The Release Cycle of Care
Why empathy is much more than MVP
Most startup failures aren’t technical. They aren’t caused by the language stack, the database choice, or even a bad scaling model. They are, almost universally, human.
We in the tech sector, especially in the breathless, venture-fueled atmosphere of the startup world, have built a religion around the concept of iteration.
We obsess over the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). We launch a v1.0, gather metrics, learn from the data, and then refine. We practice Agile development, Scrum, and Kanban (we have a thousand sophisticated frameworks to simply say, “Try again, but faster”).
But here is the million-dollar question: Why do we treat empathy (the fundamental requirement for good product, good support, and good leadership) as a static personality trait that you either downloaded at birth or you didn’t?
Empathy is not a feature. It is a system. And like any system in a dynamic environment (like a relationship, a company, or a network protocol), it needs constant debugging and upgrades. It needs iteration.
The Neurodivergent Feedback Loop
For many of us who are hard-wired differently (myself included, navigating the world with the dual-stack architecture of Autism and diagnosed ADHD-i), empathy is explicitly not an automatic download. It doesn’t run on instinct. It is a meticulously engineered system.
We have to consciously seek data (facial cues, tone, body language), run it through a complex logical parser (the ‘social context engine’), and generate an appropriate, human-centered response. This is iteration in action. The reason it can feel exhausting is that we are constantly running a parallel process: Build, Measure, Learn (BML).
If we can apply the BML loop to our infrastructure (which we do religiously, measuring latency and throughput), we can certainly apply it to our leadership and communication.
The Minimum Viable Empathy (MVE)
Stop trying to deploy a fully-featured, perfect solution the moment someone expresses pain or frustration. That is the Waterfall model of empathy (long, rigid, and prone to catastrophic failure).
Instead, seek the Minimum Viable Empathy (MVE). The MVE is the smallest possible empathetic action that validates the other person’s emotional state while requiring the least effort (and therefore lowest risk) from you.
The process of Iterating Empathy looks exactly like your product roadmap:
1. The Build Phase (Observation/Data Collection)
Stop preparing your response. This is the hardest part for technical minds (we are geared to solve, fix, and explain). Instead, enter listening mode. Collect qualitative data. What is the user (your teammate, your customer) actually saying? What is the feeling they are emitting (anger, fear, shame)?
2. The Measure Phase (Deploying the MVE)
Once they pause, deploy your MVE. This is your first tiny, reversible release. It is not a solution. It is pure validation.
MVP response: “That sounds incredibly frustrating.”
MVP response: “I hear the weight in your voice, and that must be exhausting.”
MVP response: “So, if I understand correctly, the outcome was X, and the feeling that created was Y. Is that right?”
This measured response is your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You are testing a core hypothesis: “Is validation the thing this user needs right now?”
3. The Learn Phase (The Feedback Loop)
Observe the immediate result. This is your critical feedback loop. Does the person’s body language soften? Do they visibly relax? Do they sigh and then open up with more detail? If so, your MVE was successful. The system has stabilized. You have gained validated learning.
If they tense up or correct you (”No, it’s not frustrating, I’m just furious!”), then your MVP failed. You need to quickly branch the code and deploy an emergency patch. “My mistake. I hear you’re furious. Tell me more about that.”
Later, during your personal ‘retrospective’ (perhaps during your walk home or your hyperfocus deep-dive), you analyze the failure: What non-verbal cue did I miss that indicated fury instead of frustration? Document the finding (mental Jira ticket, maybe).
The Continuous Delivery of Trust
The best infrastructure I ever built (and I’ve built a lot) wasn’t the globally distributed one running on redundant fiber. It was the network of trust with my team. It turns out that people perform better, debug faster, and solve more complex problems when running on a steady supply of trust and psychological safety, rather than just cold brew coffee.
Stop waiting for the perfect, comprehensive empathy patch to magically appear. Start treating empathy like the critical business tool it is—a system that requires constant tuning, small, frequent releases, and an unwavering commitment to the iterative feedback loop. Ship often, and ship human.