Feedback is better with "plussing"
We know that feedback can improve behaviors. But it's also pretty effective at elevating ideas. Just ask the creatives at Pixar.
Pixar is one of the most successful movie studios in Hollywood. Over the years, it has collected more than twenty Academy Awards for hits?like?Toy Story,?The Incredibles, and?Finding Nemo. Its feature films have earned nearly $15 billion?at the worldwide box office, with an average worldwide gross of $680 million per film. The memorable characters and storylines that Pixar dreams up have delighted moviegoers of all ages.
But behind all of?the box office magic is an active feedback system that’s built on candor, adaptability, and a surprising openness to other people’s ideas.
Creating full-length animated films is?no small feat. A single scene lasting just four seconds requires about one hundred frames, which can take up to a week to produce. For the 2001 smash?Monsters, Inc., animators spent twelve hours on each frame, many of which featured Sully, the film’s furry blue hero, and his 2,320,413 individually animated hairs, each painstakingly created to appear like the real thing.
At times, the process can seem more forensic than artistic. Story artists comb through every detail of a scene, scanning for things that probably go unnoticed by viewers –?the placement of a prop, perhaps, or the way a character’s eyes roll. They do so at their own peril: Changing even one minor detail in the animation means adjusting a character’s “rig,” or the digital dimensions that shape facial expressions and body movements. Rigging is a complex web of formulas, coding, and physics, and any imprecision in the rig can compromise a character’s lifelike performance on screen.
The margin for error is high. Further down the pipeline, bits and pieces of the story – from camera angles and lighting to sound effects and motion capture – get reviewed and revised by film editors, technical directors, and creative designers. All that trimming adds up: It took Pixar’s team five years to scope more than 146,000 images before bringing?Toy Story 4?to the box office. Making movies the Pixar way is requires rapid design, painstaking precision and ruthless editing that result in ideas getting dumped just as quickly as they’re dreamed up.
The power of "plussing"
But instead of producing production bottlenecks, the process leads to creative breakthroughs – all because of a feedback technique Pixar calls “plussing.” Instead of shutting down ideas completely, animators try to add on to them with suggestions for improvement. So when the creative director for?Toy Story 4?didn't like the initial design concept for Bo Peep (it took ten design concepts to finally get the right one), he tried "plussing" the story artist: “I like the way you drew Bo Peep's bonnet. What if it curled a bit on the edge?”
While that might seem semantic, the feedback effect is significant. Rather than reject ideas in their entirety, "plussing" creates an?additive approach?to sharing feedback. It actively encourages artists to come up with their next steps based on the leads they receive.
"Plussing" borrows from the tenets of improv, in which partners keep the sketch alive by “accepting all offers” and mining for comedic wrinkles in each other’s ideas. Instead dismissing ideas, they look for their untapped potential.
Instead of settling for "yeah, but," "plussing" opts for "yes, and."
People who operate with a “yes, and…” approach use their words to amplify ideas, not silence them. This is what keeps improv sketches going. But it's not just about developing ideas. "Plussing" builds trust by signaling that we respect and value the person on the other side of an idea. Because when we validate other people's ideas, we validate them, too.
Start "plussing" your feedback
How can become we become better at "plussing"? Here's a short list of ways to boost the quality of ideas (and relationships) at work:
With just a simple tweak in our feedback, we help others think about ways to turn the corner rather than leaving them stranded at dead ends. And while this approach has worked wonders for Pixar, it can be applied as a collaborative feedback strategy to help just about anyone challenge their initial assumptions and come up with a better version than the one they had before.
Whether it’s?big-screen success or small wins in our work or relationships, "plussing" can be a powerful way for us to lift up other people's ideas and our own relationships.
Keep fixing,
Joe
Dr. Joe Hirsch helps organizations design and deliver feedback without fear. He's a?TEDx?and?global keynote speaker?and the author of "The Feedback Fix." Joe's work and research has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Inc. and other major outlets. He also hosts the popular podcast,?I Wish They Knew.