a successful marriage, it has been found that you should have a ratio of at least five positive interactions for each negative one. That's I believe John Gottman's research has shown that. And I think there is something of value that we can take back into the workplace from that research around the types of interactions we want to have and the types of feedback we want to give. If we could jump forward a little bit into the discussion of radical candor, that book was really eye-opening for me in terms of breaking down the importance of giving timely feedback for behaviors and not allowing things to fester, right? Radical candor, like many books meant for business people, has two orthogonal concepts that can be arranged into a quadrant diagram. And in this case, it's care personally and challenge directly. And we want to ramp up the challenge directly. In this case, the author believes that it is harder for us to give corrective feedback than it is for us to give positive feedback. It may be easier for many of us to say, good job, when somebody does something good. And it may be harder for us to say, hey, not that. Don't do that again. In fact, the author tells a story of doing a presentation and saying um and ah a lot. In the presentation. And her boss pulled her aside after the meeting and said, you need to work on your diction, on your presentation skills, because you say um and ah a lot. And she said, um, I think that's okay. It'll be fine. I'll work on it, okay. And her boss said, no, we're sending you to a coach for this, because in your role, it is crucial that you be able to present effectively and represent our department effectively in front of people. And if you talk like that, it does not lend you credibility. And so that kind of thing can only be done if you care about the person and want to help them improve. And you are willing to challenge directly the behavior that is not in line with their expected outcomes. So care personally challenged directly creates a quadrant diagram. And the high in care personally and high in challenge directly is called radical candor. Okay. You're giving people a lot of feedback. Everyone's giving each other a lot of feedback because everyone is trying to improve together. And we all care about each other and the outcomes that we're having. The exact opposite quadrant is called ruinous empathy, where we care deeply, but we don't ever challenge. Have you ever worked with a manager who you thought was a very caring and empathetic person, but never rose to the occasion to challenge somebody for their behavior? Oh, definitely.

[00:19:17] Allan Stewart: How did that work out? Yeah. It just, it was not a great experience from my point of view. Very personable. I really liked him as a person, but as a manager, I felt like he was ineffectual.

[00:19:28] Dave Adsit: And mostly because the team can't improve if you're not ever given corrective feedback. Right. And in many cases, you just keep hoping if you find yourself, like we all find ourselves operating in these different quadrants, right? There are times when we challenge less or challenge more, where we care more deeply, care less deeply. If we are not challenging people, we're not challenging people enough often is because we're hoping that they'll get better on their own and we don't have to, or we expect that it's going to be a hard conversation. And if we're delaying that feedback, it just gets worse and worse and worse. And you can potentially have some of your A players on the team decide they're not going to put up with this anymore. They're going to go look for another job somewhere else. And now not only are you stuck with a person who is underperforming or performing badly or a problem person on the team, but you're also. Yeah. down a good player, somebody who was contributing at or above expectation, because those are the people that find it easiest to go somewhere else. And so I, I don't know, I feel like giving direct and timely feedback is one of the most crucial skills we have to develop, especially in leadership, but even between peers. If I'm sitting on a team and we're doing, we're pairing together, and I noticed that you start writing code without testing, I need to challenge you on that and say, hey, let's write that unit test first. We're doing TDD in this shop. Or if we're coding along and I start formatting my code in a way that is my standard, but not the team standard, it's your responsibility to say, hey, our team practices to do X, Y, and Z. We capitalize variable names like this. We cap, you know, remind me. You can do things that are gentle reminders that are corrective, but you can also sometimes have to step it up a little bit.

[00:21:13] Allan Stewart: Yeah. I think for my personality type, I tend to take a lot of responsibility for my work. I feel like I'm often in the care personally camp because if I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to care. And so I experienced the exact same problem. I kind of get after that manager that was ineffective in his role, but I also fall into the ruinous empathy quadrant often, I guess. For me, the problem that I have is when I have given feedback and nothing has happened, then I go from speaking. shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting shutting

[00:22:17] Dave Adsit: care, that's called ruinous empathy. If we go back to radical candor and then we reduce our care and keep the challenge high, that's called obnoxious aggression. I feel like I have fallen into that category many times in the past where I am frustrated with a situation, I'm frustrated with a person, and I will just tell them, you have to start doing this or stop doing that, or the system is going to be this way with or without you. And when we are not expressing care, it makes it hard for the person hearing it to receive it. When we're not communicating with care, it makes it hard for the person to receive it, but the feedback is still given. I do think it's interesting that when given the choice between either a manager, if a radically candid manager is off the table, having one who is ruinously empathetic or obnoxiously aggressive, many people in the U.S. job market would prefer an obnoxiously market would prefer an obnoxiously aggressive boss because at least they're getting feedback, and they then have an opportunity to improve even if the feedback comes wrapped around a brick. And yet, for most of us, the natural place to go is to that ruinous empathy where we're not giving feedback at all. Or maybe we slide all the way down to low on both and we're in manipulative insincerity. We don't care if you're going to improve or not, and we're not going to help you in any case.

[00:23:46] Allan Stewart: I think that there's a feeling of jeopardy in giving feedback and challenging because you kind of put yourself out there. It's like, oh, well, if I don't say anything, then there won't be an encounter. There won't be a problem there. Nothing will get any better either, but I won't have made it worse. Risk aversion really, really can hurt you in a case like this. It might be useful in other areas. Risk aversion might be really good for certain kinds of programming. Tasks. But for working with other people, it's probably better to take some risks. And I say this knowing that it's something that I have to remind myself of too, to make sure that I'm taking some risks so that things will change, so that things will improve and it doesn't just degrade into mediocrity.

[00:24:35] Dave Adsit: Yeah. So radical candor is one model for giving feedback. And we've talked a lot about how you would use it between peers or from a manager to subordinate type of experience. And I think that's a dynamic. It's also important to leverage feedback the other direction. Managing out or managing up is one of the concepts that you'll hear often. And giving feedback to people in the opposite and possibly less comfortable direction. And there's tools that we've used to do that, like 360 reviews, where everyone on the team reviews everyone else. Everyone reviews the manager. The manager reviews everyone. Everyone reviews their peers. Then we get multiple perspectives on a person, a situation, a dynamic. Those can be really powerful. I have not seen them be very effective in many cases because they are expensive to prepare and expensive to deliver and very time consuming. And it's hard to work in an environment where feedback is enough of a common part of the system that people are comfortable giving that kind of 360 feedback to each other. You have to have a pretty safe and healthy environment before that becomes the norm.

[00:25:51] Allan Stewart: I feel like you have to practice feedback in order to build the psychological safety where people say, oh, I had encountered this before and it is going to be okay because I've gotten feedback, both good and bad in the past. And it was okay with this group of people. And so, yeah, I like the idea of the 360 reviews. I think it can be good, especially when, you know, things haven't been happening, right? Like as a practice to make sure that there's sort of a regularity to at least getting some feedback. But to be really effective, you kind of have to have had already feedback within the team for it to really hit home.

[00:26:34] Dave Adsit: So if we need to practice, we should practice at least once a year during our annual review, right? Once a year during my annual review, my manager can tell me all the good and bad things that he remembers me doing for the last 12 months.

[00:26:46] Allan Stewart: a pretty good cadence. You wouldn't want to have it more than that. Maybe once a decade or once in a lifetime, you could get feedback and just make sure that you're going off on exactly the right course and that you never have altered even one degree. And no updates are needed. Yeah. Yeah. That's.

[00:27:06] Dave Adsit: Yeah. If there's one thing that we've learned from the DevOps revolution is that slow feedback is powerful feedback. No, I mean, obviously, we want feedback more often than that. That's one of the reasons why many organizations have implemented the one-on-one where the manager meets with every member of their staff on a weekly or at most biweekly cadence to have a discussion about how things are going. And it's an opportunity for feedback. It's an opportunity for course correction. It's an opportunity for improvement.

[00:27:36] Allan Stewart: Yeah. And I like the concept of cadence for meetings, right? If you know that this is something that's going to happen, if you have a regular, regular retrospective with your team, that gives you an opportunity to say, hey, here are some good things that have been happening and give some positive feedback. Maybe here's some bad things that have happened too. And you can give some more objective or critical feedback. But if you don't have a schedule for that, or for your one-on-ones with your manager, you don't have a cadence for when these meetings are going to be, or they're very haphazard. I feel like you lose a lot of the effectiveness. Because people forget like the annual performance review. Like I can't remember the details of what I was doing or what was bothering me or what I said on a particular day, nine months ago.

[00:28:27] Dave Adsit: It's true. So we've talked a little bit about some concepts around feedback and that feedback should be timely and frequent and a regular part of our practice. If we want to build a good team and move quickly, we've talked about radical candor and some of the concepts there around the importance of feedback and how to deliver feedback well. There's also the classic crucial conversations, tools for talking when the stakes are high. That book talks a lot about the importance of creating a dialogue versus a debate. I think about that in the same way as I think about creating a collaborative environment versus a cooperative environment. I want my PM and my tech lead and my engineers to be collaborating on building a good feature. I don't want them to be working independently and in parallel and then cooperating at a touch point and then going away. I think about that the same when it comes to handling these important high stakes conversations. We want to have an ongoing dialogue and discussion versus trying to get into a debate. Because once we get into a debate mindset, now we're taking stances. We're digging in our heels. We're looking at defense and offense versus moving together towards a common goal. One of the other concepts that is repeated in that book is how important safety is. And that's a common theme in all books about feedback and discussion and conversation is the importance of creating a safe environment where we can share perspectives and opinions and be wrong without being declared a wrong person, right? You are perhaps holding an incorrect view, but that doesn't make you a bad person. Or you are behaving in a way that is incompatible with our expectations, but you are still a valuable person and probably still a valuable member of the team. But we want to make sure that we are talking through this in a place and in a way that makes it feel comfortable and safe for us to express many perspectives on the same incident, the same behavior, et cetera, so that we can have a common understanding and move forward in a collaborative direction.

[00:30:51] Allan Stewart: One of the other things that Crucial Conversations talks about are the concepts of self-awareness and emotional control. And that may be the single most important thing that I got out of the book, because I'm definitely one of the stereotypical developers of the stereotype in which I didn't get into this industry so I could talk with people. Kind of mindset, I like the computer. I can tell the computer, I can give it instructions, it does what I say, I can kind of bend the world to my will. And so it took a while for me to really recognize how much better things could be with a collaborative environment working together with, truly working with other people, not just they're also writing code in the same codebase as me. that expressly, right? Like it was something that I didn't have natural talent in. And so I had to really work at understanding. It's like, Oh, where am I coming from? How am I feeling about something? And what, why do I feel so strongly about it? And how can I keep myself in check so that I don't let myself kind of get out of control and escalate into a confrontation where one didn't need to exist? I definitely have the blessing and the curse of speaking perceived truth to power, which can be good at times, right? Like managing up, you need the ability to say, somebody above you, Hey, I think we can make some changes. But I often did not do that well early in my career. And it was for this reason, I didn't have sufficient self-awareness of what was going on and why, or even the empathy to look at the way that I am presenting. This is destructive. Even if the thing that I am saying is genuinely good and truthful and beneficial for the company. If I said it in the way that was incompatible, then it couldn't be

[00:32:52] Dave Adsit: received. Early in my career, I worked with a manager who was a yeller. He would yell all the time. He would get hot. He would sound angry. He would, you know, constantly, he would berate people when they didn't deliver. And if you asked him about it, he would tell you is because he used emotion to show how important the work we were doing is and how important it was that everybody did their part. But the outcome that he got on the team is that no one ever took risks. We were very averse to any risk-taking on the team. Everyone took the safest, most conservative steps in every case because there was no room for learning through mistake, learning through error. And that meant that we couldn't take any big steps. We were going back to the, uh, the frictionless surface. If you have ever walked on a sheet of ice, you know, that you're going to take very small steps with your body weight centered over your feet, and you're not going to let them get too far apart because things go badly quickly when that happens. And so you can't do anything big in an environment where the manager is always upset and yelling. Everyone will move in ways that are defensive to their position and defensive to their reputation, et cetera. And that means not taking any risks and not being an organization that truly succeed at a high level. So emotional control is critical. I've had to learn that a few times in my career. There've been times when I felt powerless in an organization and I've lashed out with high emotion as a way to break through that. And it doesn't work. It actually backfires more often than not. You get perceived as that guy who's emotionally unstable and hot headed, and nobody really wants to work with that guy, except for a couple of other emotionally unstable and hot headed people. And then you find yourself in an echo chamber of pain and misery. Not great. So, okay. So we've talked about a lot of ways to give feedback, receive feedback, tools that we can look into and master. What are some other tools that you've used in the past? We've talked about 360 reviews. We've talked about one-on-one meetings. What else is there?

[00:34:54] Allan Stewart: I've used a few different tools at different companies that are focused on feedback, where you get a message in Slack and you take a survey or that it prompts you to say, tell us about somebody. Who has done something great and give a positive message. Some of those tools can be good. They can be useful to understand. One of the drawbacks is that if you, you do have to be a little bit careful because so like right now I work at a very small company. And so every time that I write feedback into one of these things, I'm just kind of thinking in my head, it's like, how likely is it that they are going to know exactly who wrote this in the anonymous tool? It never says, Oh, that's me by name, but I have a particular way of writing that doesn't match with say the sales guy that also works in our company in the past. I've actually intentionally done things to make myself sound different, giving these feedback. Like I didn't capitalize my letters because anybody who knows me is like, Oh, well he always, even in texts, but even, even in the old days where you had the like number pad, the T9. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would capitalize crap when I didn't need to. That's funny. That's a good use for an LLM.

[00:36:16] Dave Adsit: You know, we've definitely ragged on LLMs many times, but there's a positive use for an LLM. Make rewrite this in the voice of Ron Jeffries or Barack Obama or in the voice of the most average

[00:36:27] Allan Stewart: person, the voice of the most average person. Only once have I experienced one that was kind of similar to this, but the it's the concept of merit bucks. And I believe this comes out of the book, the narrative managing for happiness book, which incidentally has a bunch of other things I find really interesting and useful out of that book. The merit buck system is basically like an alternative bonus scheme, but it's, it's a way to kind of put money where your mouth is literally that you say, Hey, I think that somebody is doing a good job to the tune of this many merit bucks. And you know, there's some rules around how, how you can set it up and like, you can't just hold onto your merit bucks. You have to give them away for them to have value and things like that. I think it was a really interesting situation because it gave incentive to feedback. In addition to the good reasons for feedback that we already talked about, we say, Oh, well, let's add some financial incentive to get a little bit more of that going.

[00:37:30] Dave Adsit: Right. I remember that program fondly. That was a powerful tool for reinforcing company values and behaviors aligned with them. Other things that we have done at different companies, I've used a similar tool that allows you to just call people out in Slack. And we've have an artificial currency of how many accolades you can give a week or whatever. And that allows us to call people out for good behavior and congratulate them for doing things. It seems to carry more weight because it's limited when it's unlimited, nobody actually uses it, but when it's limited, people will use it because they don't want to give, they don't want to lose their opportunity. One of the tools that I've Encouraging them to use them more is positive public feedback for good work, calling people out publicly for what they've done well. And I think that's fantastic. Some people really thrive under that. I will say that in my experience, when working in a collaborative environment, it is better to call out the team than an individual, because if you, even if you try to enumerate all of the individuals that contributed, you are And you may not have the all around positive impact that you expect, because the people who have forgotten will probably hold it against you. Or people who noticed that somebody got forgotten. I'm like, why didn't you remember so and so they were a big part of this project, they helped us get it across the finish line, and you didn't even call them out on the company meeting. So I like to call out teams, instead of individuals, because I feel like you're always going to forget somebody. Or maybe you're going to call out somebody, who the team didn't think helped very much. But if you say we want to call out the banana team for doing great work on this plantation, reforestation, then everybody who participated in that will say great, we all did a good job. If you say we want to call out Bob and Dan for their work on that project, and Bob doesn't think Dan did very much, and Mike thinks he did do a lot. Now you've got two problems. Right. So I do like public positive reinforcement for good behavior. I just like to use it with certain constraints.

[00:39:46] Allan Stewart: One of the things that I really like about the concept of feedback really comes down to no surprises. So I first started thinking about this when I had read a blog post that was talking about getting feedback from managers. The blog Rans and Repose, he's got a really excellent post, it's from years ago, but I still remember, about don't do diving saves for when people quit the company. You don't be like, Oh, quick, let me just figure out how much more money I could pay you now that you're leaving, instead of paying them and acknowledging them and giving them feedback all the way along. And so ultimately, I feel like feedback is important to avoid surprises. If someone's going to be fired for their job, I think it's a terrible thing for them to not see it Blindsided and just one day, you just lost your job. I mean, I guess maybe if there was like a layoff, like something happened that wasn't their fault, but if it's because they're not doing their job, well, I think that's a terrible thing. Like, why is now the time that they're getting told? Where was the feedback? And so that is a terrible surprise. Same thing for the manager, the manager who has this impulse to do the diving save. there's been some feedback that has been missing here. Why is this person leaving? It ought not be a surprise. And I think that there's a kind of a question there is like, Oh, well, have you been doing your job as a manager to get and give feedback in order to prevent that from happening? Or at least to know that it could be coming down the line. Now, I know a lot of people, myself included, are not just going to openly say to their boss, Hey, I'm thinking about leaving. I am Nick Neuman 06.15 Because you want to keep this level of safety is like, Oh, well, if those interviews don't work out, I've got this job still. I don't want to get fired because I'm looking or I don't want them to change their minds. But I've also observed that you can find out pretty quickly how happy somebody is by talking to them, by communicating with them and actually getting that feedback and avoiding the surprise. Because those kinds of surprises

[00:42:01] Dave Adsit: are almost always nasty surprises. Jim O'Shaughnessy 06.15 So I've worked at a lot of companies, and I've been in individual contributor roles, junior manager roles, senior executive roles. Jim O'Shaughnessy 06.15 I've worked at all levels of an organization and a culture, and I have had the most success in organizations where everyone gives and receives positive and negative feedback on a regular basis. Even for us in leadership, getting positive and negative feedback is super important. One of the things that you find is that leadership is lonely, right? And nobody ever says, nobody ever thinks, Hey, I should probably tell my boss he's doing a good job. Or, Hey, I should probably tell my boss he's really screwing up this area of the job. He probably thinks he is already, but I'm going to tell him and make sure he knows. But the importance of feedback and creating a culture of feedback does fall to those of us who've been around longer, whether we are in explicit or implicit leadership positions, people with tenure, people with authority, building a culture where feedback, is one of the ways that each of us can contribute to improving the overall system of work and improving the quality of work and improving how each of us feels about the work we're doing. If I'm doing my best work and I'm hearing about it, that makes me feel good about what I'm doing. If there's opportunities for me to improve, then I'm learning and growing, and that feels good as well. It may not feel as good in the moment that I'm receiving the negative feedback, but it is still an opportunity for me to become a better version of myself and deliver at a higher level. And so I would encourage each of us to do what we can to create that culture and environment of regular, fast, person-to-person feedback, so that we can all perform at our highest level.