To move our companies forward, we need to create robust and timely feedback loops.  Getting effective feedback early and often allows us to change products, tactics and strategies that do not work.  The entrepreneur Andy Hackworth says it well:

The first thing I would say is you just need to be aware that whatever the plan you have, it’s going to be wrong.  The only way you’re going to know it’s wrong is by having these feedback mechanisms and these measurement systems in place.

In his book, The Geek Way, scientist and author Andrew McAfee also highlights the importance of feedback in whatever we do:

To accelerate learning and progress, plan less and iterate more; organize projects around short cycles in which participants show their work, have access to peers and models, deliver to customers, and get feedback.

Unfortunately, few of us create effective feedback loops.

• “We have our strategy in place (we have our product ready to launch) we just need to go and execute on it.”
• “Getting feedback takes too much time and slows us down.”
• “I don’t like to give feedback; it is uncomfortable for the other person and me.”
• “I don’t need any feedback.  I know what I am doing.”

How to Create Feedback Loops

Many of the ways to create effective feedback loops are straightforward:

• We need to make giving feedback easy
• We need to make giving feedback safe without repercussions
• We need to make feedback go both ways (top-down and bottom-up)
• We need to give frequent feedback ourselves
• We need to act on the feedback we receive

Three other ways of creating feedback loops are not as straightforward but are just as vital.

• We need to be open to feedback and to be seen to be open to feedback:  First, we need to be open with our teams that we are not perfect and that we are working on improving what we do as well.  Second, we need to really listen to the feedback we receive and acknowledge the person who gives us feedback.  Any shutting down or immediate dismissal of feedback means that no more feedback is coming.  Publicly rewarding team members or customers that give us valuable feedback goes a long way to getting more feedback from others.

• Feedback needs to be scheduled as part of any strategic, process improvement, or product development process:  We need to formally include obtaining feedback in all such processes and we need to schedule the time to get feedback and act on it.  This ensures that whatever we might do reflects the views of the workers who will be doing the process or the customer who will be buying the product – even if it takes longer.

• We need to ask for advice: In a perfect world, employees and customers would offer feedback willingly.  Toyota has probably come closest to this perfect world by giving their employees the requirement to both do their job and to suggest better ways to do their job.  For everyone else, we need to pull the feedback out of our employees and other stakeholders.  The academic and author Adam Grant stresses the importance of asking for advice rather than feedback as advice expresses our willingness to improve, is more focused on the future and what we can do better going forward and gives the other person pride in and commitment to the solution.  As Benjamin Franklin was reported to have said about winning friends:

Appeal to their pride and vanity by constantly seeking their opinion and advice, and they will admire you for your judgment and wisdom.

Conclusion

Creating effective feedback loops is fundamental to moving our companies and ourselves forward.  With the feedback, we can course correct and improve our strategies, our products, our companies, and ourselves.  The global economist Owen Barder goes even further in touting the importance of feedback in making the world better.

We should not try to design a better world.  We should make better feedback loops.