Say the Thing: Getting to the truth is more important than making people comfortable. When seeing bad ideas or bad execution in the team, say it. Say it now, succinctly, and about the thing, not the person.
Tweet: Say the Thing
Shopify’s COO Kaz Nejatian sent this note to his team a month after he joined:
I've been working on Money for over a month now. It is incredible how kind and welcoming everyone has been. Everyone has gone really far to make me feel at home and comfortable. Almost too comfortable.
I am now pretty sure that this is not just folks being kind to the nO0b, but also a fundamental character of our team. We are nice people. That is fantastic. But we need to be mindful not to confuse "being nice" with "making sure everyone is comfortable". In order for us to succeed, we frequently need to make people uncomfortable. That is a lot of what thriving on change is about.
Change is uncomfortable. You can't fix that. But you can get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
For the past month, l've held lots of meetings. In none of those meetings has anyone said "that is a terrible idea" or "we are screwing this up." I assume that we have some bad ideas as a team and that we are in fact screwing some things up. I assume all of us know this.
Why aren't we speaking up?
Start with me. When you hear me say something that is a bad idea, say so.
When you see me screwing something up, say so. Say the thing. Make me uncomfortable. I will not take it personally. Let us all assume that we are talking about ideas and products, not people.
Here are some guidelines for how to say the thing:
- Say it now. We don't have time to wait. As soon as you know something, say it. You are doing everyone a favour. Say it now. Say it again. Say it until you feel you have been heard. (People don't need to agree with you, but they do need to hear you.)
- Say it succinctly. You don't need to say "this may be dumb" or "I'm just putting it out there." Don't do that. Give yourself credit and everyone else will too.
- Say it about the thing, not the person. If a product is bad, say so. If a meeting is a waste of time, say so. Assume good intent about the person working on it, but say this thing sucks for x, y or z reason.
You can get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I also think being nice is not being kind. Being nice sometimes means sugarcoating things and masking problems. Being kind means telling the truth with care and without being a jerk.
It's harder to be kind because it's painful to learn how to tell the truth, but it doesn't mean we should be more concerned with not offending each other than getting to the truth of problems they were trying to solve.
This is "the desire to be right and the desire to have been right are two desires" on an organizational level. Also remember: "People may forget what you said, people may forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel".