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How to provide an effective feedback?

An organization is always changing and will grow or scale down. Inside, you'll have many people that will join in the beginning and many people that will join after. That will change the company and the way it is being run.

I recently started to pay more attention to the way people are working and how the necessity to provide some feedback is crucial as the organization relies on its people day after day. As the founder, it's critical to ensure the company grows and becomes less founder-reliant over time.

People are usually getting really quickly used to bad habits and it can harm the company in the long run if nothing is being done. I remember that one day, my co-founder argued on a topic on the way to do things and we ended up disagreeing. He thought his way was the best and I didn't. 10 days passed. Nothing happened. He decided to do nothing about that matter and we wasted 10 days. I had to ask him if he did something or he sticked to his position and didn't move forward on this. He answered that he sticked to that position and we wasted 10 days... That's when both of us realized that it wasn't good for the company to act like that and we got our act together and solved the problem.

What's an effective feedback?

In order to move forward, it's necessary to spend a little bit of time on defining an effective feedback. For me it's a process where we will be doing the following things :

  1. Detect a problem

  2. Connect the stakeholders

  3. Assess the damage caused or potential damage

  4. Get input from the stakeholders

  5. Craft a couple solutions to solve the problem

  6. Set an informal meeting to share about how to solve that

  7. If not successful, gather the reasons why there's resistance

  8. If successful, follow on with the actionable items

  9. Follow the metrics ( if possible ) to assess the improvement ( hopefully )

  10. Close the case after a period of time so it can be defined an effective feedback

Example 1 - Organizational

People kept asking some days off and there was no proper tracking of doing it. I gathered the team members and explain how it affects operations over time and lack of accountability and came up with a spreadsheet where each team member will be to request the days off.

When the spreadsheet was set up, some people kept resisting so it requires a little bit of pedagogy but it eventually worked out. I decided to wait for a couple quarters to see if everyone is following the procedure in order to close the case on this matter.

Example 2 - Individual

I organize a roundtable for investors every quarter. During one roundtable, one investor came late and and kept interrupting the flow of the roundtable asking questions that were already answered in the document that was sent 2 weeks prior to the meeting.

Other investors during the roundtable messaged me privately about it being irritated and asked me to do something about it as we couldn't discuss more advanced topics.

I had to informally discuss with that person and request to come in time and read the document beforehand so we can deep dive and have a more productive conversation.

The person wasn't receptive initially and thought it was fine to come in and do things that way but with a little bit of persuasion, I explained the flow disruption affects everyone and prevents us from discussing some complex problems to solve.

Some common mistakes to avoid

At the end of the day, an effective feedback is designed to be sent to someone or a group in order to solve a problem and improve something.

Make the stakeholders realize about the problem to make feedback effective

I'm personally a fan of Socrates maieutic. It's to me the best to achieve an effective feedback by making people realize of the problem and the potential damage. They can see it and then after that we can discuss solutions.

People won't simply care about the problem if they don't realize it is.

Don't fall in love with your own solutions to make feedback effective

Another problem from the feedback provider is to fixate on a specific solutions and forget about the problem. Sometimes, we'll come up with solutions we fall in love with and it's where the feedback is not effective anymore.

Instead, reminding the problem to solve frequently is necessary for both sides to understand what's the focus and gear toward a resolution. I'm prone to fall in love quickly with my solutions so I have to fight against my natural instinct to jump on a solution I find to remain focused on the problem.

Ensure the feedback doesn't get personal to make it effective

Solving the problem is key and ensuring the focus on the outcome is important. The problem is that it's getting personal on the receiving or sending side.

As every human being comes with a different personality, it's necessary to deal with each to ensure the way the feedback is being given focuses strongly on the necessary changes to be made to make things better.

Ask solutions from the person receiving the feedback to make it effective

Another way I found useful is to involve the person receiving the feedback as a sense of ownership can come up with this.

By working together on solving the problem, the person receiving the feedback can take it as a way to improve like an athlete instead and will think more about how to a better agent in the company.

Make frequent feedback to make it effective

Usually a "feedback" is considered being negative and people will associate naturally negative feelings to it.

Instead making the feedback process more frequent so people can be told positive AND negative information. The frequency is up to you to decide as I don't have a general recipe. I personally do it once a month.