Feedback and Escalations Are a Gift
Withholding feedback is the most selfish thing you can do — and escalations are a gift you chase to true root cause.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
A two-part operating stance on information flow. First: withholding useful feedback is fundamentally selfish because you're optimizing for your own comfort over someone's improvement, so demand and give it. Second: escalations from customers or teammates are gifts, and the response is to trace true root cause — the system that built the system that produced the error — not just patch the surface symptom.
Origin
MacInnis is known at Rippling for insisting people never withhold negative feedback and for loving escalations. Rippling even runs a dedicated escalations team skilled at 'pistol-whipping' the org to real root causes rather than closing tickets on surface fixes.
Core principles
- 01Withholding a helpful thought to avoid your own discomfort is the most selfish thing you can do.
- 02High-performance teams demand feedback and give it; feedback given is still open to being questioned and discussed.
- 03Escalations are a gift — the fact that you might already know about a problem is no reason for someone to withhold it.
- 04'Root cause' means the system behind the system, not the immediate data fix.
How to run it
- 1
Give the uncomfortable feedback
When you observe something that would help someone improve, say it. Don't optimize for your own comfort by staying silent.
Pro tip Feedback you give should remain open to challenge and discussion — delivering it isn't declaring it final.
- 2
Actively solicit escalations
Tell customers and teammates that raising problems is welcome, not a bother — it is literally your job to find and fix them.
Pro tip Queue small nits and issues and take them to the relevant teams directly, framed as 'let's study this,' not as blame.
Watch out People under-escalate because they don't want to bother executives; counteract that explicitly.
- 3
Chase true root cause
Don't close the ticket at the surface fix. Trace from the data error, to the software that created it, to the system that created that software — and solve all of it.
Pro tip Consider a dedicated escalations function whose skill is driving the org to real root causes.
Watch out Treating 'we fixed the data error and shut the ticket' as root cause is throwing the term away.
In the wild
A dedicated team is 'particularly skilled at pistol whipping other people in the company to get to real root causes' — following an error back through the software and the system that produced it.
→ Fixes the system that builds the system, so classes of defects stop recurring.
MacInnis keeps a to-do queue of minor issues people flagged in the last couple of days and takes them to product teams directly to understand what happened.
→ Continuous, non-punitive improvement from small signals.
Common mistakes
Withholding to stay comfortable
Silence optimizes for your own comfort at the cost of someone's growth — the most selfish move, and not how high-performance teams operate.
Surface-level root cause
Fixing the immediate symptom and closing the ticket leaves the system that generated the fault intact, so the problem returns.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders building a high-candor culture and product orgs that want defects fixed at the systemic level.
Not ideal for
Low-trust or fragile-morale environments where blunt public feedback could do more harm before psychological safety exists.
From the transcript
“Fundamentally, the most selfish thing you can do is withhold feedback from someone.”
“There's no greater gift to me as a product executive than receiving an escalation from a customer.”
“you found the software that created the data error and then you found the system that created the software that created the data error and…”
From the episode
10 contrarian leadership truths every leader needs to hear
Matt MacInnis (Rippling)