Self-awareness is in my opinion the most critical component to growing as a person, as a leader, and as a productive human being.
Understanding what we do right and wrong is the cornerstone of being able to improve; one need to understand what is working and what isn't working to know what to focus on the and to find ways to get better. Much like building a startup is all about getting data and adjusting, our evolution as leaders functions the same way.
Sadly, most startups don't pay enough attention to developing their people and tend not to provide enough feedback. There is just too much to do and there are no formal channels for getting feedback. This was happening at ThinkNear and it was bothering me. I wasn't improving on a daily basis and neither was our team. I did not want to add a performance evaluation or some rigid process that you do once a year and is meant to judge a person rather than give them constructive feedback about what is working and what they can improve.
A couple of weeks back I heard about a startup called ClearGears that sends every employee a question a day about another employee. I decided to implement it at ThinkNear with a few slight changes. We decided that we couldn't just rate someone, but we actually need to provide a comment with feedback. We also made it clear that this was not a tool that was going to be used to evaluate anyone - the only purpose was to create a channel for constructive feedback. This did away with the common practice of just saying everyone is excellent. The point is to get good feedback that no one sees other than the person receiving - this made folks think hard about what advice they would give co-workers to help them improve.
Since we implemented it everyone on the team is getting quick feedback on a daily basis on a range of topics. It takes less than three minutes a day, but has been giving us daily concrete feedback about how we can get better. Not just from a manager / but from everyone on the team. Just as helpful, we now have an easy channel by which to give feedback across the company. This is helping create a culture where we are all open and willing to give and take feedback...and I am starting to see it happening outside of ClearGears as well, its happening in the hallways, meetings, and email. Its all constructive and helpful and appreciated by all.
I personally have found the feedback incredibly helpful. I am learning about things that I am doing that people appreciate and now will make sure to continue doing them. More importantly, I have heard about the things that I am not focusing enough on or doing poorly and it has been revealing and helpful. Most of these items are easy to change and now that I am aware, I will definitely work had to improve on them.
