2015-08-18 10:32:29
Jim Whitehurst
August 14, 2015
I worked as a consultant for many years before becoming the CEO of Red Hat. One
of the most surprising aspects of that work was that people would open up to
me, an outsider, about all the elephants in the room but they were too polite
or embarrassed to call out the obvious issues or blame their peers inside their
own organizations. My fellow consultants and I would sometimes joke that just
about every individual inside a company could immediately tell you what was
going wrong and what needed fixing. But whenever everybody convened for a
meeting to point out those very issues, you wouldn t hear a peep about anything
that could be perceived as negative. To our amazement, they were more open to
hearing feedback from us, the outsiders, than from their own colleagues.
Though this might be good for the consulting business, shouldn t companies be
having candid conversations since they almost always know the solution to
their problem on their own? Wouldn t the ability to share open and honest
feedback throughout the organization improve their chances of addressing their
issues, and more quickly?
These are the questions that keep me up at night as a CEO. Luckily, the
practices of open dialogue and providing constant feedback were already in
place and part of Red Hat s DNA when I joined the company. Because Red Hat
sprang from the world of open source software a community whose members pride
themselves on delivering open and honest feedback having candid, and what
others might call difficult, conversations is the norm. We debate, we argue,
and we complain. We let the sparks fly. The benefits of operating this way are
immense because we are able to tackle the elephant in the room head on, but
this kind of culture is hard to build and maintain, especially as companies
grow.
Fortunately, we ve learned a few tips from working in open source communities
about how to create and manage a vibrant feedback loop within our organization.
Once you establish the practice of sharing regular feedback across the company,
it begins to function like a flywheel. It s hard at first to get it moving. You
ll need to do some substantial pushing and monitoring to get the wheel
spinning. But before you know it, you ll find that the wheel begins to turn all
on its own using its own momentum.
We ve found that there are three key things you need to tackle to get your
feedback loop spinning; this is the foundational work that gets everyone
pushing in the same direction and that creates a safe environment where
everyone feels comfortable having difficult conversations. As a leader, you
must role model these behaviors, and encourage them at every level of your
organization:
Show appreciation. It surprises me that when people use the term feedback, it
often comes with a negative connotation. Why can t feedback also include
positive aspects as well? A great way to start a feedback loop, therefore, is
to actually begin by recognizing the good work someone has done. What we ve
learned is that one key to creating a self-sustaining feedback loop is that you
need to spend much more time recognizing and appreciating someone s efforts
than you do criticizing them. At Red Hat, I d wager the ratio is something like
9:1 (research typically suggests a 3:1 ratio of positive to negative). You re
far more likely to have someone from outside your department thank you or tell
you that you did a great job than anything else and they mean it. That s how
you can begin to establish trusting relationships that are strong enough to
withstand any constructive criticism that might come along.
Open up. We all have the tendency, when we think we re under attack, to circle
the wagons and protect our department and ourselves. You can literally read
someone s body language when this is happening they fold their arms, furrow
their brows and you can almost see the steam coming out of their ears. But if
you want to build a feedback loop in your business, you, especially as a
leader, need to lead by example and open yourself up to hear what people are
saying. If someone in another department is convinced you re not listening to
them, what makes you think they ll listen to anything you have to say to them?
Yes, opening yourself up makes you vulnerable. But that s also why we preach
the idea that you aren t your code, which is another way of saying that we
all need to be able to process constructive criticism without taking it
personally. If you can do that, you can create the kind of open and honest
culture that is capable of tackling the thorniest of issues together. And you
ll be amazed that when you do listen to someone s feedback, and take action on
it, you ll increase that person s engagement level in his or her work.
Be inclusive early and often. One of the interesting complexities inside most
organizations, especially larger ones, is that they establish departmental or
functional silos for reasons of efficiencies. And yet, they inadvertently
create mistrust and misinformation by doing so. It often results in an
us-versus-them type of situation that results in a departmental blame game.
That s why a big part of building an effective feedback loop is to get people
from all over the organization involved as soon as possible in your
decision-making, whether you work in finance, IT, or human resources and
often. It s far easier and effective to gather feedback from other departments
on smaller incremental issues than waiting until you re father along where the
stakes and risks have increased. If you do get some constructive criticism
early on, you can more easily change course while also increasing trust and
buy-in from the rest of the company.
So unless you ve got the budget to hire a consultant to do the straight talk
for you, it s time for you to lead the way by encouraging difficult
conversations inside your organization. If you can tackle these three steps up
front, you ll find your feedback flywheel will begin spinning faster and
faster. Otherwise, that elephant in the room is bound to trip you up sooner or
later.
Jim Whitehurst is the president and CEO of Red Hat, the world s leading
provider of open source enterprise IT products and solutions, and the author of
the book The Open Organization (HBR Press, 2015). Follow him on Twitter at
@JWhitehurst.