The modern workplace champions open feedback as a cornerstone of growth and productivity, yet in organizations designed without traditional bosses, this vital communication can become a surprisingly difficult puzzle to solve. Industry leaders like Gartner have consistently urged human resources departments to foster cultures of open feedback as a top priority. This push highlights a universal truth: employees who receive regular, meaningful input on their performance are more engaged and effective. However, this raises a central challenge for a growing number of non-traditional companies.
This paradox becomes particularly sharp in employee-owned organizations. In a structure where every staff member is also a co-owner, one might assume that open communication would flourish naturally. Without the inherent power dynamics of a top-down hierarchy, feedback should theoretically be easier to give and receive. The reality, however, is often the opposite. When no formal processes exist, and everyone is technically a peer, the social friction of offering constructive criticism can lead to a culture of polite silence, preventing individuals and the organization from truly evolving.
The Backstory: Defector Media’s Cultural Challenge
Defector Media provides a compelling case study in navigating this exact dilemma. Founded by a group of journalists who left a corporate media giant after major disagreements with management, the company was built on a foundation of employee ownership and a fully remote structure. This origin story shaped a workforce that was deeply skeptical of traditional corporate practices, including many of the standard, often impersonal, functions of an HR department. The team’s shared negative experiences created a strong collaborative bond but also left a void where performance management processes should have been.
This cultural backdrop presented several immediate obstacles to establishing a feedback loop. With no established HR infrastructure, the company was, in the words of co-founder Jasper Wang, “starting from zero.” The staff, primarily writers and editors, had little to no experience with formal performance management and were unaccustomed to the structured give-and-take of professional feedback. Compounding the issue was the remote nature of the work, which can make sensitive conversations feel more awkward and transactional than in-person interactions, causing employees to put their guards up. Internal surveys soon confirmed what leadership suspected: staff were not comfortable giving constructive feedback to their colleagues.
Designing a Peer-Driven Solution
Recognizing the need for a system that honored its unique culture, Defector embarked on a journey to create a bespoke, peer-driven feedback process from the ground up. The goal was to build a mechanism that felt authentic to their collaborative spirit rather than imposing a generic corporate model that would likely be rejected by the employee-owners.
Building a Foundation with External Partners
The first step was acknowledging their internal limitations. Rather than attempting to invent an HR framework in a vacuum, Defector’s leadership sought outside expertise. They enlisted Your Other Half, an external HR provider, to help lay the essential groundwork. This partnership was crucial in demystifying the principles of effective feedback for a team unfamiliar with them.
Your Other Half developed a company-wide training program tailored specifically to Defector’s needs. The sessions focused on the fundamentals of giving and receiving structured feedback in a way that felt constructive rather than critical. This foundational education provided a shared language and a set of tools that equipped employees with the confidence to engage in these conversations, transforming an abstract challenge into a manageable, skills-based practice.
Introducing the ‘Feedback Champion’ Role
With a baseline of understanding established, the next innovation was the creation of the “Feedback Champion” role. This system was designed to embed the feedback process directly within the company’s existing editorial pods—small, three-person teams. Twice a year, one member of each pod is designated as the champion, tasked with facilitating the feedback cycle for their two podmates.
The champion’s role is more of a facilitator than a manager. They conduct interviews with each pod member to gather commentary on their peers, then synthesize these notes with written feedback collected throughout the year. The result is a personalized report for each employee, complete with actionable items to focus on over the next six months. By keeping the process within the pod, the champion has a holistic view of the working relationships, ensuring the feedback is contextual and relevant.
Shifting from Positive to Constructive Feedback
Defector wisely implemented the program in gradual stages to build comfort and trust. The first feedback cycle, which took place in the latter half of last year, deliberately emphasized positive reinforcement. Leadership encouraged staff to share what was working well, framing it as an essential part of the feedback process. This approach helped employees “build the muscle” for giving and receiving commentary in a low-stakes environment.
As the team grew accustomed to the new habit, the nature of the feedback began to evolve. In the second cycle, employees were noticeably more comfortable offering direct and constructive critiques. This organic shift demonstrated that once a safe and structured channel was established, the team was ready and willing to engage in more challenging conversations. The trend is expected to continue, with each successive cycle deepening the quality and directness of the feedback exchanged.
The Uniqueness of Feedback Without Hierarchy
What truly sets Defector’s model apart is how it completely decouples feedback from the traditional metrics of corporate success. In most companies, performance reviews are inextricably linked to promotions, raises, and career advancement. At Defector, where hierarchy is minimal and career paths are not linear, the purpose of feedback shifts from climbing a ladder to fostering personal growth and strengthening collective accountability.
The motivation for improvement is therefore intrinsic and community-oriented. Feedback is geared toward helping individuals achieve self-directed goals and better meet the expectations of their co-workers, who are also their co-owners. This reframes the entire dynamic: it is not about impressing a superior but about contributing more effectively to a shared enterprise. The process becomes a tool for collaboration and mutual improvement rather than a top-down judgment.
This peer-facilitated system is the linchpin of the entire structure. By placing a peer, the Feedback Champion, at the center of the process, the authoritative tone of a traditional review is eliminated. The conversation becomes a dialogue among equals, focused on enhancing team dynamics and individual contributions. This fosters a sense of shared responsibility for performance and growth, which is essential for a flat organization to thrive.
Current Status: Combating Stagnation in a Stable Environment
Today, the feedback system is a vital, established part of Defector’s operational rhythm. In a company that boasts a near-zero turnover rate, with all its original founders still on board, the risk of complacency is real. Extreme stability can easily cross the line into stagnation, where suboptimal processes and bad habits become entrenched simply because there is no crisis forcing change. The peer feedback system acts as a crucial “bulwark against staleness.” It creates a regular, structured opportunity to question the status quo and ensure that workflows, communication, and collaboration continue to improve. It prevents the team from simply keeping their heads down and assuming that the absence of major problems means everything is optimal. This proactive mechanism for continuous improvement is what keeps the organization agile and forward-thinking, even in a stable environment.
Reflection and Broader Impacts
Defector’s journey offers significant insights into the future of work, particularly for organizations moving away from traditional hierarchical models. The experiment reveals both the strengths and the inherent tensions of managing performance in a truly democratized workplace.
Reflection
The primary strength of the model lies in its ability to humanize HR for a workforce justifiably wary of corporate bureaucracy. By co-creating the system with employees and prioritizing their experience, Defector built a process that felt supportive rather than punitive. It successfully translated an intimidating corporate function into a meaningful, peer-driven ritual that reinforces the company’s core values of collaboration and shared ownership.
However, the challenge of creating robust accountability in a co-owned business remains an ongoing puzzle. Without the traditional levers of promotions or disciplinary action, ensuring consistent performance across the board requires a high degree of intrinsic motivation and peer-to-peer accountability. Effectively managing underperformance in a flat structure is a complex issue that Defector, and other organizations like it, will continue to navigate.
Broader Impact
This case study provides an invaluable blueprint for other cooperatives, startups, and non-traditional organizations seeking to build people processes that align with their values. It demonstrates that effective systems do not have to be imported from a corporate playbook; instead, the most successful solutions are those custom-built to fit an organization’s unique structure and culture.
The core lesson extends to all HR professionals, regardless of their company’s model. It highlights the importance of being “humanistic, not legalistic” when designing processes that impact people’s work and careers. By focusing on the employee experience and meeting people on a human level, HR can build trust and create systems that genuinely support both individual and organizational growth.
Conclusion: A Blueprint for Human-Centered Feedback
Defector Media’s journey to build a functional feedback system provided a powerful lesson in organizational self-awareness and incremental change. The company acknowledged its cultural skepticism toward traditional HR, sought external expertise to build a solid foundation, and introduced a peer-led model that honored its flat structure. By starting with positive reinforcement, it successfully built a habit of open communication that evolved into a robust mechanism for constructive improvement.
This experience stands as a compelling blueprint for any organization looking to create a more people-focused and adaptable feedback culture. It showed that the most effective systems are not one-size-fits-all but are instead deeply aligned with a company’s foundational values. In an era of evolving workplace structures, Defector’s model champions a future where feedback is less about judgment from above and more about collaborative growth from within.