Turning Criticism into Collaboration

“Everyone’s a critic” is a problem designers know all too well.   When you show a design solution to a group of businessmen, computer programmers, accountants, and managers they love to pick it apart and can be highly creative in imagining scenarios in which your design will fail, spinning up hours or days of work in which you have to do some deeply ridiculous things to accommodate their criticism.

While we have little love for critics, it’s unavoidable that people with little understanding of design are going to criticize your designs – and as much as you might relish the thought of bringing a case of pacifiers and a tube of super-glue to design reviews, that’s a choice that the HR department will likely rule out.

It is also not very productive to turn the situation into a battle of wills, which is a contest to see which person can be the most infantile.   Designers in general suffer from the stereotype of throwing tantrums when someone criticizes their work, and while that can be purgative and entertaining, it’s not a solution to the problem.

Neither is it particularly productive merely to silence our critics.   Everyone who’s invited to a design review has something to offer, and knowledge that must be leveraged in creating an effective solution – which is the reason they were invited (or saw fit to invite themselves) in the first place.   So instead, we must find a way to channel their negative energy into something more positive.

Criticism is not Collaboration

The first thing to do is to inform the culture of what it means to genuinely collaborate – because some critics think that their nit-picking is in some way helpful to the goals of the group, the project, and the organization.   But there is a significant difference between criticizing and collaborating.   Consider these key three points:

CRITICISM	COLLABORATION
Gives Problems to Others	Gives Solutions to Others
Makes Conversations Longer	Makes Conversation Shorter
Takes Us Further from the Goal	Gets Us Closer to the Goal

Both criticism and collaboration are part of the problem-solving process – you must find a problem before you can solve it, but the work does not end there.  If you’re going to make a contribution to an effort, rather than just creating more effort, you have to provide solutions to the problems that you identify.

Collaboration Requires Labor

It’s no accident that the word “labor” appears right in the middle of “collaboration” because it takes effort to be collaborative, and the “co” prefix indicates that it’s work that two or more people do together.  It’s certainly not a process by which one person gives work to others and then walks away from the problem they just created.   I believe the word for that is “executive management.”

The problem is that people are basically lazy and want to do half the job – or far less than half, because it takes two minutes to point out a problem that will take someone else two hours (or days, or months) for someone else to solve.   But that’s not collaboration – it’s criticism – and rather than silencing your critics, you must get them to be collaborative.

Turning Critics into Collaborators

How do you turn a person who wants to criticize others’ work into a collaborator who does something positive to achieve the goal?   Two words: be stubborn.  Do not be stubborn in ignoring criticism, but be stubborn in demanding collaboration, and do not let them off the hook until you have their commitment to give it.

One technique is to respond to a criticism by asking “so what do you suggest?”   Very often a person who points to a problem already has a solution in mind that they are reluctant to suggest.     That itself can be trouble because the solution they have in mind is often very, very bad from a design perspective.

But instead of dismissing their ideas, help them to improve them by asking two more questions.  “How does that solve the problem you just suggested?” and “How do you know it will be effective?”  That last question is a easy for someone who understands design, because they can cite theory or evidence of design choices that are effective.

You can use these exact phrases to encourage critics to collaborate – What do you suggest?   How does that solve the problem?  How do you know it will be effective? – or develop your own, improvising to suit the situation so that you don’t sound like a broken record every time criticism rear its ugly head.   The point is to get critics off of merely criticizing and contribute something that will move the team forward rather than holding everyone back.

Terminating the Terminal Critics

Again, it’s generally the case that a critic means to be helpful, but there are “those people” who can’t help themselves and who cannot be helped to overcome their negative behaviors.  The “terminal critic” is a lot less common than you might think – and if you try the technique of stubbornly demanding their assistance, they will often recognize their own bad behavior, correct it, and adjust their approach to you in future.  People generally mean well, and you should always assume positive intentions, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

However, there are those special few who insist on criticizing and will refuse to collaborate – and there are toxic workplaces in which a complainer who dumps problems on others is seen as having “management potential.”   You can work to change the culture, or you can get out of it.   But when you are in an organization where the culture is positive and there are a few negative individuals who don’t fit in, and stubbornly refuse your efforts to get them to collaborate, then sometimes the answer is to terminate them.

The technique described is not intended to dumbfound or embarrass critics into withdrawing their criticism, but to contribute the thought and labor required to be collaborative – if their criticism is valid.   But if they are dumbfounded, it’s a strong sign that the criticism is not at all valid, and they will often withdraw it, and then refrain from making unfounded critical remarks in future.

That’s not at all a bad thing, because you’re not discouraging them from collaboration, just from criticism.  And it sends the strong message to be collaborate, or be silent – and in the long run, to be collaborative, or to be gone.   That sounds a bit Machiavellian, and it probably is – but if you repeatedly try to bring out the best in people and you find “the best” just isn’t there, then you don’t need them and neither does your project team.   They will get the message that they are not being productive or helpful, and so will everyone else in the room … and in the end, square pegs have the tendency to pop out of round holes all on their own.   Enough said?

Building a Collaborative Culture

To end on a positive note, you should work to create a collaborative culture in your team and your workplace, and unless you’re in a management position you are going to have to do it slowly, one critic at a time and one criticism at a time.  You will see results, but just as slowly, as your team becomes more productive, working relationships become better, and an atmosphere of criticism turns into one of true collaboration.

This is a critical step in advancing in your own career: moving from your role as a design practitioner to the role of a design coach and even a design leader requires improving not only your individual performance, but also that of your team and company.   And when the powers that be recognize that you’re the kind of person who can do this, your chances of being elevated to a management position in which you can spread positive influence more broadly and more quickly will significantly improve, at least in an organization that values and rewards collaboration.