We welcome and actively look for feedback. But what do we do with it? How do we get actionable data out of narrative feedback? What do we do with the data once we have it?
Data and feedback that you cannot act upon isn’t just worthless, it actually works against you: because the inability to act will be seen by your employees as a decision not to act. What is our greatest asset quickly becomes an incredible liability.
We may employ formal surveys, such as Gallup’s Q12 or NPS surveys. We also receive feedback from employees – whether obtained by formally-designed internal surveys, discussions with HR, comments freely given to managers, and employees speaking with their feet as they walk out the door. But acting on it is a whole different ball game.
Here are five domains which stop us from acting on our feedback:
Scope
- Blocker: We are overwhelmed by the scope of the problem.
- Underlying Issue: We’re trying to “eat an elephant in one bite.”
- Concept: Complex problems cannot be solved in a single leap. The solution becomes manageable and achievable only by focusing on smaller, individual items.
- Action: Control Scope by breaking down the Problem into smaller, manageable contributing Factors.
Risk Aversion
- Blocker: We cannot being fixing the problem until we have Guaranteed ROI.
- Underlying Issue: We want to “have our cake and eat it, too.”
- Concept: When solving for a problem with many unknown variables, it is impossible to demand clear, exact ROI estimates or exact timelines.
- Action: Simply the approach. Is it a problem? Is it costing the company money? Is it hurting our business? If any of these answers is “yes”, then the simple answer is we must fix it now. Failure to act now guarantees present and future loss.
- Action: Mitigate Risk by taking small, measurable steps towards progress. Leverage the “big picture” to overcome ROI objections. Small steps lead to bigger steps. Any progress today will result in eventual ROI.
Lack of Information
- Blocker: We don’t know what we don’t know. (This is actually good! However, we rarely see it that way.)
- Underlying Issue: We use “lack of data” as an excuse to remain in a state of inaction.
- Concept: No business was founded by sitting by and waiting for something to happen. We must be proactive to solve a problem, and we must be proactive to gather the needed information!
- Action: Build Knowledge
- Leveraging prior feedback
- Invite new feedback from all channels of the business
- Make feedback easier to provide
- Action: Accommodate Additional Knowledge
- Build systems to handle additional influx of feedback
- Actively categorize feedback
- Design methods to identify trends
- Decide, preemptively, what types of trends are significant
- Action: Follow up on feedback trends!
Responsibility
- Blocker: We don’t know how to transform data into actionable items; we don’t know how to apply feedback.
- Underlying Issues:
- The most common issue: we just aren’t sure how.
- The second is more subtle: We expect others to do the hard work of Application when they provide feedback. We put the burden of proof on our employees and refuse to act just on their word. “We can’t act on emotional feedback or just your single incident report.”
- Concept: Requiring logical, precise, ready-to-act-upon feedback undermines 10,000 years of human evolution and runs counter to the way actual human beings (your employees) naturally communicate. Especially when under pressure.
- Action: Take responsibility
- Re-examine all prior feedback filed as one-offs, not-actionable, or too emotional. Those emotional items are especially significant.
- Create mechanisms to identify and analyze quantifiable details within the narrative or emotional feedback you receive. Get ahead of the problem.
- Action: Share Responsibility
- Reward employees who bring feedback.
- Empower employees to gather additional information – especially if your standard operation is to say, “Thanks but we need more info. Come back when you have it and we can act.”
- Failure to reward and empower employees to bring you feedback is taking to asking them to “make bricks without straw.”
Lack of Feedback
- Blocker: Low employee interaction. They just don’t seem to bring their concerns to upper management, despite open door policies. Middle management hasn’t report any trends, either. People just don’t talk.
- Underlying Issues:
- Passively waiting for feedback to come to you.
- Feedback gets lost in the chain of command.
- Employee-facing communication does not acknowledge nor ask for employees to voice their concerns.
- An environment which is inhospitable to feedback.
- Concept: We must recognize that our actions (and inaction) actively undermines trust and willingness to provide feedback. Some of the contributing factors are: failure to take proactive action as leaders; insisting that employees “trust the system”; a pattern of lost feedback; a pattern of persisting, unaddressed employee-reported problems. Thankfully, there are a multitude of methods which can be employed to regain and rebuild genuine trust.
- Action: Demonstrate the Value of Feedback:
- Build formal structures to guarantee feedback is delivered directly.
- Build mechanisms to guarantee feedback is analyzed, broken down into actionable items, and followed up accurately.
- Communicate directly with the ones who provided feedback to ensure it is being understood properly.
- Aggressively seek feedback, even from those who do not volunteer.
- Action: Reward Feedback
- Deliver rewards which are meaningful and powerful according to those who deliver it.
- Publicly and Immediately recognize employees who speak up and provide feedback which has resulted in action.
Some of you will find immediate application and value simply in this high-level overview. Excellent! If you see the value but don’t know how to implement these principles, well – that’s what I’m here for. Consider looking at my offerings and reaching out to me to see if I’d be a good fit for helping you achieve your business needs.