Credit to NatashaFedorova
In a LinkedIn workshop, the instructor put one of my old posts on the screen as an example of what not to do. She kind of rip[ped it apart. She hadn't warned any of us she'd be doing that. It was the graphic of the YES AND framework from my book, the one I hired a designer to make.
I felt bad, but mostly I was annoyed.
Her critique treated my post like an infographic, something that should stand on its own and explain itself. It wasn't one. I'd shared an image of the framework from my book because I was excited about it, and I wanted to pass that excitement along to people who already know me and maybe add a little for the book. That's a different job than teaching a stranger the framework in one image, and it deserves a different standard.
Then something happened that I didn't expect. I started doubting the rest of her advice. If she hadn't taken the time to understand my situation before giving feedback, how useful was the feedback? That's the Dig Deeper step of my YES AND framework showing up in my own head.
To be fair to her, that was a reaction in the moment, not a verdict. She's great, she knows this topic well, and I don't hold it against her. But in that moment, a little trust eroded.
When it's a workshop instructor, that's no big deal. When it happens on a team, you can see how much more quickly it could add up.
What a small trust leak looks like at 50 to 500 people
Imagine someone on your team shares a half-formed idea. Maybe they're excited, like I was. The feedback comes back without any sense of what they were trying to do. They don't argue and they don't complain. They just don't share the next idea.
If I pose ideas and people keep answering "yeah, but…" eventually I'm going to stop giving ideas. Nobody records that as a problem. It doesn't show up in a survey or a meeting. It looks like a team that's fine, but not excited.
That's why I believe the biggest obstacle to change is apathy, not resistance. Resistance is loud, so you can see it and address it. Apathy is quiet, and it spreads through a lot more of the room than the loud people do. Small moments like my workshop story are one of the ways it gets there.
And I'll say what Yes, And doesn't mean here, because it gets misread. It doesn't mean nobody gets critiqued. She may well have been right about infographics. That's not the point. The point is the condition under which the feedback arrived.
Version one
I recently interviewed Steve Lerch for my podcast about his book, Innovate. Steve spent about a decade at Google, where he taught innovation philosophy, and he has a simple idea I really like.
Imagine every report, form, and meeting agenda in your company had "V1" printed in the corner. That tiny label tells everyone that a version two is expected. It's okay to question this. It's even the job. When people know something is version one, it feels safe to share it, because everybody knows you're not done, and everybody's supposed to help.
My graphic wasn't a version one. It was the finished, professionally designed version. But the idea still explains what went wrong in that workshop. Nothing had told her, or me, what stage this was at or what kind of input would help. Version one is really a way of setting the terms: here's where we are, here's what's useful.
This matters for anyone leading a change. In my experience, a lot of people believe that if the rollout is clear, logical, and polished enough, people will get on board. But a plan that arrives finished and sealed gives people nothing to add, and people who can't add anything quietly check out. Steve has a Beatles story from the Peter Jackson docuseries that makes this point better than I can. You can check it out in the podcast episode.
Why I don't teach all six steps in my keynote
There's a second piece to this, and it's about my own work.
My book has a six-step framework. I don't teach all six in a keynote. How many I cover depends on the time and what the audience and the event need. In a 30-minute keynote, it's one step. In a 90-minute version, it's two to four. Which steps I pick change based on the room.
Cutting is hard. I feel almost bad leaving things out. What makes it easier is telling the audience up front what we're covering in the time we have, and that the rest is in the book. I know they can get it somewhere.
Steve told me something similar about his speaking. He used to try to hit eight principles of innovation in a single talk. Now he does three, and he can barely get through three. The more he's done it, the more he's realized you have to take your time and make sure people really understand before you move forward.
If you're communicating a change, you probably recognize the pull in the opposite direction. There's so much to say, and so much at stake, that it all goes in. But overloaded people don't get excited. They get tired. Choosing what to leave out is a way of respecting them.
Questions to ask before your next rollout
Before you send the next message or present the next plan, try these:
- What stage is this at, and have I said so?
- What kind of feedback do I actually want on it?
- What are the one or two things this has to land, and what am I deliberately leaving out?
- The last time someone brought me something half-built, did I dig deeper into what they were trying to do before I responded?
None of these take long. They just move you from handing people something finished to inviting them in.
The short version
Smaller and open beats finished and sealed. That's true for how you give feedback, how you roll out a change, and how you design a keynote.
Steve and I get into version one, the Beatles story, and more in the episode: Say Yes, And to Building a Culture of Innovation with Steve Lerch.
P.S. If you want to see all six steps of the framework, they're on the book page.