Last week I was on the panel for a pitch competition hosted by CIC and Blue Tech. Think of a pitch competition like Shark Tank only without the money. But this one was a little different. We still had several founders pitching their startups as though they were going in front of VCs, but after some preparation, we were instructed to never let them finish. If their first 10 seconds made our minds wander, we stopped them. If we weren’t 100% clear on their value proposition, we stopped them. If they used rhetorical questions, we stopped them. And if they used jargon a ten-year-old couldn’t follow, or used more than one number in a row, or didn’t help us to visualize the number, or rattled off a list of things, then we stopped them. Basically, it was our job to call BS on anything they said that didn’t sound quite right.
During the first round, no founder made it past about 20 seconds. After we stopped them, we gave them specific feedback on what didn’t quite resonate with us. They had a chance to refine their pitch and return for another beating. This went on for about two hours. I’m sure they were all exhausted and needed a drink after that exercise but you know what? It worked! It worked so well in fact that by their last round, not only were they getting through more of their pitches, although still not past about a minute, their messages were more focused, and in some cases got us so emotional that they had us cheering. The improvement in just a couple of hours was remarkable.
What made this exercise so valuable for these founders is that in a short amount of time, they received feedback that will help them to avoid rejections from countless VCs in meetings that may have taken weeks or months to set up. It was a great form of message boot camp.
As you know, I’m a big believer in avoiding BS. In fact, my company’s number one core value is No BS, which to us means always being straight with each other and with our clients, even when the message can be painful to hear. So I truly recognized the value of taking off our BS filters for a couple of hours with these founders. In fact, my mind wandered to the many possibilities of dropping BS in our feedback in other areas of our lives.
I once went on a first date with a guy who showed up wearing one of those white fabric clip-on belts. This guy had no connections to the military and we weren’t on a boat. I’m sure that works for some people but that plus his obvious lack of confidence was a real turn-off for me. I knew within the first 5 minutes that there would be no second date, but I thought it would be kinder to go through with the evening since he had clearly put some thought into it. But was it? Had I let him down within 5 minutes, neither of us would have wasted our time and maybe he would have polished his first impression a bit more for the next girl.
In business, we have so much BS. I find it ironic that the business undergraduate degree is called a BS in Business Administration. Harvard Business Review wrote about experiments in “radical transparency” at Bridgewater Associates and Netflix, both of which encourage harsh feedback, with the belief that it’s kinder to be candid if we really want to help someone excel. It’s similar to why we have safety checklists on heavy equipment, or quality checklists before taking a website live. Being specific can be useful. It’s trickier when it comes to performance though, whether it’s someone’s pitch, how well they’re leading a team, or their strategy. Here, research tells us that if we tell them how to improve, we actually get in the way of their improvement. We also know that simply watching someone else who is great, won’t make us great (which is why I’m not hanging with Simone Biles at the Olympics right now), and if you compare someone with a model of excellence and show them their gaps, that’s not enough either. When it comes to messages, the only truth we can share is how it made us feel.
A friend of mine from my corporate days used to give the fastest job interviews of anyone I have ever met. When we were growing and in heavy recruiting mode she would pop people in and out of her office within 15 minutes if they weren’t the right fit. Some days we’d time her just for the fun of it. Her logic was that if a candidate didn’t make a great first impression with her, they would be unlikely to do so with a client. Cutting them off right away sent them a clear message and she felt was actually kinder than stringing them along for an hour, letting them feel hopeful, and then sending a rejection letter. I must say this is a tactic I have adopted with my own recruiting. I tend to schedule a briefer screening interview, send the candidate over to my team if they pass, and then do a deeper dive with them once they have made it through the basic hurdles.
When vendors pitch me and whatever they’re selling isn’t a fit or the price is too high, rather than smile and say I’ll get back to them and ghost them, I typically tell them that I don’t think I’m in their target market. I have literally told salespeople not to schedule that follow-up with me in 2 months because I don’t want to waste their time. Most of them tell me that they appreciate me being straight with them so they don’t build their pipeline with unqualified prospects.
No BS feedback can also be applied to helping close networking colleagues grow their business. Is it kinder to listen to someone’s 30-second commercials for a year and never give them a referral because you’re really not sure who they’re looking to meet and what they do that’s so special, or would it be kinder to give them that feedback next time you have a 1-1? You don’t need to be an ass about giving the feedback, but I know that if my message was missing the mark, I’d sure like to know about it.
The key is how we give that No BS feedback. If we blurt out, “you suck”, we’re likely to trigger the fight or flight response of the person receiving the message. But if we take the time to understand someone’s goals and then brainstorm with them on how to best deliver the message to meet those goals, then they are likely to be more open. We learn based on building upon what we’re doing well. That’s what happened during the pitch competition. Our feedback to the founders was most effective when we simply shared how their message made us feel. “I’m confused by that string of numbers”, “I’m not sure what that acronym means”, “You took too long to get to the point and I was distracted.” This is far more valuable than telling them what to say.
This week I encourage you to go out in the world with your BS meter on high alert. I’ll be surprised if you don’t find an opportunity to provide more effective feedback, that if done with heart, could actually be the most helpful message someone receives.