How a "Nice" Company Culture Leads to Bad Products

Sean Weisbrot: Welcome back to another episode of the We Live To Build podcast. This is

Sean Weisbrot: episode 101, and you may hear that my voice is not perfect. Because I have been

Sean Weisbrot: sick. I'll explain that in a second. But first I wanted to share that after 11

Sean Weisbrot: months in America, I'm finally gone. I'm currently in Europe. I got here on May

Sean Weisbrot: 11th.

Sean Weisbrot: Today is June 4th. I spent three

Sean Weisbrot: weeks in Greece with an old friend, who is Greek, who I met in China nine years

Sean Weisbrot: ago. I hadn't seen him in four years, so it was amazing to see him again. And I

Sean Weisbrot: know that me being there brought joy to him as well, and that felt really good.

Sean Weisbrot: I also got to meet one of my team members.

Sean Weisbrot: My marketing director, Nicholas,

Sean Weisbrot: is also from Greece, so they happen to both be in Athens, and it was just great

Sean Weisbrot: to be able to spend time with both of them. And now I'm currently in Slovenia,

Sean Weisbrot: Luana, visiting another friend who I met in China nine years ago, who I also

Sean Weisbrot: haven't seen in four years. His name is Stan.

Sean Weisbrot: And, he's from Serbia and he's got

Sean Weisbrot: a Slovenia wife and they've got a baby and a very beautiful family. Very sweet. so I got to see them a few

Sean Weisbrot: days ago and it's been amazing. So why am I sick? Well, I'm sick because the

Sean Weisbrot: pollen in Europe this year is really bad. And because I'm not from Europe and I

Sean Weisbrot: haven't spent that much time here, this is my fourth time in Europe.

Sean Weisbrot: But. I've never experienced pollen

Sean Weisbrot: before. I've never had allergies like this, so this is quite bad for me. To the point that,

Sean Weisbrot: there's times like last night where I woke up three times in the night 'cause

Sean Weisbrot: my nose was so stuffed I couldn't breathe. I'm kind of sick. I had a fever of

Sean Weisbrot: 101.5, which is 38.5 Celsius a few days ago.

Sean Weisbrot: so I'm just like borderline sick

Sean Weisbrot: all the time. Stuffy nose, runny nose, unable to breathe. feverish. I tested

Sean Weisbrot: for COVID. I was negative, thankfully, but being sick nonetheless makes it

Sean Weisbrot: difficult to record episodes, so I've had to put off a few interviews until a

Sean Weisbrot: few weeks from now. When I get to Spain, I'm hoping that the pollen there is less, stronger than here.

Sean Weisbrot: So I was sick in Greece and in

Sean Weisbrot: Sylvania, so it's been almost a month that I've been sick, and it's just not

Sean Weisbrot: fun at all. But I don't wanna detract from the fact that this is an amazing

Sean Weisbrot: episode. And our guest today is Dennis Leonard, the managing partner of

Sean Weisbrot: Creative Navy. They're a design agency. He's been running for 13 and a half

Sean Weisbrot: years, which specializes in embedded GUI and Web and mobile ux.

Sean Weisbrot: They focus on the medical, marine,

Sean Weisbrot: industrial, and automotive sectors. So in this fantastic conversation, we focus

Sean Weisbrot: on group think. We talk about why we need diversity. We talk about how to

Sean Weisbrot: remove bias from a group, think

Sean Weisbrot: how to recognize that you are experiencing groupthink, how to remain open-minded.

Sean Weisbrot: About criticisms that people give

Sean Weisbrot: you so that groupthink isn't accelerated and things like that.

Sean Weisbrot: Why don't you tell everyone a

Sean Weisbrot: little bit about yourself and what makes you the right person to talk about

Sean Weisbrot: these things?

Dennis Lenard: So my name is Dennis, and I'm the CEO of Creative Navy, where what we do all

Dennis Lenard: day long is build digital products.

Dennis Lenard: So that means we help companies

Dennis Lenard: take an idea and actually bring it to life in the form of a usable interface

Dennis Lenard: for users. We've been doing that for more than 10 years now. So I've seen a lot

Dennis Lenard: of teams trying to, you know, grow, innovate, and achieve a lot of things.

Dennis Lenard: There's a lot of experience to go

Dennis Lenard: back on.

Sean Weisbrot: All right, great. Thank you for that. And before we go any further, I'd love to

Sean Weisbrot: know what made you wanna create this kind of a company?

Dennis Lenard: It came about organically, I would say. So I tried building a product. And then I realized it's

Dennis Lenard: very difficult to find someone who can actually be on your side and to help you

Dennis Lenard: through the whole difficulty of making something come to life.

Dennis Lenard: So while trying to do that for

Dennis Lenard: myself, I became better at it. and, and that's where Creative Navy started. And

Sean Weisbrot: What kind of a time period was this from

Sean Weisbrot: when you started to make products until you decided to build this company?

Dennis Lenard: That was about 15 years ago, give or take. I would say really the early days

Dennis Lenard: of.

Dennis Lenard: Digital products. Of course there

Dennis Lenard: were a lot of digital products out there, but the real boom was just about to

Dennis Lenard: form.

Sean Weisbrot: So what kind of problems did you encounter when making products? You said one

Sean Weisbrot: of them was you felt like it was hard to have someone on your side. What do you

Sean Weisbrot: mean by that?

Dennis Lenard: Whenever you try to innovate, the biggest challenge is that you're actually

Dennis Lenard: venturing into the unknown.

Dennis Lenard: So you have a sense of what you

Dennis Lenard: want to build, but you don't really know because. Figuring out exactly what you

Dennis Lenard: want to build and what needs to be there in the market is part of the whole

Dennis Lenard: process. So you can know beforehand, and that means that you encounter a lot of

Dennis Lenard: hurdles, a lot of challenges that you cannot foresee.

Dennis Lenard: That also means that you cannot

Dennis Lenard: really prepare for handling those. So whoever you work with must be prepared to

Dennis Lenard: face those challenges with you and to, to stick through it, and to try to find

Dennis Lenard: solutions even when it looks like there are absolutely no solutions out there,

Dennis Lenard: because this is very common, you know?

Dennis Lenard: It's one thing to have a challenge

Dennis Lenard: and to work on it and to figure it out, but it's another thing when, when it

Dennis Lenard: really seems like there is no solution and everything is just impossible and

Dennis Lenard: against you, that's also the point where innovation comes from because

Dennis Lenard: everything that is easy to solve has already been solved.

Dennis Lenard: The difficult things haven't been

Dennis Lenard: solved yet. So if you can figure out a new solution, then you have what's

Dennis Lenard: called innovation.

Sean Weisbrot: That's where we are with my company right now because we've built the MVP, but

Sean Weisbrot: the way that we actually establish uniqueness. Is what comes next. And what

Sean Weisbrot: comes next is something that no one else has done before.

Sean Weisbrot: And so we have to literally think about how the hell we're

Sean Weisbrot: gonna build it and we have to get it right the first time. Because if we don't,

Sean Weisbrot: we're gonna have problems and we won't be able to fix them. Or it'll be very

Sean Weisbrot: difficult to fix. So I can feel that pain for whoever is out there who's been

Sean Weisbrot: through it or is about to go through it or is going through it now.

Sean Weisbrot: It's definitely painful. And we

Sean Weisbrot: haven't even started on that. We haven't

Sean Weisbrot: started that innovation phase yet.

Dennis Lenard: I was just about to say that, that is in fact the challenge, specifically.

Dennis Lenard: Creating a robust foundation because you cannot scale out of an improvisation. You know, you can

Dennis Lenard: put together some features and some interfaces and some coding.

Dennis Lenard: That's sort of a partial solution.

Dennis Lenard: But if it's not robust, it cannot scale. And if it's not robust and it's not

Dennis Lenard: going to be a product, it's just going to be that improvisation. It has a user

Dennis Lenard: base, but it cannot go beyond the MVP phase.

Sean Weisbrot: We had to challenge a lot of assumptions that we had, and we built things and

Sean Weisbrot: then we realized that we shouldn't have built those things.

Sean Weisbrot: And so we had to get rid of them.

Sean Weisbrot: And then we thought, how can we do this better? And, and that kind of got us to

Sean Weisbrot: where we are now. I'm curious to know

Sean Weisbrot: more about innovation and I'm afraid of group think. So why don't we talk about

Sean Weisbrot: groupthink in particular? Give me some examples of times in which you

Sean Weisbrot: experienced groupthink either.

Sean Weisbrot: You found that you were the

Sean Weisbrot: creator of the groupthink or where you had a client that you found had

Sean Weisbrot: groupthink already? Like talk, talk in those kinds of details.

Dennis Lenard: I think first of all, I should explain what groupthink is. I. And specifically

Dennis Lenard: it is reaching a consensus without critical reasoning. That sounds like, why

Dennis Lenard: would anyone want to do that?

Dennis Lenard: Because everybody's critical thinking is the thing that we all love. That is true. But the number

Dennis Lenard: one factor that leads to groupthink is the

Dennis Lenard: desire not to upset people or to upset the balance or, you know, the positive feelings

Dennis Lenard: in the group and so on. That's also why it's not a

Dennis Lenard: particular individual that's causing it.

Dennis Lenard: Or you cannot avoid it just by

Dennis Lenard: hiring a particular type of person. Of course, there are people for whom the well-being of the group

Dennis Lenard: and, and the positive feeling while you're together is more important than for

Dennis Lenard: others, but nobody is immune. You can start out with a team that's highly

Dennis Lenard: critical, so it feels like they will never develop a loop thing, but then in time you realize that maybe it has

Dennis Lenard: happened.

Dennis Lenard: That's also the interesting thing

Dennis Lenard: that you get, is that people don't realize that they are trapped in this. It

Dennis Lenard: takes someone from the outside, and even for someone from the outside, it's

Dennis Lenard: difficult to just spot it. It takes a while to realize what happens when you build something or when you work together, at first

Dennis Lenard: everybody comes in with a.

Dennis Lenard: Particular set of emotions and an

Dennis Lenard: attitude and so on, and that's fine. They get put together and there are some

Dennis Lenard: clashes and everybody's aware of that, and that's fine. There is not much risk

Dennis Lenard: of grouping. But as you work together and you face challenges and everybody

Dennis Lenard: gets invested in certain solutions, or also in the fact that solutions have

Dennis Lenard: been tried.

Dennis Lenard: They haven't been found. that

Dennis Lenard: oftentimes leads to a compromise where people accept something that is not the

Dennis Lenard: best solution, but it seems like a reasonable one or as good as we can do. But

Dennis Lenard: if that keeps going on, going on, you can get into a situation where we have a

Dennis Lenard: lot of these compromises where you're actually just dancing around the actual

Dennis Lenard: solution or that robust foundation, something that is innovative from the core.

Dennis Lenard: Eventually, people start working

Dennis Lenard: towards confirming the bias that what you're building is good. Even though it's

Dennis Lenard: probably not good enough, that even means that you go in and collect feedback

Dennis Lenard: from users or potential customers or whoever, but you only hear what you want

Dennis Lenard: to hear or you interpret what you hear in such a way that it confirms or you

Dennis Lenard: know, say, okay, yeah, this is a critical, but this is a weak spot, but it's

Dennis Lenard: just this one and maybe it's not even that important.

Dennis Lenard: People have a lot of techniques for doing that, and they all do it without wanting to. So getting

Dennis Lenard: out of that is, is the big challenge. That's why I experience a lot of that

Dennis Lenard: because we often get hired because people got

Dennis Lenard: into this situation and they just can't figure out a solution, but they don't

Dennis Lenard: know why.

Dennis Lenard: So it's only they come talking to

Dennis Lenard: us and they say, please help us figure out a concept that is better than what we have because we just can't get

Dennis Lenard: a solution out of this.

Sean Weisbrot: I've spoken with another guest before about bias. We were talking about how to

Sean Weisbrot: remove bias. From your user research. And so I like how you mentioned that

Sean Weisbrot: people may get stuck seeing what they wanna see rather than what they need to

Sean Weisbrot: see.

Sean Weisbrot: And so we were talking about how

Sean Weisbrot: to establish your user research, your surveys, and all that in a way that

Sean Weisbrot: removes bias. From what you're doing, although it's impossible to remove bias

Sean Weisbrot: because humans are biased, and if you ask an AI to create the questions, the AI

Sean Weisbrot: will be biased based on what the human has trained them to do.

Sean Weisbrot: So there's really no way around

Sean Weisbrot: it. There will be bias. So how can you try to minimize it from this point of

Sean Weisbrot: view so that you can remove groupthink from these kinds of questions?

Dennis Lenard: There will always be some bias if you have robust methodology, and that just

Dennis Lenard: means having processes following those processes and building those processes

Dennis Lenard: according to best practice.

Dennis Lenard: what you will get is that you can

Dennis Lenard: avoid a lot of bias or, or where you have huge blind spots and I think that's

Dennis Lenard: what you. Definitely wants to achieve in order to get around groupthink. One

Dennis Lenard: thing you should look out for is a spiral that leads to more and more bias

Dennis Lenard: about a certain thing. So this is where groupthink is dangerous because it's not a huge piece of bias, so to say.

Dennis Lenard: It's not one huge blind spot, but

Dennis Lenard: it's something that creeps up on you and you don't realize that you are biased.

Dennis Lenard: Especially because of that. So in order to avoid that, you need to have some processes to check that

Dennis Lenard: the decisions you make don't become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It helps a lot

Dennis Lenard: to develop a culture that encourages being

Dennis Lenard: critical.

Dennis Lenard: So that means that you might

Dennis Lenard: prefer having people who are too critical or maybe criticism being phrased too harshly in terms of how you communicate it

Dennis Lenard: rather than. A culture where you cannot tolerate any, any sort of tension in

Dennis Lenard: the group or anyone who speaks up in, in ways that don't feel nice. The other

Dennis Lenard: important thing is to set a very high standard for the solutions that you

Dennis Lenard: develop, though, you know, whenever you feel that you're making compromises,

Dennis Lenard: and I think you can tell that you make compromises.

Dennis Lenard: If you're honest with yourself,

Dennis Lenard: that's a bad sign. And whenever you feel that you have to. Find a workaround in

Dennis Lenard: order to make another workaround work, and that generates another workaround

Dennis Lenard: and so on in user experiences. And you might experience that as we keep adding

Dennis Lenard: icons in a place where we shouldn't add icons, we end up with 15 options in a

Dennis Lenard: navigation and so on.

Dennis Lenard: So those are signs that

Dennis Lenard: fundamentally the product is not conceptualized the way it should be. There's

Dennis Lenard: also an element that is very important at the product level because something like. User experience or

Dennis Lenard: even development is always subject to what you're trying to build. And if you

Dennis Lenard: dream up something that is very complex code and the user experience is going

Dennis Lenard: to be complex as well, you cannot just wish away complexity, you know, with icons or making something pretty.

Dennis Lenard: So here what is critical is the

Dennis Lenard: notion of. Causality really in terms of what features or which aspects of

Dennis Lenard: features actually determine value for the user. And the truth is it's very

Dennis Lenard: difficult to know that even with, say, classical business, it's difficult to

Dennis Lenard: know which things that you do in your business actually add value and which

Dennis Lenard: ones don't.

Dennis Lenard: This is where. When it comes to

Dennis Lenard: scaling, it's very interesting to look at franchises because the whole

Dennis Lenard: franchising model is based on the idea of figuring out only the valuable

Dennis Lenard: features of the business, stripping away all the rest, and then scaling that a

Dennis Lenard: lot. If you have a franchise model where I. 50% of what you scale is useful and

Dennis Lenard: 50% is wasteful or not relevant to, to adding value to the customer.

Dennis Lenard: Then you scale the good, but you

Dennis Lenard: also scale the bad and then it doesn't work. That's why these hugely popular

Dennis Lenard: franchises that really work are amazing from a business perspective. Of course.

Dennis Lenard: As a consumer, you might feel, you don't like them because they're everywhere

Dennis Lenard: and so on. But from a business

Dennis Lenard: perspective, they really figured it out and I think there's a lot to learn from

Dennis Lenard: them.

Sean Weisbrot: So I actually talked about minimalism before with one of the guests. His name

Sean Weisbrot: is Pieter, episode 18, and

Sean Weisbrot: he's a consultant. His entire business is about

Sean Weisbrot: looking at all of the things you're doing that's wasteful and just getting rid

Sean Weisbrot: of 'em all and having those difficult conversations with whoever the

Sean Weisbrot: stakeholders are that make those decisions in the company to recognize that

Sean Weisbrot: this is a problem and you have to get rid of it, and I think it's fantastic.

Sean Weisbrot: One of the things that we've tried

Sean Weisbrot: to do in my company is. How can we prepare ourselves to scale with what we

Sean Weisbrot: have? And so we've been putting things in place that makes it so that we can

Sean Weisbrot: repeat them more easily. You know, obviously we're, we're still wasteful. Everyone, every company has

Sean Weisbrot: waste. It's very difficult to get around that as well, because this team thinks

Sean Weisbrot: that they need this software.

Sean Weisbrot: This team thinks that they need

Sean Weisbrot: this person. And sometimes you can justify it and sometimes you can't. But even

Sean Weisbrot: if you can't, like, you can't really do much about it. At times. So how do you

Sean Weisbrot: recommend they look at what works and what doesn't? What will scale well and

Sean Weisbrot: what won't scale well?

Dennis Lenard: Well, something that doesn't really scale well is something that's, it's too

Dennis Lenard: complex and it has a lot of things in it that don't add value or, or not enough value.

Dennis Lenard: And here the cure is really

Dennis Lenard: minimalism. And I would say minimalism is where you get to after you've done

Dennis Lenard: the job. Getting there is difficult, as you said. And, the big challenge is.

Dennis Lenard: How people get attached to certain things emotionally or also how they are

Dennis Lenard: afraid of losing things.

Dennis Lenard: The argument I would

Dennis Lenard: make is that if something relies on a lot of complexity, perhaps the product is

Dennis Lenard: a conglomerate of a ton of features, and for some reason we say that they all

Dennis Lenard: have to work together at the same time.

Dennis Lenard: Otherwise, users will not like it.

Dennis Lenard: These types of things are actually a way of masking the own insecurities that we have. People

Dennis Lenard: who build products or people who try to make products popular and to build a

Dennis Lenard: business around it, or even as, as people who try to build a team or a process

Dennis Lenard: internally that works.

Dennis Lenard: So the cure for this is trying to

Dennis Lenard: truly understand how something works and recognizing that bias where you have a vision of how you think it works and

Dennis Lenard: then you look for information to confirm that, you'd want to. A research

Dennis Lenard: method. and research doesn't have to be user research or anything that's

Dennis Lenard: complicated, but just a way of getting feedback from reality to see how it

Dennis Lenard: actually works.

Dennis Lenard: It means the mechanics of how it

Dennis Lenard: produces results, those, that causal relationship between something that

Dennis Lenard: happens and then the next thing that happens as a result of that. So you want

Dennis Lenard: to understand that because once you understand that, you can imagine it working

Dennis Lenard: in different ways. But also it'll resolve some of those insecurities around

Dennis Lenard: what if you lose this?

Dennis Lenard: Well, if you understand the

Dennis Lenard: mechanic, you know what happens if you lose X or how you can make it work in a

Dennis Lenard: different way if you get rid of x.

Sean Weisbrot: I saw a video recently with Elon Musk and in it he said, the most common error of a smart engineer is

Sean Weisbrot: to optimize a thing that shouldn't exist.

Dennis Lenard: Exactly. That's what a lot of product teams do, and that's exactly what you see

Dennis Lenard: a team doing within a group

Dennis Lenard: thing.

Dennis Lenard: They'll try to get incremental

Dennis Lenard: change or produce workarounds or time

Dennis Lenard: solutions to solve small problems. Where the problem shouldn't exist in the

Dennis Lenard: first place. Any product is going to be somewhat complex, even the

Dennis Lenard: simplest ones. Therefore, you have to be very careful

Dennis Lenard: with what you allow into the product.

Dennis Lenard: And anything that you allow into

Dennis Lenard: the product is going to add a lot more complexity than you think. So it's very,

Dennis Lenard: very dangerous. You should treat it like it's radioactive. You need something

Dennis Lenard: in the product. but everything you put in is dangerous. And as a result of

Dennis Lenard: that, whenever you have something that.

Dennis Lenard: Gives you a headache because it

Dennis Lenard: poses new problems and new challenges that you're trying to solve. You should

Dennis Lenard: really think about whether the problem that you're trying to solve should exist

Dennis Lenard: in the first place, and chances are if your product is truly useful, it

Dennis Lenard: shouldn't throw up all those challenges.

Dennis Lenard: So you should remove complexity to

Dennis Lenard: reveal one powerful principle, I would say, or one powerful mechanic. You

Dennis Lenard: should strive towards that. It doesn't have to be exactly one. If you have,

Dennis Lenard: let's say, 25 things that add value, you should really think about whether it

Dennis Lenard: wouldn't be better to only have three, which add a lot of value because they're

Dennis Lenard: very powerful.

Dennis Lenard: This is also where you can take an

Dennis Lenard: honest look at your product and think about whether it is innovative, because

Dennis Lenard: if your product is one thing so well that everybody wants it. It's probably

Dennis Lenard: something innovative. If your product has 25 things that other products do, but

Dennis Lenard: it has just combined them into one.

Dennis Lenard: It's probably not that innovative.

Dennis Lenard: It's just a mix of everything that's out there with a new brand, with a new

Dennis Lenard: logo, and it's probably not where it should be in terms of the potential.

Sean Weisbrot: What I see in my industry is there's a lot of companies. That position

Sean Weisbrot: themselves. Exactly. In the same way they all say, oh, we're an all-in-one.

Sean Weisbrot: We do this, this, this, and this.

Sean Weisbrot: But none of them actually do it in a way that's of value, I think. And so what

Sean Weisbrot: we decided to do was turn that on its head and, and do it the way that none of

Sean Weisbrot: them are doing it.

Dennis Lenard: that sounds a lot like that

Dennis Lenard: conglomerate of stuff that I mentioned before.

Dennis Lenard: You take stuff that's already out

Dennis Lenard: there, you change the color. You put it together into one thing. Of course the

Dennis Lenard: chat is maybe not going to be as good as something that does the only chat, or

Dennis Lenard: the files are not as good as another system that does only files and so on. And

Dennis Lenard: so what happens in this probably is that you get a little bit of the usefulness

Dennis Lenard: of any one of these systems.

Dennis Lenard: But you also get a lot of the junk

Dennis Lenard: that's not useful. That is annoying. And, and that might actually be sort of

Dennis Lenard: the unpleasantness of using any of these systems, let's say for files or for

Dennis Lenard: emails. That is just at the end of. Using

Dennis Lenard: files. Files are not perfect. You know, if reality were perfect, we wouldn't have files.

Dennis Lenard: We would just think of things and

Dennis Lenard: communicate telepathically because we can't. We have these files and you have

Dennis Lenard: to find them. You cannot just wish away the issue of finding files and

Dennis Lenard: everything that's unpleasant about them. So if you take a lot of systems, it's

Dennis Lenard: very likely that you will also, if you try to replicate them, you'll probably

Dennis Lenard: also import a lot of the unpleasantness.

Dennis Lenard: It's very unlikely that you will

Dennis Lenard: be able to get at the core. On the other hand, if you take one principle or or

Dennis Lenard: one aspect of this entire ecosystem, perhaps it could be the aspect of

Dennis Lenard: integrating all of these in some way, and if you really figure out how they can

Dennis Lenard: be integrated or at one principle how it could be made excellent.

Dennis Lenard: Then you have innovation and most

Dennis Lenard: importantly, you have added value to the users.

Sean Weisbrot: Oh, it's definitely innovative. I mean, I've spoken to 200 CEOs and they're all

Sean Weisbrot: like, holy shit, when can I use it? You know, I think it's there. We just have to get started on customer

Sean Weisbrot: acquisition, stuff like that. But yeah, I'm excited about it and the team's

Sean Weisbrot: excited about it and the potential customers are excited and investors are

Sean Weisbrot: excited.

Sean Weisbrot: So hopefully it ends up being

Sean Weisbrot: something of value and hopefully group think doesn't enter the company. if we

Sean Weisbrot: can be aware of it. One of the things I do in that regard in order to remove

Sean Weisbrot: groupthink is that, so my COO is American. He's lived in Asia for half his

Sean Weisbrot: life. My CTO is from the Philippines.

Sean Weisbrot: And he's worked with a French company and some Americans and

Sean Weisbrot: all that. My marketing director is from Greece and he's worked with people in

Sean Weisbrot: Dubai and the Netherlands. And then my product manager is from Kazakhstan.

Sean Weisbrot: She's been living in Turkey and she started a hardware company before. So we

Sean Weisbrot: all have a very unique way of looking at things and everyone has a voice.

Sean Weisbrot: More often than not. I will. Let

Sean Weisbrot: them do it the way they want to do it. Sometimes I'll put my foot down and go,

Sean Weisbrot: no, this is like, I wanna do it like this. But sometimes you know, they'll be

Sean Weisbrot: like, oh, I think we should do it like this. Alright, fine, go for it. So

Sean Weisbrot: sometimes, we will compromise about what to do.

Sean Weisbrot: Like where they have an idea and I

Sean Weisbrot: think it's okay, but like I think there's a better way to do it. Or maybe like

Sean Weisbrot: I'll just default to asking them what

Sean Weisbrot: they think because I don't want everyone to always need my approval to do something, but sometimes there's things I

Sean Weisbrot: wanna have a say in where like, I really want it to be this certain way.

Sean Weisbrot: Is that a good strategy for preventing groupthink or if you let people do things on their own,

Sean Weisbrot: they do it on their own and there is no group?

Sean Weisbrot: So, like, for example, if there's a question about marketing, my COO and myself

Sean Weisbrot: and my, my marketing director will talk about it. If it's something about a product, my COO, myself and the product manager will talk about it.

Sean Weisbrot: If it's something related to tech,

Sean Weisbrot: my COO, myself and the CTO will talk about it. So there are groups, but they're

Sean Weisbrot: just tinier groups based on what's relevant.

Sean Weisbrot: And sometimes, you know, the marketing

Sean Weisbrot: director and the product manager will talk if they're trying to figure out

Sean Weisbrot: how to market a, a feature or, or the CTO and the

Sean Weisbrot: product manager will talk about how to implement something and what are the

Sean Weisbrot: feature specifications and things like that.

Sean Weisbrot: So like we all talk to each other,

Sean Weisbrot: but it's not common that we all five talk about one thing at the same time. So

Sean Weisbrot: like if we're talking about a new feature, I might talk about it with my COO

Sean Weisbrot: first, and then I might talk about the feasibility of it with the CTO, and then

Sean Weisbrot: I may talk about it with the product manager for how, like what it looks like

Sean Weisbrot: and feels like.

Sean Weisbrot: And then I'll talk to the marketing director to see how to

Sean Weisbrot: market it. But like we might, like, we tried having a conversation where all

Sean Weisbrot: five of us were involved and it became a mess really fast. We found it's easier

Sean Weisbrot: to discuss, like high level to low level basically.

Dennis Lenard: I think it, it definitely helps creating little silos where the product or, or

Dennis Lenard: any kind of change can be looked at from different perspectives is useful

Dennis Lenard: because obviously you, when there are fewer people around, there's less to

Dennis Lenard: worry about in terms of this is going to upset someone and you fear to speak

Dennis Lenard: your mind and even you feel a certain liberty to, to think in different ways

Dennis Lenard: and to challenge things because the essence of avoiding group thinking is.

Dennis Lenard: Critical reasoning and challenging

Dennis Lenard: things. A very powerful thing. But also the interesting, you know, it's a double-edged sword, is to have

Dennis Lenard: several experts in one field where they also feel that they can challenge each

Dennis Lenard: other. Because if you have a group where only

Dennis Lenard: one person is an expert for a particular aspect, the others would have a more

Dennis Lenard: difficult time challenging that person.

Dennis Lenard: That's not necessarily a given

Dennis Lenard: because sometimes. Not being an expert in something also means you have a

Dennis Lenard: simplistic look at things, but that might actually enable you to see those

Dennis Lenard: fundamental contradictions in an idea. Which are easily explained the way by

Dennis Lenard: adding more complexity and more explanation and and more fluff.

Dennis Lenard: But at the core, perhaps because

Dennis Lenard: you don't understand all those intricate dynamics, you can also just say, yeah,

Dennis Lenard: but it doesn't make sense because there's a contradiction, which is fundamental

Dennis Lenard: to the argument that you're making or the way that you envisage this. But

Dennis Lenard: that's not always a given. Just like when you put three experts together, they can perhaps quickly

Dennis Lenard: persuade each other to do something in the way that it's always been done,

Dennis Lenard: because they all know that this is how.

Dennis Lenard: This thing is done. So that again,

Dennis Lenard: means that critical thinking just goes away, and, thus you get into this spiral

Dennis Lenard: of just confirming each other's perspectives.

Sean Weisbrot: So, yeah, so thankfully my COO has a background in marketing and my, and he

Sean Weisbrot: also understands tech some, but not like the CTO. The product manager also has

Sean Weisbrot: like COO experience in her previous company.

Sean Weisbrot: She was her COO, she decided not

Sean Weisbrot: to be the CEO, so she understands processes. So there's, there is an overlap

Sean Weisbrot: for us, but there is also a lot of, I don't know from a, from a deep point of

Sean Weisbrot: view as you said. So. Like, what I've found is I, I learned a lot about tech

Sean Weisbrot: from asking my CTO questions and he would be like, yeah, but like, we could do

Sean Weisbrot: it, but you need to think about this thing or that thing, and be like, oh,

Sean Weisbrot: okay.

Sean Weisbrot: So he helped to shape my

Sean Weisbrot: understanding of how things work technologically and fe feas and what's the

Sean Weisbrot: feasibility of a lot of them. And that's helped me to get better at designing

Sean Weisbrot: and, you know, the ui, ux and the feature specs and all of that. I don't like

Sean Weisbrot: silos, so everyone is free to have conversations amongst themselves.

Sean Weisbrot: We have a very flat structure, I think, in a lot of ways besides

Sean Weisbrot: having the titles just for reporting for, for ease of reporting. But yeah, we

Sean Weisbrot: find that it's not so much about silos, but

Sean Weisbrot: rather like before we go to build something, we need to flesh it out at the

Sean Weisbrot: highest level, and then we need to see if it makes sense to build or how it

Sean Weisbrot: could be built.

Sean Weisbrot: And then. The details of the

Sean Weisbrot: building and then the marketability of it. So we, I don't like to think of

Sean Weisbrot: those, those as silos. I like to think of it as part of a process of trying to

Sean Weisbrot: determine if we're going to build something. Yeah, that makes sense. And so it

Sean Weisbrot: may not make sense to have the CTO talk about it if we decide not to move

Sean Weisbrot: forward with it.

Sean Weisbrot: So there's no point having him on a call to discuss this thing if my COOL and I don't agree that it's worth pursuing if the CTO

Sean Weisbrot: says, Hey, this is a cool idea, but it's. Very difficult to do. We don't have

Sean Weisbrot: the resources to do it. If you get me $20 million, okay, fine, then there's no

Sean Weisbrot: point to have the product manager involved because it's not gonna happen.

Sean Weisbrot: And if the, you know, if we agree

Sean Weisbrot: that it's feasible and then we go to talk about the details of it, of how to

Sean Weisbrot: implement it, there's no point talking to the marketing director because we

Sean Weisbrot: haven't figured out what it's gonna look like, what it's gonna feel like. We

Sean Weisbrot: don't have designs, we don't have details, we don't have content prepared for

Sean Weisbrot: him to be able to talk about it.

Sean Weisbrot: So I think of it as a process, not

Sean Weisbrot: a silo. So it's about making sure we. Minimize wasting people's time.

Dennis Lenard: Yeah. I think that's definitely

Dennis Lenard: a good approach and, and it is important. What I was

Dennis Lenard: just picturing while you were describing, this is a scenario where perhaps you

Dennis Lenard: agree that it's worth building something.

Dennis Lenard: It would be useful

Dennis Lenard: if it could be built, and perhaps then at the next level, when you flesh out

Dennis Lenard: the details, you realize. You can build it,

Dennis Lenard: but you have to fix it somehow because the way it's envisioned is difficult to

Dennis Lenard: build. Then you start working around the idea and it becomes something else,

Dennis Lenard: which is then a collection of point solutions of.

Dennis Lenard: Incremental fixes of workarounds

Dennis Lenard: for, for things. I mean, that can happen as, as you build things, it's actually

Dennis Lenard: quite common. what is very important at that point to avoid group thinking is

Dennis Lenard: having a culture where it's okay to realize that. You've made a huge mistake,

Dennis Lenard: actually, not just a small one. and that you have to go back to do it from

Dennis Lenard: scratch.

Dennis Lenard: You know, sometimes you pursue an

Dennis Lenard: idea and it all seems good, and then you, there's a challenge, but you, you

Dennis Lenard: figure it out and there's another, you figure it out and you keep going that

Dennis Lenard: way until you get to a point where actually it's all just changed and, and it's

Dennis Lenard: not cool anymore. If at that point you give off a vibe where people feel, oh,

Dennis Lenard: everybody's frustrated.

Dennis Lenard: This shouldn't have happened.

Dennis Lenard: Everybody's sad about it, and I dunno what. And the next time people will avoid

Dennis Lenard: accepting that it was a huge mistake and they will just confirm each other's

Dennis Lenard: bias. So this is where the way you relate to the situation where you have to go from scratch

Dennis Lenard: is so key to what's going to happen in the future.

Dennis Lenard: Because if you have a culture

Dennis Lenard: where everybody knows yes, when you build products, sometimes you work on

Dennis Lenard: something for four weeks and then you get to the point where you realize that

Dennis Lenard: you are in that situation where you're optimizing something that you shouldn't

Dennis Lenard: even have built. Then you say, that's okay.

Dennis Lenard: It happens. This is how it goes.

Dennis Lenard: Let's go back to the drawing board. Let's do something else. Nobody's upset. Because when you have that culture, then

Dennis Lenard: you're not going to. have that desire creep up of not wanting to upset the

Dennis Lenard: team's balance.

Sean Weisbrot: So I've definitely been there before where I

Sean Weisbrot: started to work on something and wrote down the feature specifications.

Sean Weisbrot: I designed the whole thing and

Sean Weisbrot: then I presented it to the team and they're like, yeah, but this, this, this,

Sean Weisbrot: this, and this. A few months later. We've now come back and we have a better

Sean Weisbrot: idea of it. But this time I haven't done the specifications, I haven't done the

Sean Weisbrot: designs. I just said, this is my vision for how I think it could work.

Sean Weisbrot: Let's tear it apart and then once

Sean Weisbrot: we think we figure out how to make it work, then we'll get into the designs and

Sean Weisbrot: the future specifications. And so through doing it this way, it will hopefully

Sean Weisbrot: save us a lot of time this time. But I learned from that process how I could do

Sean Weisbrot: it faster and better the next time.

Sean Weisbrot: So hopefully that will also help

Sean Weisbrot: us to avoid groupthink, because

Sean Weisbrot: instead of going, Hey, here's everything fleshed out, pick it apart. It is

Sean Weisbrot: like, Hey, here's the idea. Pick it apart.

Dennis Lenard: Yeah, you'd want to

Dennis Lenard: question things in all the phases and to even do that in the very early phases

Dennis Lenard: because that's where the idea is like the foundation of everything.

Dennis Lenard: If that is not optimized, it's

Dennis Lenard: going to skew everything into one direction, and then maybe you get to that

Dennis Lenard: point where it falls apart because there is a threshold where you cannot cope

Dennis Lenard: with those imbalances anymore.

Sean Weisbrot: So do you have any examples of a client or clients where this happened, where

Sean Weisbrot: you tried to help and in the end you're like, guys, I've tried, but like, no,

Sean Weisbrot: there's just no way to save this idea or

Sean Weisbrot: anything?

Dennis Lenard: oftentimes we see that from the beginning. So we, so we have people who write

Dennis Lenard: to us with an idea and they've put together something, but we can already see

Dennis Lenard: that it's not, it's not sufficiently innovative. It's just a few things stuck together with tape. and we don't

Dennis Lenard: think.

Dennis Lenard: That can scale. Of course, we, you

Dennis Lenard: know, we can design anything, but there's no point in designing something if

Dennis Lenard: you can already foresee that it's not going to work based on those assumptions

Dennis Lenard: that they have. So that's when we, when we tell people, some of them accept

Dennis Lenard: that, or, or I mean, that makes them curious to understand why others get upset that is then again, a sign of whether working on a product is realistic or not. Because if you cannot. Criticize things from the

Dennis Lenard: beginning, then, obviously you cannot improve things. It's also very common to

Dennis Lenard: see corporations or large teams who fall into the group think trap, because there, in large organizations there are a lot of them.

Dennis Lenard: Culture around not upsetting

Dennis Lenard: people and being nice to each other, which is of course great, in terms of

Dennis Lenard: getting on with everyone. but it can easily degenerate into group think. It's very difficult to convince people to

Dennis Lenard: demonstrate to them that the way they're trying to build something is not

Dennis Lenard: right, because there are a lot of defensive mechanisms that that's very

Dennis Lenard: important.

Dennis Lenard: I mean, we have an advantage

Dennis Lenard: because we are an independent advisor. But anyone who would try to do that from

Dennis Lenard: inside the team would be shut down immediately and, and there is a certain leap

Dennis Lenard: of faith when someone tells you what you're doing is fundamentally wrong. It

Dennis Lenard: has to be different. Now, hang

Dennis Lenard: on until I show you how it could be different.

Dennis Lenard: That could take a month or two or

Dennis Lenard: three of designing and building to demonstrate what that new vision could be.

Dennis Lenard: Because of course when you criticize something, you only know that it's not

Dennis Lenard: right, but you don't yet know what the alternative is, so that takes some time.

Dennis Lenard: So yeah, I think these are some cases where it happens very, very often too.

Sean Weisbrot: I think my team is lucky that I have a very tolerant threshold for them

Sean Weisbrot: criticizing things because I recognize, and I think maybe I learned that

Sean Weisbrot: patients from interviewing all of these guests, the way they're a common thread

Sean Weisbrot: for them was like, yeah, you need to be able to trust your team. Or also, why

Sean Weisbrot: are you hiring them?

Sean Weisbrot: So I feel pretty secure in going,

Sean Weisbrot: like, look, if I mess up, tell me to my face. That's it. I won't judge you if

Sean Weisbrot: you say it in a mean way, if you're like a complete jerk about it. Okay. I'll

Sean Weisbrot: be annoyed, but like, if I can sense that you're coming at it from sincerity, then okay, I'll take your judgment or your criticism and

Sean Weisbrot: let's talk about it very openly.

Sean Weisbrot: I just hope that I can hire

Sean Weisbrot: people. That will be capable of telling me. I think that the larger fear is not can I take it,

Sean Weisbrot: but rather can I find people who will give it.

Dennis Lenard: Yeah. And that's important

Dennis Lenard: and that's difficult to maintain, I mean that kind of culture. No, we have our

Dennis Lenard: own culture when we work as a team, which is different too.

Dennis Lenard: How we communicate with customers,

Dennis Lenard: let's say, and with customer teams, because obviously whenever we work with an

Dennis Lenard: external team, that's, that's a new team with a different culture. So you

Dennis Lenard: cannot walk in with the assumptions that you have inside. But for example, with

Dennis Lenard: us internally, we have certain principles that shape how we work together.

Dennis Lenard: And one of them is that whenever

Dennis Lenard: you feel heard by someone's feedback or what someone says about something

Dennis Lenard: you've done. It's your own problem. Even if it feels like they're being a jerk

Dennis Lenard: to you, it's your own problem. As long as what they say is sound conceptually.

Dennis Lenard: So if they say, this doesn't work, even if they say it in the worst way, if it

Dennis Lenard: doesn't work, it's your, the emotions that you experience at this company is

Dennis Lenard: your own problem.

Dennis Lenard: Of course, if you, I mean, you can

Dennis Lenard: imagine a lot of extreme scenarios of what could happen. Nobody in our team is,

Dennis Lenard: is, is a jerk on purpose. but just. In terms of the principle, it is very

Dennis Lenard: important because it means that feeling good or bad about something is

Dennis Lenard: irrelevant or you have to be able to, to ignore that in order to appraise

Dennis Lenard: whether it works or whether it doesn't work, whether it is sound from a

Dennis Lenard: technical perspective of the design.

Dennis Lenard: This is an important principle

Dennis Lenard: because when you don't have to be. Worried that what you say could upset

Dennis Lenard: someone. Obviously there's a lower likelihood of groupthink Now, again, we are nice

Dennis Lenard: to each other and so on, but it is important that everybody knows that, especially

Dennis Lenard: new people who joined the team.

Dennis Lenard: Because you have a lot of people who join teams with the assumption

Dennis Lenard: that the most important thing is not to upset others. So they have to be

Dennis Lenard: extremely nice, extra nice. And when they criticize something, it almost has to

Dennis Lenard: sound like praise.

Dennis Lenard: There is some merit

Dennis Lenard: to that, but it is dangerous because it can lead down

Dennis Lenard: this path.

Dennis Lenard: So, there has to be a balance, and that's why the fundamental

Dennis Lenard: principle for us is that arguments matter, the technicalities matter. Emotions

Dennis Lenard: have to be put aside at least as long as you make decisions.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. What I meant by them being rude, I meant like, you know, if they're

Sean Weisbrot: cussing at me telling me I'm an idiot and.

Sean Weisbrot: Like, obviously I'm, I'm not gonna

Sean Weisbrot: tolerate that, but if they're like, yeah, you know, look, I was looking at this

Sean Weisbrot: thing and I, I think there's some problems with it, I'd love to talk to you

Sean Weisbrot: about it. Yeah, sure. Fine. Or like, oh, I noticed you had this button here,

Sean Weisbrot: but like, I just don't think there's any value in having it.

Sean Weisbrot: I think instead we could just have them click on the thing instead

Sean Weisbrot: and then you don't need the button and it's simple. It's like, yeah, okay,

Sean Weisbrot: fine. Go for it. So, I also try to tell the

Sean Weisbrot: team members that. You should always assume that people are coming from a place

Sean Weisbrot: of positivity, that they're, they're never saying something like for a bad

Sean Weisbrot: reason.

Sean Weisbrot: And so don't assume mal intent in

Sean Weisbrot: their words, and everyone has problems in their life, so just be nice to them

Sean Weisbrot: because you don't know what's going on in their personal life Sometimes. Part

Sean Weisbrot: of encouraging criticism. And encouraging positive social interactions in the

Sean Weisbrot: team in a way that doesn't allow a groupthink to creep up is nice to each other.

Sean Weisbrot: But be honest, as long as you

Sean Weisbrot: maintain that level of honesty, even if it hurts, like, okay, well then figure

Sean Weisbrot: out how to say it in a way that doesn't hurt. But, just be honest. 'cause that's more important

Sean Weisbrot: than anything else.

Dennis Lenard: So someone has put, let's say they've put, together a design for a whole flow.

Dennis Lenard: It has. Five steps. So that means

Dennis Lenard: five page designs, let's say. And within each of these. Page designs, they've

Dennis Lenard: put in a lot of effort and they found a lot of solutions that they think are

Dennis Lenard: great. There's a lot of awesome stuff in this thing, a lot of work, and just a

Dennis Lenard: lot of good ideas. There are two or three things that they are unsure about,

Dennis Lenard: but otherwise they feel that the concept is great.

Dennis Lenard: Plus it has a lot of awesome

Dennis Lenard: features and details in it. So let's imagine this scenario. Then they walk up

Dennis Lenard: to someone and that person sees that and they think, oh boy, this is not right

Dennis Lenard: in, in any shape or form. It shouldn't even be five steps because it should

Dennis Lenard: somehow be reduced. It should be something that's completely different.

Dennis Lenard: Now, if you can dress that up and

Dennis Lenard: tell that someone, say it nicely, but the message is basically what you've done

Dennis Lenard: is fundamentally wrong. That enthusiasm that you feel is completely misplaced

Dennis Lenard: because you haven't made a lot of progress. It was a waste, essentially. You

Dennis Lenard: can, you can think of it that way. Even the most experienced person in handling

Dennis Lenard: that kind of situation is going to feel incredibly frustrated and hurt and

Dennis Lenard: upset, and it's just human nature to immediately feel like that other person is hurting you.

Dennis Lenard: Even if they're not trying to, or

Dennis Lenard: even if they're trying to. Not to hurt you, so they want to be as nice as possible. That's where

Dennis Lenard: I would say those feelings of frustration and anger and whatever it might be,

Dennis Lenard: are the problem of the person who's created

Dennis Lenard: that, and you have to deal with that and so many methods to do that.

Dennis Lenard: But it shouldn't be that the

Dennis Lenard: person giving the feedback says, yeah, you know what? I see that you've done a

Dennis Lenard: lot of effort and perhaps it's not that bad if you would improve these things

Dennis Lenard: or take this something into consideration, but otherwise it's good. But if that

Dennis Lenard: happens, you're going down

Dennis Lenard: the path of groupthink you, you have to have,

Dennis Lenard: the courage to say no, it's fundamentally wrong.

Sean Weisbrot: Like Steve Jobs. That, that's the thing that gets me about Steve Jobs is

Sean Weisbrot: everyone admits that he was one of the worst human beings they ever worked

Sean Weisbrot: with, but he consistently got fantastic results out of his teams.

Dennis Lenard: I mean, I'm not sure what was going on while he was there and what it felt like

Dennis Lenard: working with him.

Dennis Lenard: But as long as the premise is that

Dennis Lenard: people have to do better, not because we're trying to hurt them, but because

Dennis Lenard: the standard of what we think is good enough is just so high. You know, if you

Dennis Lenard: want to do great things, unfortunately you have to conform to reality and not

Dennis Lenard: to your own emotion or to whatever you agree with everyone else.

Dennis Lenard: Life and reality are very harsh. We don't have to be harsh to

Dennis Lenard: each other. but as long as we're trying something that has to, like a bridge,

Dennis Lenard: no, it's not supposed to collapse in a hurricane, but then we have to build a

Dennis Lenard: bridge for the hurricane and not to make each other feel good. If you fail to

Dennis Lenard: do that, we are going to suffer.

Dennis Lenard: We are going to feel hurt. But

Dennis Lenard: either way, the bridge cannot be built in a way that we collapse in the hurricane.

Sean Weisbrot: So I was gonna ask if there was anything you wanted to say to close out this

Sean Weisbrot: episode?

Dennis Lenard: I would come back to this element of emotions because the point is we have all

Dennis Lenard: these negative emotions and they're all part of life, frustration, anger, fear,

Dennis Lenard: and and all of that.

Dennis Lenard: And they are also part of working

Dennis Lenard: with others, building products, figuring out what could help us improve the

Dennis Lenard: reality around us. And all that revolves around not knowing what's going to

Dennis Lenard: happen. How it's going to unfold and so on, so, so this idea of uncertainty and

Dennis Lenard: the unknown is difficult to deal with, but as long as we deal with it in an

Dennis Lenard: honest way, even admitting that we have these emotions, I think we are going toget it.

Dennis Lenard: Results that are a lot better. So

Dennis Lenard: the point is that redoing something from scratch or just admitting to yourself

Dennis Lenard: or even to others that

Dennis Lenard: something that you've done and that you were so emotionally invested in was

Dennis Lenard: wrong, feels bad. But if you get over that, you go back to the drawing bone,

Dennis Lenard: you redo it. If you keep doing that and persevering, then you'll come up with

Dennis Lenard: something that is really great and it's going to make a lot of people happy and

Dennis Lenard: it's going to make their lives better in a meaningful way.

Dennis Lenard: And that then is going to be the

Dennis Lenard: reward. For sticking through this process, which oftentimes feels like it is

Dennis Lenard: impossible to tolerate and like you have no way out, and there simply are no

Dennis Lenard: right solutions. You just have to stick with it and, and trust that it's going

Dennis Lenard: to be fine. The fact that you don't feel good about it is not an indicator that

Dennis Lenard: it's not.

Dennis Lenard: The right thing to do. Oftentimes

Dennis Lenard: the right thing to do doesn't feel good at all.