Edu: Good Communication – The Superpower That Could Save Your Startup w/ Jenny Rudd

Jenny Rudd: Whenever you read these deep studies about why startups failed, communication between either the co-founders or key players is always in that top three. Fundamental to startups is disagreement really, isn't it? You're changing the status quo. How do you balance all these different innovative ideas? There's gonna be a lot of disagreement. How do you manage that?

Yaniv: Hi, I'm Yaniv.

Jenny Rudd: And I'm Jenny.

Yaniv: Chris is away resting his voice after his surgery. So today we have Jenny Rudd joining us to talk about communication. I believe that the soft skills are actually the hardest to get right. There's nothing easy about soft skills, and they're enormously impactful to the success of a startup. So I'm really excited to jump in with Jenny about the importance of communication and how you can get it right at your startup now, Jenny, Just before we jump into the meat of the topic, we'd love it if you told us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Jenny Rudd: Ah, lovely. Thanks Yaniv so, my

name's Jenny Rudd. I live in Tauranga, New Zealand and I'm the co-founder of Dispute Buddy, which is a tech startup which improves access to justice. We are just about to build our mvp, so we're very excited. Background wise, I bought a failing regional magazine with my husband, Matt, and we made a very successful exit after launching an international title, and growing multiple revenue streams. I'm really, really, passionate about using data, to increase the amount of venture capital deployed to women-led businesses because when we invest in everyone, we all.

Yaniv: Absolutely couldn't agree more. So thanks so much for coming on, Jenny. you'd suggested this topic of communication and then I was really excited that you did that because it's something that I care about a lot and I think about a lot, and I see the importance of, but as with a lot of these things, everyone thinks they understand what they mean about communication, but actually, we rarely have a good definition of it.

So we thought we would start here and talk about what communication really is.

Jenny Rudd: Yeah, I think that's such a great point. there's a lot of words in startup world where we use one word to describe a lot of things like failure or growth or communication. Or relationship or mentor. And, when you say that one word, every single person who hears it has a really different view built from their own experiences of what that means. And there you go. That's just what communication is, isn't it? So How might we really understand each word that we say, What does that mean for someone else? And when they speak or they write or they do something that imparts information to you, how do you make sure that you understand what it is that they're trying to, tell you?

And are you bringing in from your own background that's affecting the way you understand? I mean, that sounds like a whole lot of words when someone just probably says, Hey, how are you? But you know, If you start thinking about it like that, you really do realize how easy it is to miss.

Meaning between two people.

Yaniv: Yeah, I actually think communication is absolutely magic and, and one of the ways that I think about it is you are really using primarily words, but not only words. And we can talk about that a bit as well. To influence the state of someone else's brain, We've each got our brains floating in their jelly with their senses.

And inside that brain is a model of the world, an understanding of how the world works and the state of everything. And in communicating with someone, we're actually. Trying to change their mental state, their beliefs, their understanding about the world, their emotions, and that is very powerful. I think that's why when humans developed language, that massively increased our ability to influence each other, and that's why we were able to. Create such complex organizations and societies. So I think it's one of those things we take for granted, but it's, like this crazy superpower, which is reaching inside someone else's brain and changing it. And if you do that right, you can only imagine the possibilities.

Jenny Rudd: That's so interesting that that's how you see it. I agree with you that there's something like really magical about, let's say this situation here. before we got on this call, we dunno anything about each other. We both know that we're interested in communication, but at the end of this call, your brain and my brain is gonna be changed forever. Based on what we talk about in this call and all the stuff that we're gonna talk about, we're not going to loads of other people. We're just gonna exit the information in our brain and listen to the other person. So it's interesting that you see it as a way to influence other people with what's going on in your own brain.

I see communication as a way to swap back and forth constantly so that you can your own information in your own brain so that you can follow the path that you really care about.

Yaniv: I agree with that. I think those concepts aren't incompatible, right? When you have two parties communicating with each other, there's this iteration that benefits both parties, And that's really the power of, communication.

Jenny Rudd: It's that iteration that is the bit that's really important. So people get really hung up. On their own view, don't they? Like, hold strong opinions lightly. that's a phrase that you hear knocked about a fair bit, in the kind of, VC world, which is probably based in things like, doing customer research.

So you hold your own view but you need to be able to take on feedback and information and listen carefully to make sure that you're not just validating your own view. not gonna, have product market fit or whether you actually listen to the market. So this iterating, how do we really carefully listen to what someone else is saying so that we can go, actually, I think the way that I thought before is not quite right.

I need to take this on. So you've got all these other weird things like ego and confidence and excitement and things coming in the way as well.

Yaniv: Absolutely. And that kind of leads, into the next thing we wanted to talk about, which is why is communication so hard? we have language, most of us have had, over a decade of schooling and a huge amount of socialization and a lot of that is focused around communication.

And yet I would say your average person, Has some very serious deficiencies in, in their communications. it's not an easy skill to master. why is that

Jenny Rudd: I think it's because we don't talk about how to do it properly. I think that we have partly conditioned to make sure that our opinion's heard and we're quite egocentric. It's sort of more important to us that our opinion is right. if you loosen off with that ego thing and you start thinking. Well, why is communication so hard and what do I really want out of it? if I want to grow my business or I wanna grow my relationships, it shouldn't really just be coming out of you. It should be you kind of listening a lot to the other person. But then can you ever remember Yaniv, if at school, anyone saying, I'm gonna give you some tricks and tools for how you can work out what the other person is actually saying that just doesn't happen, does it?

Yaniv: So there's a lack of skill. I completely agree with that. and as you were talking, I, thought also a lack of intentionality. We spend all our time communicating, but not necessarily thinking what our goals are when we're doing it. And, you mentioned there are a lot of human aspects bound up in this around ego and, obviously, one of the most classic forms of.

Poor communication. I feel you called me out when I said that I, view communication as being about influencing what's in another person's brain. Is it is too much about something outward focused. maybe particularly with men, it can be a bit of a, dominance effect. It's like, can I, influence your brain while protecting my brain from having to change at all? Um, and first of all, unless your aim is dominance, and perhaps it is at times, That's not going to get you what you want because you haven't actually figured out what you want to get out of that communication. So if you view communication as a tool, tools are neutral, right? You can do anything with the tool You need to put intention behind your usage of the tool if you want to get the most out of it

Jenny Rudd: You said a couple of things in there that really get me going. One of them is like intention. So whenever I go into anything where I know that there's gonna be a conversation, I always think beforehand, what's the best outcome? And so when I think of what's the best outcome, I try and think of. What is the best outcome for me and the things that I'd like to achieve? And they're usually stuff like, I want to get further ahead with this, but I would like to do it in a way where we both win. And I would also like to deepen my relationship with that person. So those are usually the three things I go into things with, but also I try and imagine.

What is it that the other person's given me in my relationship with them that I know about them? How might I understand what an ideal outcome for them might look like? Because often people won't tell you what the outcome is that they're going to conversation with. And also, we can't do that in every single conversation that we have, so I'm trying to go, okay, I'd like this outcome. that outcome also looks like a good place for the other person. So I'm gonna manage my own behavior and the way that I listen, and I'm gonna try and listen out for more stuff with them and try and repeat it back so I can make sure we both get that same outcome.

And usually if you can get there, then you've deepened your relationships, you've got more trust to build on. You don't build resentment cuz that's a disaster to build on resentment. And you learn a lot more and you get more used to just taking on other information and changing your own mind quite quickly.

Yaniv: I do often try to start a meeting or, some sort of work discussion with what are we trying to achieve. it's surprising how often people enter a conversation or a, dialogue, without a clear sense of what they're trying to achieve with that communication.

And of course, if you don't know where you're going, You're not likely to get there. but I'm interested also, you mentioned ego and emotion. I reflect on myself that ego and emotion, various.

Less frontal cortex. Parts of your brain get involved in communication very often, and when they get involved, they often make things harder rather than easier. what are your thoughts and reflections on that?

Jenny Rudd: Yeah, that is really true. So one of the things that, I think about a lot or I try and practice a lot is neutrality. So if I'm going into a situation like. When you got a startup, you are in masses of conversations where there's all sorts of elements at play, different motivations for different people that you're unaware of.

You might be under quite a lot of stress. You're moving at speed, the other person's doing the same thing. And a startup. often, there's not many other people ahead of you, maybe in your particular industry or field. So when you're running into a greenfield and you dunno what's going on, you go, how do I stay really neutral so that I can take on as much information from everybody else and my own without letting my emotions get the best of me. So usually the best way to do that, I find is this sounds a little bit, woo fuckery, but bear with me. So if you,

Yaniv: Side of fuckery.

Jenny Rudd: Yeah, that's right. If you stand outside of your brain and you look at yourself and the other person you go, what are the things driving the things that I'm saying, what's in the engine room? if I go, no, we have to do it this way. am I saying that because this is the most efficient way of doing it? Am I saying it because I feel under pressure cuz of something else? Or am I saying it cuz I've experienced something else? Or just I don't want the other person to win or whatever it is.

If you can stand outside yourself and examine. behavior, your motivations for saying something do the same thing for the other person. So when the other person's saying, I refuse to ever work for you again, you're an absolute asshole, I'm not doing that thing with you. If you can stand outside of that, instead of just hearing, oh my God, that's person's really belligerent and rude, and I'd probably feel the same. If you can stand outside of it and go.

What other things going on in their engine room that's making them behave like that? You are able to then go and resolve either those bits or understand them more deeply so that you don't allow the things that are being said to affect what's going on. But you look at the stuff around the edge, obviously that's a hell of a lot to be doing in a simple conversation, but the more that you reflect on those conversations that you've already had in order to understand your part and the other person's behavior in it, the better that you get at staying neutral in future conversations, I think.

Yaniv: And that really is a lot about mastering our emotions. And I'd say this is less woof fuckery and more we all need therapy. Um, you know, I, I feel. Nowhere more than in communication is there this tug of war between our reptile brain and our highly evolved human brain. that's where it gets really difficult.

It's easy to feel attacked in a communication. It's easy to feel undermined. There is a lot of discomfort in having to change your mind and having to listen in, having to negotiate. And if you. Those more primitive parts of your brain dominate the conversation. As many people do, and as I know, I, definitely can get caught up in, it can be very difficult to maintain that neutral beginner's brain, where your aim is to learn and to achieve outcomes, and to make communication purely a tool rather than some sort of reflection of your identity.

Jenny Rudd: That's such a good point. So on that, my husband and I have got like a whole kind of football team of teenagers that live with us. So they face the most complex, situations in their life that me and you definitely not faced as teenagers. So, One of the things that we encourage them to do we will sit down and we'll go through that communication with them retrospectively, and we go, okay, you said this, then they said this. What do you think happened there?

Can you see. When you said this, what do you think the other person felt? And so we help them pick apart what they've already done so that then they can use that to influence their future behavior. Which is really funny cuz we do that everywhere. Like we do that in everything else.

How can we go back and look at what we did so we can improve the future, but we don't do it with communication. Why don't we encourage ourselves to record conversations with people, especially difficult ones, and then go back with like a kind of neutral open mind. with someone who's really skilled at this and pick it apart. Go, this is where you, directed this. Can you see it? Cuz when you are in it, you can't see it. It's a no-brainer, isn't it?

Yaniv: So we are The Startup Podcast. I think this has been a fabulous conversation so far, and now I would like to bring it in a little bit to talk about communication in the context of a startup and why it is so important. It's important everywhere, but the key aspect of communication within a startup, even from the earliest stages.

Jenny Rudd: So one of the reasons why I suggested this to you, eff is apart from quite passionate about how we use communication is whenever you read these Deep studies about why startups failed communication between either the co-founders or key players is always in that top three.

Like it's always in there and I think, oh my gosh. if it's always in there, why isn't there more around about. how do you change that? How do you sort it out? Because if you think about communication with your co-founder. Well, I look at Dispute Buddy. So Vicky Smith, my co-founder and I, we didn't know each other before we started Dispute Buddy together.

We weren't in the same circles. We don't come from the same background. We live in the same town, Tauranga in New Zealand, but we literally don't know each other at all. We met through, an angel dropping clinic, which I am part of through, enterprise Angels, which I'm a board member of, and Vicky came in with an idea.

She's already got a tech startup called Searay. She came in with an idea for dispute, buddy. I could see it immediately. So I was like, that's wicked. Let's, get together. So I could see straight off the bat, I was like, oh my gosh, we don't even know each other. how do we stop ourselves from falling out?

Or how do we build disagreement? Because, fundamental to startups is disagreement really, isn't it? Fundamentally how you're changing the status quo. That's the first thing. How do you balance all these different innovative ideas so you can bring out the best. So there's gonna be a lot of disagreement. How do you manage that with someone you don't know?

Yaniv: One of the things that I like to say about startups is that they are learning machines. Fundamentally. You are in this process of you've got this idea and you need to learn how to make it a reality in the world, especially at the early stage. But for a long time, really before you have product market fit , you are learning. How to actually create that business. You're discovering that. And so there's this huge element of gaining and utilizing knowledge.

And as soon as there's more than one of you, you have multiple brains. Again, I'm gonna come back to this sort of idea of brains influencing each other and, helping each other is multiple brains. Each learning things about the world, that are useful for the startup. if you want to. A maximally effective startup. What you need to do is make sure that those brains. Synchronizing over time. And there, there are two reasons for that. the positive side is if I learn something and you learn something else, and we bring those two learnings together, we can generate new knowledge that couldn't be possible if we each kept those learnings to ourselves. So if you want to learn quickly, if you want to cross-fertilize ideas, then there needs to be this really strong communication keeping that knowledge in sync. And not just the knowledge, but the synthesis as well, right? Like, what have we learned from that? How do we update our model of the world, our view of where our startup fits into the world based on the things that we've learned?

The downside as well, which is really dangerous, is if, you don't communicate, then your views, your models of the world start to diverge, So you both think you're building the same thing, or you all think you're building the same thing, but based on what you've learned and based on the conclusions that you have.

From what you've learned, you start to get different ideas about what your startup should be and what the product should be. and not only is that supremely inefficient, because it leads to a lack of alignment and actually we had a whole episode on alignment and its importance earlier on in this podcast.

But it will ultimately lead to disagreement and conflict. And, one of the key reasons for startup failure is co-founder conflict.

Jenny Rudd: This is where the communication's key because let's say, I would go to a meeting, I'd ring up Vicky and say, I just met this guy.

He just talked really extensively about this area that we've got a problem with. These are all the things he said. usually what I do is I preface it by saying, I wanna tell you that, I don't have a strong view either way on what he said, but I'm just gonna repeat to you verbatim what he said. So then Vicky knows that I am not trying to convince her of a particular way.

So she's able to feel a bit more receptive cuz she knows I'm not trying to influence her. So I'll repeat verbatim what this person said and then I'll usually stop and say either what do you think? what's come up there for you? What are the bits that come up?

Or I'll say, this is what I think, but I'm really careful to go, okay, I really wanna hear what Vicky thinks. And then we always give each other space before we go and make the next decision for the business because, I think. Really quickly, I make decisions really quickly.

I can take in information really fast and just go, Vicky has got a completely different way of seeing the world. She likes to synthesize things in a very different way. So some of the things that we've had to learn between us is how do we manage that? When we got a bit of information that comes in, how do we choose the way forward in a way that.

Equally values both of our thinking that is where I think some of the crux of communication is. How do you get out of the quieter, more introverted group of people, their information, and how do you hold back the extrovert? Well not hold back, but how do you not allow the extroverted people to always make the decisions?

Yaniv: I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you can use communication to uncover great innovation that would otherwise get lost. And in particular, how you can be more intentional about balancing people's different communication style bring out the ideas of the introverts, keep the extroverts under control, and so on.

Jenny Rudd: So I'm gonna tell you about a little tool that I use in a group. I belong to a group called, it was terrible name. It's called Bella Mafia. we're not really mafia, but we are very Bella. Anyway, it's, five women and we got together about, three or four years ago to champion each other's businesses and share success and really encourage each other on our way. So we, meet up about three or four times a year and we run retreats and workshops together. And we problem solve in each other's business. So we came up with this structure called the BM Board, the Bella Mafia Board. We've nicked bits of it from all over the place, and we've made it our own. So we recognize this straight away, that there's people in our group who are really demonstrative, and there's people who are a bit quieter.

So what we do is the person who owns the problem, the problem owner, they speak for five minutes and they get to talk five minutes. We time it. So we stop the timer after five minutes and then. 10 minutes as we go round the table one by one in order. You cannot go out of order and you only get to ask one question.

So as you go round the table, each person asks one question. and they have to be qualifying questions. They're not suggestions of how to improve the problem. you do that for 10 minutes, the timer goes off, and then for the next 10 minutes, Question owner does not speak at all.

And then we do the same. We go round the table and each person takes it in turn to make one short suggestion to solve that problem. And they also write it on a post-it and give it to their question owner. because the question owner's gonna get a lot of suggestions, you go around the table and all of the loud people like me are all like itching to get up and say.

You and the people who either speak slower or a bit quieter are afforded the time and the space to say they're deeply important things. And what you often find happens is within that 10 minutes, instead of like in a traditional meeting where the loud person starts speaking and everybody just follows their idea and talks about their idea, what happens is, Each person around the table has afforded the opportunity to talk a little bit more about someone else's suggestion or a new one of their own.

So you start to hone in on one or two suggestions to solve this problem. and very rarely is it just always the loud person. It feels really equal. At the end of that 10 minutes, the buzzer goes off again. And then the person who owns the problem gets to feedback to the group for five minutes, which one they're gonna go with.

It is 30 minutes this structure. And we do. all day, over two days and smash out loads of problems. Is phenomenal.

Yaniv: As you were speaking about that, made me reflect on Covid, or at least remote work. I felt it had a big improvement in terms of the quality of, meetings and balance. and one of the biggest innovations as strangers it seems, is the little hands up tool that they have on, Google Meet or Zoom. It became a norm, both at my previous company where I was working on circular, my current startup, to expect people to put up their hands. And so you went from a mode where the loud people in person were just always talking over each other, interrupting, never leaving space for anyone to talk to. The creation of, space for everybody. but it occurs to me that it's not enough. It creates a more orderly meeting.

It means some people who may be. Comfortable jumping in aggressively now get to speak. but you still find that the loud people speak, more. And then there are some quiet people who are less comfortable speaking up in a group and they, won't put their hands up. and so what I like about that BM board is the forcing function.

The fact that you're not relying on people to use the tool. everyone has an assigned role and the tool dictates how that happens.

Jenny Rudd: I, it is staggering the kind of, results we've had out of it. I was describing to someone recently and they said, oh, that's very Scandinavian to take it in turns to go round a table. I haven't run meetings in Scandinavia, so I wouldn't know. But the other thing that you're talking about there on Zoom calls, another thing that cropped up, I really liked this was right at the beginning of Covid I belonged to an outfit called She, they're now called Corless, but they invest in women led businesses. I've been part of it for about four years. And at the beginning they got onto Zoom super quick. they got onto the structure of how to manage really good calls really quickly. And I went to a workshop where they talked about how to use tools on Zoom to stop the loud people from talking to everyone all the time.

So there's the hands up thing, but they also did this other stuff like they said. Write in the thing that you'd like to talk about. So everybody writes in the thing then all of the ideas get posted in the Zoom call and then everybody gets an equal chance to vote on one of those things.

so that also removes people talking over each other. They did another thing where they showed us how if you wanted everyone to answer a question, you just say to them, here's the question. Everybody type it in the chat. And then when I say 1, 2, 3, go, you press return and put it in the chat.

So all of these little tools, they sound little, but they're real levelers, aren't they? They really level out the opportunity for loud people to talk all the time. And they bring in introverts because it's all typed. The really good ideas just come to the top.

It's not the most persuasive people, which I think is fantastic.

Yaniv: it's funny, I'm getting a little tingling spider sense from the, hypothetical, mental model of, the listener who might be listening to some of this and saying, I'm an early stage founder. I am just, trying to make this thing work.

This all seems a little bit soft, a little bit fufu, right? And. I encourage you to keep listening to this episode and to, take these thoughts seriously because I speak from experience. The amount of time that is wasted, the amount of great ideas that are lost by poor, informal, sloppily conceived, unintentional communication is epic.

So you could call this slowing down to speed up whatever you like. If all you are doing is nose to the metal, Thinking about how you actually coordinate with each other, you'll be pulling in different directions. Again, please listen to our episode on alignment if you haven't already, or re-listen to it. Chris and I think it's one of our most important episodes, and I this episode, Jenny, is a great companion to that. you cannot make progress if you're not pulling in the same direction and you're not going to be able to pull in the same direction if you are. Communicating effectively. So these tools are. very much worth your time investment and perhaps the slight awkwardness that initially comes from being a bit more structured in your communications.

Jenny Rudd: Putting structure in communication is really important cause you get real gold out. And interesting that you say people listening might be like, oh look, I just really wanna find out great tools to grow really quickly or I really want find out how to. Build revenue or I want all the things that are traditionally labeled as startup growth, tools. But this is so fundamental. You won't believe how quickly you can grow if you've got really good communication. Cause the other thing is you will be able to attract the best fucking talent out there because all talented people, they want to come into a group where they know who they are. They talk to each other kindly, they listen to each other carefully. It is the most attractive environment to come into if you are, talent isn't it? So it is fundamental to building a great company that looks attractive.

The other reason why I know it's so important and have had to work really hard at it is. My first business I built with my husband, that's the most important relationship in my life. We bought a failing magazine and then we realized really quickly we need to make sure that we communicate with each other really clearly at work, and at home, obviously, but mainly in work so we can get further ahead. And so I bought quite a lot of those tools with me into. Dispute, buddy.

 So one of the things that me and Victor did straight off the bat, and everybody should do this is if you Google 50 questions to ask your co-founder, there's that, fantastic resource. It's a pdf, I think you can find it on, first Round Ventures.

 The seed capital specialist, it's like a PDF with a green banner at the top. And it was built over time by a group of VCs. I think, but me and. Did this straight off the bat as well. We gave it to each other and said, okay, let's answer them. It's pretty hairy. Writing down your answers to things like, how do you deal with conflict? Tell me about a time when you didn't do this very well. Tell me what does success look for? Like, at what level would you exit the company? And lots and lots and lots of questions. You filled those out and you can work out super fast.

How aligned you are. I can remember Vicky sent me her one. We had only met like twice and I dropped off a friend at the airport. I was sitting outside tur Long airport and I opened the email and she'd sent hers to me. And as I read it, I could feel my spine tingling because it was exactly how I feel.

So I knew that we were gonna be walking the same direction. So then all we did is we took our joint answers. and we're like, okay, that's what we're aiming for. So that we both stay aligned. We both stay really clear. And then there's also lots of opportunities for us to crop up and go, I don't feel like that anymore.

I wanna talk about the fact that I, don't wanna do this anymore. So every week we have what we call a hooey hooey, any of the New Zealand listeners might know what this word is. It's a Maori word, which means like gathering and getting together. it's just a quick check-in, like a standup, but one of the things that is in there, is called see it say it. So this is a structured opportunity for each of us to bring up something that's either rankled about each other, or about anything outside or something that we saw that didn't work very well.

It's really difficult to bring these things up in real life. You know, like I couldn't just randomly ring Vic and go, oh, I'm a bit pissed off that you did this cuz she's gonna be on the defensive. She don't wanna feel great about it. I'm not gonna get a good outcome. But if I know that every week there's an opportunity to sit down and that one of us can say to the other, hey listen.

I heard you on a phone call to a client the other day and it didn't sound great. Tell me what went on there. Then both of you are ready. in that little moment that you're both gonna say something that potentially is about feedback and about how to improve, or that you've done something that hasn't been very helpful so you are not defensive in that moment.

You know that you're gonna hear something. let me tell you Yaniv, I usually get one every week.

Yaniv: I wish I got more. did say, we were going to talk a bit about feedback, which is a key type of communication. And a super important one. again, you'll see Jenny, I like to take theoretical approach to these things before diving in.

One of the ways that I think about it, is nearly about information theory and learning domains, whether you're a human or a computer or whatever. you're trying to learn about something. there are a variety of characteristics of that learning domain. Affect how easily you're able to learn.

And it's mostly to do with the feedback cycles, How frequently do you receive feedback? How quickly after your action do you receive the feedback on whether it was a successful action or not? How accurate is that feedback? Again, we're talking about our mental model, right?

We're learning, All of these things allow you to update our mental model more effectively. So what. Difficult learning domain is one in which feedback is infrequent. It's slow, it lags, right? You take an action, you only find out a year later whether it was a good idea or not. Those are difficult learning domains. Now, some learning domains are just naturally more difficult than others, but if we give each other that gift of feedback frequently, if you say, Hey, you did that.

It didn't work for. you did that. Here are my thoughts on the impact it had. And of course, positive feedback as well. You did that, it was great, and this is why you are helping the other person learn and grow and become better in their role much more quickly. And so again, in a sense we're influencing someone's brain, but with feedback, we're doing something. Incredibly powerful, which is we are accelerating their learning. and if we're working together, we should absolutely be wanting to do that. And you should always be wanting to receive feedback cuz you'll always wanna be accelerating your own learning.

Jenny Rudd: I think that's true, but there's a massive piece in there that is really important and it's called intent. So when the person who's giving the feedback, what is their intent? Are they trying to have a dig? Are they trying to fuck you off? Are they hurt about something because what you did, whatever it is.

Or have they got the intent that, oh my God, I think you are really onto something. I think you're missing a trick here. I can see where you can improve. So first of all, what's the intent behind the person giving the feedback? that's huge. whenever you give feedback, you should always give it in this model of knowing that it's relatively hard to take so, One of the rules that, we kind of instill in our family, in my marriage, in our business, everything is we commit to never saying anything to intentionally, have a digger or hurt or in any way hurt the other person.

And then the other side of it is you've got to commit to knowing that every time that person says something to you that you're not gonna, like, they're not saying it to hurt you, and it's on you to listen to it. So if you can start off in that space again, that sounds a little bit woo. But it's vital to create this sort of like positive environment feedback.

And then if you are the one giving the feedback, I do loads. I'm used to it because when I used to own magazines, it was just constant feedback like you're, producing matters of, features for magazines and videos for clients and photo shoots and things. It's a constant round of to writers, can you change this? That's not quite right. Can you do this photography? Oh, can you adjust this styling, all the time. And also clients to me, because it's their money, they would quite often say quite cutting things cuz they're under pressure and they're stressed and they're nervous about featuring in the magazine.

So, at the beginning I was terrible at receiving feedback. It felt really personal. But after a while Once I removed all that, I was eager for it because I could see. Every time someone touches it with their opinion, you should improve this product. So, with feedback, I tend to use this structure.

You can call it whatever you like, a shit sandwich, rosebud, thorn, whatever you want. But usually should take three forms, and I usually do feedback written so that people can take time to digest it. I'll say what went well, what was a pain point and what's an opportunity to improve it next time?

So then the person reading. can disregard it if they want, but they also know some specific actions on how they can improve the thing, usually, I'd say that the top level of communication should be in person.

Number two is on Zoom, like video. Number three is phone call. Number four is text, and number five is email. But. If you're gonna give feedback, I think written feedback on an email in that structure is really good cause it gives the opportunity to say it in the most encouraging and generous format.

Yaniv: It comes back to our point earlier on about communications in humans where we have these two parts of our brain fighting each other. So in principle, as long as the feedback is. Useful. You should be happy to get it.

But we are humans, we're social creatures. We have emotions. We have a whole bunch of fight or flight responses. And so in the case of humans especially, which is mostly what we're dealing with, although I've got a chat g p t tab open, so maybe that's changing. you need to be. Quite intentional with your feedback.

One of the phrases that seems trite but is deeper than it seems is that feedback is a gift. the reason it's deeper than it seems is, if you think about what a gift is, it is something that is given with the intent to bring joy or value to the other person. It is carefully selected, it is carefully packaged, it's wrapped up. It has a bow put on it. And then receiving a gift, there is an art to that as well, right? You need to be gracious, you need to always be thankful. You need to say something nice about the gift, even if it's not a gift that you value. And I think that's sort of the protocol that is appropriate for feedback. Both the giver and the receiver have somewhat of a role, in this nearly ritualistic thing, and if you deviate too far from the role, as well as your intent, then you will not have a good feedback session.

Jenny Rudd: I absolutely love that Yaniv. That's really great. And If you think about communication, that little bit there that you said feedback is a gift and this is why. let's say in your own business, you said, I, want to encourage feedback once a week, we're gonna do feedback session. And at the start of it, you did that. This is the role of the giver, this is the role receiver. Then you just start to build a culture of this is how we give feedback. Then they just do it everywhere. So I just think that's beautiful. I absolutely love that. I will be stealing that and I'll be using it forth with.

But yes, I think, feedback is, an absolute gift. I love it. And by giving feedback to people on all sorts of different things, I have opened so many doors of possibility. Cuz also you are saying to someone, I deeply respect the effort that you are putting into your thing. And I want to match it by supporting you to grow it better.

if you don't want feedback, that's fine. Like don't have to take it. But I think there's another point in there about feedback you could do the same job for like 30 years and you could just maintain the same level at it. If you're some kind of Office worker, you just do the same thing every day, every week, every year you do it for 30 years, you don't get any better at it. You don't get any. Is it Malcolm Gladwell that said you do something for 10,000 hours, you can master it? That's only true if you add in really strong feedback loops. So you have to go out and search out feedback.

And that might be easy to do in some ways, but

When it comes to asking people to tell you what a shit job you're doing, most people do not like to do that. They are not comfortable because even though you might say, no, tell me, tell me. I really wanna hear the feedback. the person tells you and then you're like, oh my God, I don't even wanna look at them for the next two weeks, you know? So, there is a lot going on in there, and all of this comes back to this neutrality.

Yaniv: It's difficult to be neutral. You have to be a little bit crazy to be a founder. It's not the most rational choice.

Jenny Rudd: Just dunno if that's true. Yaniv, if I think the founders are, I think that to be a really good founder, you have to be deeply analytical, very neutral, not obsessive, this whole kind of picture of founders being a bit out there. I, I don't know. I don't work like ridiculous hours,

Yaniv: Neither do I. Neither do I. and it sometimes gives me some imposter syndrome, but, there is this element of obsession, of needing to prove something in the world, which is quite interesting.

Jenny Rudd: so not obsessive about the thing, but maybe I want to prove something in the

Yaniv: Mm. Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Jenny Rudd:

Wanting to prove something in the world is a deep driver to make you keep doing something, isn't it? Cuz other motivations can slip off, like if you just wanna solve this one thing, once you've solved it, it's gone.

You've gotta have a deeper purpose to be able to do things. And, if you look at this from an investor perspective, founders who can communicate really clearly are more likely to be invested in because, it makes sense. However, underneath that excellent communication could be that the, founder is able to communicate really clearly what they're doing, or that the founder has got a gift of using communication to cover up the fact that there's a load of rubbish underneath it. And I don't know if the second kind of founder is even aware of what they're doing. They're just carried away. They just recognize they've got this great skill of communication.

If you have the neutrality underneath it, if you can get yourself in a deeply neutral space so that you don't hold on too hard on what you are doing, but you also don't hold on too hard to feedback that you can sift through and use your analytical skills to make sure that whatever you're choosing does take you the right way forward.

So if we think about How do we communicate our values and purpose to the world? And what are they? Like at the beginning of your business- what is the purpose of my startup? What is the actual thing I'm trying to achieve?

Yaniv: I think I've mentioned this in previous episodes,

At Circular, we actually have values and virtues, and this is an idea I got from the book 'What You Do Is Who You Are' by Ben Horowitz. You have your values, which is what is important to you. But your virtues are behaviors, they're actions that speak to those values. And so that's much more concrete. It allows you to use them every day, it allows you to give each other feedback and communicate about them in action so they work together really nicely.

Jenny Rudd: So tell us one of your values and then the virtues that come off that.

Yaniv: So one of our values is 'waste less'. We're a circular economy company, so we feel it speaks to our mission, but also internally we want to waste less time, we want to waste less money. And so one of our virtues is: 'only work on important things'. And in our communications around that, we say: if you're in a meeting and it's not important, you shouldn't be there. If you are working on something and you don't understand why it's valuable to the business, you should ask. And if, you're not convinced, you should escalate that. So in other words, it's saying, this is the type of behavior we expect when you're living the value of 'waste less'.

Jenny Rudd: Oh, I really like that. So that is fantastic structure as well I like that you go as granular as saying if you are in a meeting and you don't understand what's going on and you don't think it's vote line to the company, put your hand up and say, I don't think it is. Ask the questions if it's not escalated. So that level of communication.

Fantastic. I really like that. And I think it just gives everyone permission to talk constantly and to ask all the time. Cuz wasting less does involve you having to question things all the time. Cuz to waste less, you have to usually stop doing things that you usually do as habit,

Yaniv: Well, we actually have another virtue, which is ask why a lot. So again, very specific. It's like we want you to question things, right? And we, thought we might say question everything. We were like, no, ask why a lot. We wanna be quite prescriptive in what good looks like here.

Jenny Rudd: And then another thing that you can do to really embed that Yaniv is. So we got our structure of our weekly Huey hooey from a lady called Katie Noble, who runs a business called Upward nz, and she develops all of these communication tools to help businesses.

So we've got like a selection of things where you. How did you sleep last night? Or tell us two words of how you felt just to kind of warm you up. And it's like, what are your goals for the week? one of them say it, see it, And the other one is say an example of where you've seen someone live our values. So it gives everybody the opportunity, someone will go, I saw Yaniv put his hand up and ask how something worked. And I was so glad he did. Cause I was so embarrassed. I didn't have a clue what was going on. Yaniv asked and I was really grateful that he lived our value. So if you can constantly.

Recommunicate ways that other people are living the values in the business. It gives everybody a bigger toolbox of the virtues, like behavior examples of how to use them. So our values are, good for all, meaning like every decision we make has to be good for everybody simple, which is really close to your waste. Less Simple for us is do things the most simple way. Don't be really ridiculously complicated. Make quick decisions And other one is manna enhances, which is a Maori word. My co-founder Vicky Smith, Maori Manna enhancing is that manna is this. Deeply spiritual a word about what's inside you, your spirit and your strength and the way that you are in the world.

And you can do things to enhance that manner and put things in it. So we decided, for instance, at the beginning of dispute, buddy, we talked about lots of VCs asked us, what are you gonna do with all the data that you store? Cuz we gathered together, communications from multiple parties on digital platforms.

they were like, that's your big money. That's where you're gonna make all the money is by gathering the data and utilizing that. And we denard for about it, and then we went, you know what? It does not enhance anyone's manner if we use their data, and, and sell it. It's not good for everybody if they don't have sovereignty over their own data.

And it's not simple. we just booted it straight away. So we were able to bring those values as a lens to look through for our business decisions.

Yaniv: So Jenny, I feel this sort of brings it back to the beginning in a sense when we are saying that in order to work effectively as an organization, the superpower of an organization is that we are able. Influence each other's brains and more specifically, I would say, to keep each other's brains in sync. we, believe the same things about the world and about our plans. I think everything we've talked about, whether it's values or feedback or sharing learning or anything like that, this is really about creating, you could call it an operating system inside your organization for keeping our brains in sync.

Values are saying, these are the things that we all believe. We've communicated it clearly, so there's no ambiguity about that. You talked about those 50 questions you should ask your co-founder, right? This is about making sure we share the same assumptions, we understand how each other work.

All of these things, conflict, feedback. We are making these adjustments in each other's perceptions of the world and our beliefs so that we're actually able to stay aligned. We're able to stay out of destructive conflict. Of course, constructive conflict is about generating new ideas, right? able to stay out of that destructive conflict and we're able to therefore put maximum Effort and apply maximum to our mission, whatever it is without having to, pull in different directions or without, simply misunderstanding each other.

That is the, critical power of this and why it's not a nice- to- have, it is at the absolute foundation of being able to run a startup from day one.

Jenny Rudd: I thoroughly agree, Vicky and I said right at the beginning, We refuse to let our brilliant startup fail because we can't communicate properly. That will not happen. So I think if you can get that quite clear in your head when you're talking about what is it that's really important. If you'll feel really zealous and you put all this effort into your business, don't let communication be the thing that makes it fall apart cuz it's solvable.

Yaniv: It can be easy to overlook the non-technical or the non-operational skills; to say, look, you know what, I've got a spreadsheet, I've got software, I've got ads, some insight into the market, and so I'm just gonna go ahead. And neglect all the things that allow you to create an effective, durable organization that isn't going to fall at the first hurdle when it meets a challenge.

Jenny Rudd: And it's such a waste. you know, you're talking about 'waste less' in your business; you will waste your business if you can't communicate clearly.

Yaniv: Okay folks, I think that is a perfect sound bite to, leave this show with. So just before we wrap up, Jenny, I'd love to give you the opportunity to tell us a little bit more and plug what you're working on, and anything else you'd like to share with the startup podcast audience.

Jenny Rudd: Oh, that is very, very kind. Well, probably the project that is dearest to my heart at the moment is, everybody's probably seen that, only 2% of venture capital globally gets deployed to women led businesses. about, 80% gets deployed to male only led businesses, and about somewhere in the sort of teens or 20 gets to mixed gender businesses. We are missing a massive opportunity around the world to solve big problems, by just not investing in, an equal kind of investment picture between the genders. So that's something that I'm working on really hard in New Zealand with Theresa Gatting. We're running a, project to straighten that out in New Zealand.

dispute body is obviously my deep with Vicki Smith. We are increasing access to justice because at the moment if you've got more money and time and tech skills, then the rule of law is a little bit harder for you to exercise and that really shouldn't be the case. The other things that I'd love to plug that I am deeply passionate about, much more Australian based, is I love being a mentor on the Start Me Accelerator and I'm about to get involved with, Kirsten Hunter who's opened the new Techstars Sydney Accelerator, which is super exciting as well.

And I really enjoy listening to your podcast. So thank you so much, Yaniv for having me on.

Yaniv: Thanks so much Jenny. And is there any way people can find you online? Are you active on LinkedIn? Twitter,

Jenny Rudd: Yeah, I'm active on LinkedIn under Jenny Rudd. And you can email me Jenny dispute buddy.co.

Yaniv: Thanks so much again for coming on, Jenny. That was a really fantastic chat we appreciate you coming on as a co-host.

Jenny Rudd: My pleasure. I've really enjoyed it.