[itsmemattchung]

Amazon has an internal tool called "Forte", a tool used once a year for employees to provide "anonymous" feedback for one another. One piece of feedback that cropped up multiple times for me, from multiple people, was that I could improve in "bias for action", akin to analysis paralysis mentioned in the article.

At first, I got a bit defensive ... and in response, I ended up running an experiment, delivering code & written documents that — inside my head — felt incomplete, unpolished, not quite at the "bar".

The feedback following?

Overwhelmingly positive.

I had anticipated that my peers and leadership would notice a drop in quality. Instead, I was commended for speed of delivery.

[V-2]

I was once accused of perfectionism. I've been working on a crushing rebuttal for a while now.

[gopalv]

> I had anticipated that my peers and leadership would notice a drop in quality.

Speaking from my experience in writing docs fast vs slow, the peers probably noticed the drop in quality, but as a positive on team-work.

Getting a document out before it is set in stone has helped bring in leadership early and have their hand in guiding your document (for better or worse). This has a diffusion of credit in general, but a document with many inputs and one editor has worked out better than a document which is written alone and only enters the debate as a "product".

Giving other people the opportunity to influence your opinion before you've made up your mind is a bit of a leap - but it is better for the group than the individual.

[quickthrower2]

Leadership doesn't care about the odd bug or two going in, but they really do love to write DONE in the spreadsheet next to a project.

[uglygirl]

Is there any similar tool that Amazon used, that helps in providing anonymous feedback to other co-workers. I want to try it in one organization where I am involved

[jovonho]

Interesting. How long did it usually take you to ship stuff vs your coworkers? And now are you on par or even faster?

[itsmemattchung]

I no longer work at AWS but the lesson has stuck with me. Whenever I start to feel that I'm starting to overthink, I quickly break the cycle and ship whatever I have.

[FractalHQ]

This has always rang true for me- even during my music career, no song ever felt ready. But my fans always loved and supported each release. Now that I write code, no PR out side project ever feels ready. But irregardless of the medium, I’m always glad I put my work out there. It’s still hard to pull the trigger though, and I still don’t do it nearly enough.

[UIUC_06]

> incomplete, unpolished, not quite at the "bar"

Do you think your coworkers were telling you your bar was too high?

[xboxnolifes]

I think his coworkers were telling them exactly what they said.

[tpoacher]

part of this may have been the "queen's duck" effect