Who needs a critical friend?

Working to support wine producers in the UK is very exciting, and of course I'm enthusiastic about the products and go out of my way to try them. Like pretty much anything though, especially a growing industry, there is clear room for growth and improvement . 

Some journalists and commentators are unendingly full of praise and others throw insults from the sidelines. So where should the balance lie and whose word should one believe? 

It's very easy to only listen to views with which one agrees, but I was very taken with a piece by Jamie Goode a while ago, entitled UK Wine: Explosive Growth in Vineyard Planting in which he said "the industry doesn’t need populist cheerleaders who think everything is wonderful. It needs friends who are prepared to be honest and constructively critical."

A Personal Experience

I was called to think of that recently when I met up with a friend in San Francisco. His business is similar to mine although there are important differences; we both spend a lot of time working alone and of course we're working with wineries and vineyards on opposite sides of the Atlantic, so there's no competition and it's great to bounce ideas around together.

He said some things about my business model, some praise but also a few things that were pretty hard to hear. I almost got upset for a moment, but then I realised it was coming from a place of genuine care and sharing hard-won lessons. I left our meeting exhilarated and buzzing with ideas, really feeling the value of a critical friend.

Anger or Dismissal?

The reason I was over there was to go to the Direct to Consumer Wine Symposium, the only specialised conference on this subject. The wine industry in the US has been established much longer than ours and the opportunity to learn from what has gone well and what has gone less well is hugely important to help me guide the producers I work with.

Following the scene over there, I recently came across this piece by Rob McMillan of Silicon Valley Bank, The Email You Don't Want to Get which is essentially about a man who visited 15 wineries with his daughter and only felt well treated in 2 of them, to such a degree that his daughter asked if they could do something else next year.

I was as struck by the responses as by the article itself. I paraphrase the two main types: "Oh that's all you can expect in Napa!" (In the article / online comments, he explicitly says that it's not Napa) and "Well, it's certainly not like that at my winery, all our customers have the perfect experience". I'm delighted to hear that you get high visitor ratings, but I doubt there is nothing at all you could improve. The article gave me a lot of food for thought - Rob, like me, works as an advisor to the industry, but not in it. I know he's coming from a good place and the purpose of sharing the information was to help people improve, so I thanked him for being a critical friend.

Being a Critical Friend as well as Having One

One of the services I offer wine producers with a paid listing on my wine tourism website Wine Cellar Door is a half hour website review and I did 2 of those earlier this week. It serves nobody if I say how great everything is, or if I trash everything. I take each on a case by case basis and proffer genuine, actionable, suggestions for improvement.

Of course I try to temper adverse comments with praise as I know how hard it can be, but at the end, they are thankful and the ones that act show huge benefits, one even said they were making more money within a week! Yet I'm always surprised how many don't take up the offer, are they afraid of criticism or do they think everything is perfect? I honestly don't know.

Accepting Constructive Criticism with Thanks

What I do know is who needs a critical friend - we all do. Whether it's a whispered "there's a ladder in your tights" / "your flies are undone" right up to pretty serious business commentary, someone who cares about you, but helps you understand where you could do better is absolutely invaluable. It doesn't mean you have to accept every word of their advice, but it is certainly worth listening with an open mind.

I'm going to try even harder to accept such suggestions with thanks rather than defensiveness.  

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash