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We forgot to do something
at Menlo along the way.

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We forgot to built a hierarchy.

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We forgot to built bosses and
reporting relationships and so on.

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And in doing so, the team still
wanted to know how they were doing.

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So we realized, since we didn't have
a hierarchy at Menlo, the only place that

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feedback could come from was
the other team members on the team.

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So our entire evaluation system at Menlo
is built on a peer to peer feedback

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system.

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A lot of its based first on
the pairings that we do every week.

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Each of us works two to a computer
on the projects we're working on.

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So the first place to get performance
evaluation criteria is with

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your peer partner.

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We've taught the team to ask during
the course of the week, how am I doing?

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Am I doing okay?

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Let me give you feedback on
how it feels working with you.

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By practicing this kind of
feedback almost on a daily basis

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when we get to the point
where it's time to evaluate,

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whether it's a moment where you
could move up in our pay system.

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We've already been practicing this way
of giving feedback to one another and

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our evaluation system, it allows you
to move up from one level to another.

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Actually, occurs a lunch hour.

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We call it a feedback lunch.

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You gather peers around you and
you talk about how you're doing.

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You talk about yourself, you talk about
how do I feel things are going here.

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You hear from your peers.

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Peers you've invited to the table.

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And we encourage people as they
think about who should I invite,

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the best feedback lunches
are when you invite people you

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believe will provide the most
challenging questions going forward

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rather than inviting the best friends
who will say the nicest things about me.

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The team realizes that will
be a long-term strategy,

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that's not gonna pan out for them.

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So they start inviting people who
are willing to challenge them on

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how they're doing.

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And because it's a safe environment,

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because it's not an environment where
anybody's going to this saying,

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I'm about to get crushed
today in this feedback lunch.

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They're willing to make
themselves vulnerable to

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enter into that danger of saying,
where do I need to grow right now?

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And these conversations that occur
at these lunchtime feedback sessions

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are among the most thoughtful
I've ever seen at Menlo.

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Because the team, given the way we work,
given the close collaborative nature of

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our work style, the fact that we work
in pairs and shoulder and shoulder.

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And we switch the peer, so everybody gets
a chance to work with everybody else.

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You see this expressed at
these lunchtime sessions.

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The person you're talking about isn't
somebody who's three cubes down

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from you on the second
floor of building five.

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They're people you've worked shoulder
to shoulder with for months and

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now they're talking about things
that are really valuable to you,

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because this is somebody who
actually knows you as a human being.