Kunal Shah on Feedback

I’ve been watching Kunal Shah’s interviews recently and noticed he has some very interesting insights on feedback. A compilation of his thoughts on feedback below, lightly edited for clarity and grammar. All wisdom is Kunal’s, any mistakes are mine. Enjoy!

On embracing feedback

I just constantly seek feedback. If you think of yourself as an app, the only way you're going to ship great features or remove bugs is by making use of feedback. Most people do not release newer versions of their app. [1 ]

Those with privilege encourage their children to play sports, because in sports the feedback is real – you lost the game. [2 ]

Feedback is a gift.?

Always receive it with warmth and zero offence.?

You may or may not use it. It’s a choice.?

But reacting negatively to feedback will shut that person forever and stop a good channel.?

You rarely see useless feedback coming from people better than you. [3 ]

People rarely understand the feedback if the feedback offends them.

People who get offended easily, rarely improve with feedback.?

People who are good at giving feedback, can give without offending.?

Those who can ignore the tone of feedback giver and understand feedback, do well. [4 ]

All the people who are good at giving you feedback are likely to be very efficient, and efficient people are perceived to be rude. [5 ]

It’s hard to be feedback seeking when you’re wired to be validation seeking. [6 ]

Very few people are sharing on social media because they are constantly trying to appear like a perfect person. One of my posts will have 10,000 likes and another will have a hundred likes, because I am writing to share, not to get likes. The moment you get de-addicted to chasing likes and all about expressing, you will be surprised how much of an authentic following you'll get where people will be actually willing to give feedback. I recently wrote on LinkedIn, “Hey, I want to make CRED better, can you give me some feedback?” and I got 1,500 high-quality comments. [7 ]

On feedback attractors v/s repellers

Insecure people often take feedback personally.

People who take feedback personally often get defensive and combative.

Defensive and combative feedback takers repel feedback.

People who repel feedback have the slowest growth rate. [8 ]

There are two types of people. The first is feedback repellers, as I call them. Just like compounding but in the negative direction, they'll become dumb, they'll just go down.?

Feedback attractors are a very different type.

First, when you give them feedback, they don't judge your tone. Be a feedback attractor; don't judge the tone. Feedback is a gift; if someone's giving it, just take it, don't judge the tone. When we get a gift, do we judge the cover? No, we just accept it.?

Second, feedback attractors will reiterate what the feedback was and communicate back to you after the moment has passed. They are reflecting on it. The best people will demonstrate that so-and-so has changed as a result of implementing feedback; they tell you, “if you observe the flaw again, please let me know”. You notice that feedback attractors just compound upwards. [2 ]

If you think of yourself as an app, feedback attractors will say, “Hey, here's the new release in which we just fixed these three bugs.” [1 ]

One method that really, really works is you have to assume feedback is a gift, and you have to be extremely greedy for gifts. What I do is I actively DM all the people who troll me on Twitter and ask them for feedback. Most people block their trolls, but I actually speak to them. For the first five minutes, they don’t accept it; they get scared, actually. I had one troll that I was speaking with recently and that person said, “Kunal, I am going to screenshot everything that you say over here”. I said “Sure, but I need feedback; can you help me with that?” I asked him five times, “can you give me feedback?” He says, ”no, I'm going to take this and put it everywhere in the media, I'll write a blog about this”. I said, “yes sure, but can you give me feedback?” and they don't understand that you are asking for feedback. Later they realise, “okay, he is just a normal person and therefore it's not fun to troll anymore”.?

We tend to ignore people who have strong feedback for us and surround ourselves with people who are mostly sugarcoating the feedback they give us. There are leaders who have puppet yes-men around them or leaders with real people around them, and you can see the difference between those two leaders. [5 ]

In India parents and relatives do not give good advice because they love to sugarcoat feedback to you. They will not give you honest feedback. India is a country of sugarcoating. As a result, you never get real feedback and nobody in your life gives you real feedback because everybody is built on insecurity. We build a mutual admiration club and that is not great to build businesses because nobody really tells you if you are doing something stupid. [5 ]

I don't know any successful founder who's not very good at giving and getting feedback. [5 ]

On customers as the best form of feedback for an entrepreneur

One thing that I see among tech startup founders is that they do research on a chair. It doesn’t work. When you talk to 500 people, you get more than what you asked for, and those are the real insights. Even after the acquisition, I’m still talking to my customers every day. [9 ]

[Before starting CRED] we did a lot of surveys. We had around 50 interns who went to malls who tested our products before we launched. We did this for 7-8 months before we launched. Why can’t we plan better? It takes a lot of user feedback to understand what the core user motivation is. Everytime I decode an idea I test it before taking it to the market. Unless I get thousands and thousands of positive replies I don’t even think of building a team or writing a code. For example, for CRED we started researching in November and we launched the company the next November after that, so 12 months of building and researching. Out of that 8 months was researching and 4 months was building. Founders can benefit a lot from this method. I believe we don’t ask each other questions. When I ran Freecharge, I had an understanding of most of India’s internet consumption behaviour. There is curiosity missing from our ecosystem that does not allow us to create original ideas. [9 ]

On implementing feedback in an organisation

Hiring itself is a big bar. For example, truth seeking is one of the values that we test for.?

The first thing is, are you truth-seeking about yourself? Do you know yourself well? Have you empowered your team members to give you feedback? So we ask a question sometimes: What was the most uncomfortable feedback you received in the last three months? If you have not received it, obviously there are flaws in you. [10 ]

A lot of times we find feedback to be hurtful and offensive because we have not built security and we have a deeply insecure mindset that we have pampered. I think when people realise this, they change. When they realise that somebody’s feedback is not personally to you but how are you doing things and how could we be made better.

If they have never worked in environments of secure people, they will find it hard because a lot of insecure groups of people do a very good job of being nice to each other. But good teams are not thinking twice before giving critical feedback because they really care for you. [10 ]

Just right now, on my own NPS (net promoter score), there are three traits that I’m not scoring well on. So I’m building a document with the help of my direct reports on what should I start, stop and continue to improve my scores on these three things.?

Unless we take a defect fixing mindset, even for individuals, we’ll not do that. And most people are not honest about it. They’re not comfortable taking feedback which stops their progress. [10 ]

The fastest way to ruin a company’s culture is to allow the brokering of feedback via middle men. [11 ]

You need to become someone who actively seeks feedback. I had a board meeting last week and I wrote to them: ‘I am not here for compliments. Tell me the three things that concern you the most about CRED.’ Only when you actively seek feedback can you become a better version of yourself. [12 ]

Other Recent Writings

I wrote this Twitter thread on my notes from reading Street Smarts by Jim Rogers. You can read it on LinkedIn here if you prefer.

And this Twitter thread on the capex to depreciation ratio to analyse capital cycles in industries.

Feedback and reading recommendations are invited at [email protected]

To get such interdisciplinary, intellectual insights delivered to your inbox, subscribe with your email at malharmanek.substack.com