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Clearing the day
Grant, Whatnot's CEO, will sit in a review and tell the team he does not think something is right. Then he pauses and sets aside the rest of his day. He sits with the team and pulls up the tickets, the code, and the data, going through it line by line until they know what is happening and can make a decision.
A room that seeks truth
The habit sets the tone that the room is seeking truth. Reviews had drifted toward listening for yes, where a PM only wanted a green light to bring credibility back to the engineers.
Top-down and micromanaging
Top-down works when leaders know ground truth. Micromanagement is what it looks like when they do not and manage people from above. When everyone works from the same data, a junior engineer or an entry-level designer is stoked to work alongside the CPO or the CEO and ship something, with no alignment meetings in the way. Feedback gets better because it comes from inside the detail.
Why do leaders go and see for themselves?
Toyota built this habit into its production system under the name genchi genbutsu, which means go and see. Managers are expected to visit where the work happens and observe the problem directly before deciding. The company's engineer Taiichi Ohno was known for drawing a chalk circle on the factory floor and asking managers to stand in it and watch. The practice spread to many other companies through the book The Toyota Way.
Why do reviews drift toward telling leaders yes?
In 1970 the psychologists Sidney Rosen and Abraham Tesser reported what they called the mum effect, the reluctance to pass bad news up to someone else. People expect the messenger to be judged by the message. In a review, that shows up as presenters hedging toward approval. Leaders who go through the raw data themselves reduce the number of steps through which bad news must travel.
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