Will You Ask for Spears?

19 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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1:04

In this short talk, the speaker argues that organizations can only incentivize behavior, not performance, and that typical reactions to problems (anger, silence) hinder learning. He shares a practice he observed in the U.S. Air Force: after a presentation, presenters would ask the audience “spears?” – a request to throw metaphorical spears (sharp, constructive criticism) at their work. This ritual forces honest, actionable critique and prevents complacency. The speaker suggests adopting this “ask for spears” mindset in business settings so that any presenter explicitly solicits tough feedback, turning feedback culture from passive praise into active improvement.

Chapters

You can't incentivize performance, you can only incentivize behavior, right? And so if something goes wrong, do you go off the handle? Do you lose your cool? Do you start screaming and yelling? Nobody wants to tell me anything. No. If that's my reaction. I'll tell you one of the ways I learned this lesson, and I got this from the US military, from the Air Force. So in the business world, if somebody like spends 2 weeks doing their PowerPoint, they have the meeting, they give the big presentation, and at the end of the presentation they go, eh? Pretty good, right? Like, that's what we want in the business world. We want people to tell us we did well. And I saw this happen multiple times in the Air Force where somebody worked 2 weeks on their PowerPoint. They came and gave their big presentation, and at the end of the presentation, they look at the audience and they said, spears? Spears? They literally say, throw spears at my work so that you can help me make my work better. And so now at work, anybody who presents anything, an idea, whatever it is, they will say, spears? Spears.