Feedback as data

Lean In provide great tools for everybody's improvements.

Recently I have received some guidelines on feedback: so simple, yet powerful.

<<What is feedback?

Feedback is information that helps to affirm or adjust performance. It can be a formal or informal conversation that may include positive reinforcement or constructive suggestions on how you handled a task or engaged in an activity.

Why is this important?

Feedback is needed to grow, develop, and fulfill your potential. We all have blind spots. So being open to receiving feedback, listening to other perspectives, building your self-awareness, and acting upon relevant suggestions is essential to improving your performance. It is an effective way to deepen your relationships and demonstrate a commitment to your growth and development.

Think about it

Asking for feedback and thoughtfully responding to it will encourage others to continue investing in you.

What does feedback look like?

It’s a growth mindset. Feedback requires being open to suggestions and actively soliciting other’s perspectives on how you can develop and build upon your strengths. It requires being curious. With a growth mindset, you are committed to engaging your potential.

It’s a two-way dialogue. It involves setting expectations, getting ongoing input on your progress, asking questions, and identifying ways to continue to grow and develop.

It’s action oriented. It goes beyond just listening to feedback and saying, “thanks.” You need to truly understand the feedback so that you can identify the areas that you need to work on. You have to commit to actions to improve your performance and set up touch points to validate that you are making positive progress.

Take action

To maximise the value of performance feedback, make sure to remain AWARE:

• Ask for feedback

• Watch your emotions

• Ask questions to clarify

• Reach out for different perspectives

• Engage your potential>>

The beauty about feedback is that it applies to more than people. Think about product development, teams functioning.. systems as well as elements. Cast your mind over metrics, KPIs, OKRs (objectives and key results) etc.

Systems thinking is one of my favourite subjects.. so I put my hand up, I'm biased, but I honestly believe it is crucial not to look at things (mostly any topic) in isolation.

The queen of feedback about systems is Donella Meadows. She explains systems in a simple way (inflow, stock and outflow) and she gives very practical advice on what to look at and how to intervene in systems (what has more levarage).

12. Don't be enticed by parameters: they're easy to observe but don't make much of a difference to the behaviour of a system. (Examples: the temperature of water, the amount of rain, subsidies, taxes).

11. For a buffer to stabilise a system, it needs to be big enough to make the potential inflows and outflows negligible. (Example: releasing hot water into a lake doesn't change the temperature of the lake, when in small amounts in proportion to the body of the lake).

10. The structure of a system (examples: transport network, population structure) is hard or expensive to modify. Donella advises that we look at bottlenecks, fluctuations and limitations instead.

9. My favourite: the time it takes to receive feedback (it can be received too quickly or too late), in proportion to the rate of change in the system. Feedback needs to be communicated promptly. (example: a malfunctioning shower: when turning the tab doesn't translate in hot or cold water fast enough.. and you end up turning more and more the tab.. which causes and over or under-reaction).

It goes all the way down to #1: a change in paradigm, what Clarke Ching and team explain beautifully in their training. Touching on concepts of Theory of Constraints and getting you to rethink about dilemas to create the "best of both worlds".

What I want to leave you with is that feedback is essential for us as individuals, for our work as part of teams and companies and for our products and services. Be open to feedback, look for it.. make good use of it. (not all data is information!)