Bob Iger's Feedback Advice
Ride of a Lifetime is an excellent book by Bob Iger, who led Disney for fifteen years. I heard about the book from Bill Gate's 2020 reading list, where Gates called it "one of the best business books I've read in several years."
The book touches on culture, personal relationships, and organizational design through an unusual lens of mergers and acquisitions. Disney's purchase and subsequent integration of Pixar is regarded as the gold standard for not killing culture during an acquisition. If you're interested in other book recommendations, check out my reading list.
In this post, I want to focus on my favorite passage in the book around giving feedback to creatives.
Don't Start Negative and Don't Start Small
Don't start negatively and don't start small. People will often focus on little details as a way of masking a lack of any clear, coherent, big thoughts. If you start petty, you seem petty.
Don't start negative. When giving feedback on a project, Iger reminds us to be mindful of how much someone has poured themselves into the project and how much is at stake for them. Project leads are fully committed to a project, and their current impact, recognition, and career growth are all attached to this single contribution. This level of investment makes negative drive-by comments from leadership exceedingly unproductive. These remarks leave the recipients deflated (flight) or frustrated (fight) and overall unmotivated to do their best work.
Don't start small. This is the most common feedback trap I see. Small feedback takes little effort and feels useful even when it's only minimally so. The number of times I've seen code reviews and design walk-throughs suffer from small feedback is countless, and as is the number of times I authored that feedback. Iger points out that small feedback is so prevalent because big feedback requires work and thoughtfulness. It takes effort to consider the whole, identify its merit and gaps, and package that feedback in a clear and coherent form. This approach to feedback goes beyond changing our communication and instead invites us to participate more deeply in this aspect of our work. Coherent communication comes from clear thinking, and clear thinking comes from thorough consideration.
Conclusion
To put Iger's quote another way: Start positive and start big. Don't focus on the little detail but instead come up with big thoughts that are clear and coherent. If you start thoughtful, you'll seem thoughtful.
No post about feedback and criticism is complete without including this wisdom from Ego.
