Letting the data speak means
interpreting it without prejudice.
Eliciting rich data is one thing, ACCEPT AND INCORPORATE FEEDBACK. but once you get those inputs, how do you make sense of them? And are you prepared to deal with the implications? Even if you acquire robust feedback through parallel testing or provocation, you could fail if you aren’t receptive enough to the findings.
We know from the Segway case that a passion for your idea can get in the way of hearing constructive and well-intentioned feedback. So how can entrepreneurs stay objective? After all, the passion required for entrepreneurship often stems from your love affair with your vision or creation. You must not only invite feedback; you must also accept and leverage it.
There are two key facets of accepting feedback. Whether you’re working alone or in a team, you need to think about how you interpret incoming data and how to avoid biases. There are two ways to address these challenges: (1) let the data speak, and (2) seek out people who think differently than you.
At Pixar, co-founder Ed Catmull oversaw a LET THE DATA SPEAK. parade of film directors who were trying to bring their creative projects to the screen. During this time, he noticed systematic patterns of resistance to constructive and well-intentioned feedback. At some point in the life of a project, the director’s passion would blind them to the movie’s inevitable problems.36
In his book Creativity, Inc., Catmull recalled directors’ reactions when receiving feedback from senior colleagues. When the stakes are high and people in the room don’t seem to understand a director’s vision, he said, “it can feel to that director like everything they’ve worked so hard on is in jeopardy, under attack. Their brains go into overdrive, reading all of the subtexts and fighting off the perceived threats to what they’ve built.”
Although the feedback might pinpoint what’s wrong or missing, candid and empathic feedback is only valuable if “the person on the receiving end [is] open to it and willing, if necessary, to let go of the things that don’t work.” Catmull stressed that the best feedback “can’t help people who refuse to hear criticism without getting defensive, or who don’t have the talent to digest feedback, reset, and start again.”
By contrast, one key to Frank Gehry’s success has been his ability to admit failure — to reject his initial attempt (in part or altogether) and start over with renewed confidence that the next draft would be better because of what he has learned. With one wealthy client, Peter Lewis, he worked for 12 years in order to