The Three Laws of Feedback:
Listen to the Experts – of all the types of feedback, those who have recently one what you’re trying to do are your best advisers. Prioritize their words.
Experiment – Try to delay your decisions. Keep both options open until the last responsible moment. Run short tests and see which of your advisors can predict the outcome of it.
Act! – Based on the data from the experiment act in a different way. Change paths, even if it makes you look bad.
If you’re not aware of what the Fyre Festival is or was supposed to be (or even if you are aware), I strongly recommend watching the excellent Netflix documentary on the topic. They have astonishing actual video of that disaster going down by the people who defrauded hundreds of people. Check the trailer here:
If you can’t watch it the excellent documentary, here’s an all-too-short synopsis: A few years back this rapper Ja Rule and a “man” named Billy McFarland decided to extend his company’s web application, one that allowed folks to sign up for A-lister performers. The thinking was to have this festival to raise their profile in the biz.
With zero music festival experience, these two characters lied and cheated many people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars its heartbreaking to watch. The Fyre festival was supposed to be in the Caribbean, a group of wealthy, beautiful people in a beautiful place being too cool for the rest of us plebeians. I am not proud to admit I relished in the collapse of this thing when it happened. I condemn those who flaunt extreme wealth, like people peeing on stacks of hundred dollar bills setting fire to them. In a world with so much need, I don’t understand it. I don’t object to people being rich, but this sort of romp was so libertine it was satisfying when it burned to the ground, almost literally.
However, despite my schadenfreude, I realized something. Fyre failing was all about the failure of feedback. The Fyre guys were tone deaf to the information that they were getting, regardless of which type it was (Stranger, Family, Expert, Peer). Pathologically, this man started lying to everyone around them as the thing became an absolute trainwreck.
Over the last few months, my personal life had some upheaval, and the principal character in this was a person who would not take feedback. In both cases, it was the American Idol Complex, a topic I covered last year.
In short, The American Idol Complex is where contestants would get on the stage before millions of people, and perhaps only for perhaps the first time to hear the words they needed to listen to all along – you can’t sing.
After the conflict, I had with this person, and the Fyre Festival documentary, I had a severe case of confirmation bias. I started seeing the lack of feedback acceptance everywhere. In Game of Thrones, (Season One) King Robert Targaryen is imagining Kahl Drago and the Dothraki horde storming the Seven Kingdoms, he is presented with the option, by his wife Cersi, to hold himself behind his walls. It’s safe, and they have no siege weapons, as they are nomadic, horseback warriors. This strategy, Robert points out to Cersei, is unwise, because while he was tucked away safe, the horde would be destroying those towns around him. “…how long will they be loyal to me if I’m safe and they’re houses are being burned to the ground by the Dothraki?”
King Robert may not have been the best king, but he had this right. The truth may not be able to penetrate our walls, but it will eat around our kingdom, robbing us of nutrients. The Fyre guys had their walls up big time, and it cost them everything.
The most important thing about feedback may not be in the listening or even agreeing. It’s in the Third Law – Act! Do something different. We can nod all day long to the howls, and be brave in the face of what we perceive as a threat, and continue unchanged. That’s the difficulty with feedback. It feels like an attack, so often because it is delivered in that way, causing us to hide behind our fortifications.
In my personal story, let’s call this person Frank, while he may have listened and responded faithfully like things were going to change, nothing did. listen. It destroyed our relationship with him. His walls were up.
Throughout the Fyre documentary, you could see the Castle Walls going up in Billy’s eyes. He could not see the truth. He kept saying to his workers, those with experience in doing these events, that it would all work out. Unfortunately, some told Billy to continue, and in his own confirmation bias and hubris, chose that comfortable advice.
There are those who are going to help you put those walls up — the Wormtongue in your ear. “Ignore the outsiders. They don’t have your vision.” Sometimes this will be well-intentioned, as I believe many were in the Fyre story. However, from the documentary, it appeared that this man had access to the truth. With his own eyes, with the sights and experience of others. The facts were there. The feedback was there. Nothing changed.
Now, in Billy’s case, he is a pathological liar, so it’s a bit different, but the result is the same. What’s instructive about Fyre was how the Laws of Feedback didn’t save him. He had experts telling him it wasn’t going to work (Law I) and at least what I saw he had not experimented sufficiently. One idea – run a small festival in the US, with one artist or two. Get some practice and learning. None of that happened.
Here are some tips for effectively leveraging feedback:
- When being given feedback, don’t respond. Listen to what is said, and say thank you. If you turn on your defense and say things that start with, “Well, the reason I did…” then you’re not listening. Let the words in.
- Second, repeat back to the person what they said, or what you heard, and continue to do so until you understand mutually.
- Third, look for patterns. This the art part of this. Feedback is noise. you have to fish through the noise for the signal, the signal that something you have to react to. This is why team creation always stresses cognitive diversity. If everyone is always agreeing with you, what value
to they provide? If you never take their advice, again, what value are they providing?
If you’re giving the feedback make I’m working on the idea that the weakness in which we give and take feedback has made our discourse weak. We get offended easily, fail to listen and make changes based on that listening. We put our castle walls up for a brief respite, all the while knowing we’re starving ourselves blind.
There are constructive ways to give feedback, techniques that will increase the odds that the hearer will change, and requires training and practice to both give and receive feedback. Most of us don’t have the time or the inclination to do this, so let’s go over a few tips:
Here are some tips for effectively leveraging feedback:
- First, when being given feedback, don’t respond. Listen to what is said, and say thank you. If you turn on your defense and say things that start with, “Well, the reason I did…” then you’re not listening. Let the words in.
- Second, repeat back to the person what they said, or what you heard, and continue to do so until you understand mutually.
- Third, look for patterns. This the art part of this – feedback is noisy. You have to fish through it for the signal, the important alarms that you need. It is for this reason that those who know about teams insist on cognitive diversity. If everyone always agrees with you, what value do they provide? If you never take their advice, again, what value are you getting from them
being around?
Finally, it’s tough to know when you’re ignoring the “right” feedback. How can you tell? How are you getting it in the first place? Feedback is like money – it pays to get good at giving and getting it, and you can never have enough. Do you hate the feedback you’re hearing? Are people you used to trust leaving your side? Are people not talking to you at all about the Big Thing? You might be ignoring feedback.
I’m working on the idea that the weakness in which we give and take feedback has made our discourse weak. We get offended easily, fail to listen and make changes based on that listening. We put our castle walls up for a brief respite, all the while knowing we’re starving ourselves blind.