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A thought that's been on my mind: most organisations don't lack feedback. They just get it too late to use it.
By the time the signal arrives, the decisions that needed it were already made — and what was a cheap correction earlier has compounded into an expensive surprise.
By the time the signal arrives, the decisions that needed it were already made — and what was a cheap correction earlier has compounded into an expensive surprise.
In this episode, I think through why short feedback loops matter more than better ones, what startups get structurally right, and how larger organisations can shorten the distance between action and insight without blowing up their governance.
The written version of this argument is at cultivatedmanagement.com — this is the spoken version, walked through at a slower pace.
http://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/quarterly-review-already-six-months-late
http://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/quarterly-review-already-six-months-late
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What is Here's an idea worth playing with?
A podcast from Cultivated about words, work and the ideas hiding underneath both.
Every week, Word@Work takes a single word that we often use in work, and follows it back to where it came from - its history, its original meaning, the way we've come to use it, and what that tells us about the popular business of being at work with each other.
Because words aren't just labels. They carry assumptions, histories and ways of seeing the world. Look closely at a word like "deadline", "career", "amateur", "cultivate" or "strategy" and you often find an entirely new way of thinking about work.
Alongside Word@Work, the podcast brings ideas from the Cultivated library to life in audio: essays, field observations, conversations and explorations of work, communication, learning, creativity, attention, making and the journey from an idea to something valuable in the world.
The episodes are deliberately short.
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For people who care about how work actually happens - and who enjoy discovering that there is usually a much more interesting story behind the words we use every day.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of here's an idea worth playing with with myself, Rob Lambert. Hope you're doing safe and well. After a bit of a gap, I am back, and I'm recording and doing all sorts of stuff over on cultivatedmanagement.com. And today, we're gonna be talking about feedback. Feedback as a compass, as that gentle, subtle, direction giving signal that allows you to keep moving forward.
Rob:We're not talking about feedback about performance from managers and none of that stuff. We're talking about feedback as you try to take an idea and turn it into something valuable. Now years ago, I worked with a client and they had these big quarterly review sessions, kinda like these, I guess, quarterly events where everybody would come together on these giant portfolios. And I remember the first quarterly event, I was tagged along. I was gonna be there to help them do this idea to value transformation.
Rob:It was almost a total utter surprise to everybody at that review that they were already, and bear in mind this is only in month three or end of month three, they were already about six months behind. I mean, how's that even possible? And it's possible because feedback is not in place. Now equally, if you know me, you know my history. I've been through the start up to sale journey, and it was a phenomenal, wonderful adventure.
Rob:And in a start up, feedback is often measured in minutes and seconds. I mean, that's that's the sort of, I guess, the power and the story that startups tell is that they're able to pivot, they're able to change, and they use signals, they use feedback as a way to do that. And within a startup, obviously, they're they're not as complex, they're not as complicated usually. Information is more open, people are more open, and we'll talk about that in a minute. And so the feedback signals are kind of everywhere, and you can pivot, you can change, you can test, and you can move forward.
Rob:It becomes a lot harder in a big company, but that doesn't mean, and this isn't a sort of, I guess, a challenge between being a big company and a start up or anywhere in between, this is purely about feedback signals. They're available in a company of any size. You do not have to wait till the quarter. You can see it daily, you can see it weekly, and that's what we're gonna talk about. How to do this, and why those signals aren't just data coming from the market, coming from the product, coming from the tooling, but also signals coming from people.
Rob:So in this example of this big corporate client and everyone sat there in this room, there must have been about 300 people in there, including many senior leaders who for the first time realized that they'd invested a huge amount of money, we're talking millions and millions of pounds in this program of work, to find that they were already six months behind after month three. Now, the reason this is it's not necessarily the feedback and the signals, it is, but it's the fact that they don't arrive in a timely fashion. And therefore, something in week one or week two which would have been flagged as a problem, some information or some insights that could have given somebody an ability to pivot, to change, to make a course correction, to do something, to make a decision, it doesn't arrive. And so week three is built on top of this problem. And so is week four, and then week five, and then month two, and then month three.
Rob:And before you know it, this initial problem that could have been identified with the correct feedback mechanisms and the culture to do something with the information, which is important, could have avoided all of this and they could have been on track. And that's what the idea to value system is aimed at teasing out is where are you not getting the information that you need? And this is feedback, and it comes from many different places. When we think about the idea to value flow, and if you've not seen it, if you head to cultivatedmanagement.com, you'll find it everywhere on there because the whole site is organized around the five different levels of it. But here specifically, we're talking about the level that I call the physics.
Rob:This is the system that takes an idea and turns it into value. And all ideas, whether we're working for ourselves as a solo creator, whether we're creating artwork, whether we're working in a corporate, it makes no difference. Ideas generally follow a very similar path. We have the idea, and this in itself is feedback. What's the market asking for?
Rob:What does our business need? This could be improvements, new platforms, new features, new events, you name it, whatever. That's a form of feedback in itself. We then choose to invest in it, and there's all sorts of feedback signals we can get here as well. Is it a good use of our investment?
Rob:We're not just talking money here. We're talking time, energy, and attention, Those finite humans' resources that once spent, we never get back. And I see a lot of that wasted in companies. We then move from an investment. We're going to take this idea and we're going to turn it into something real.
Rob:That is an investment. We then build an activity set, and this is usually a plan or it might be a backlog of work, it could be a project plan, depends on the company, it doesn't matter. It could be a list, piece of paper with 10 things you're gonna do to take this idea and turn it into something real. And within there, there's tons of feedback opportunities for different voices, different peoples, different perspectives. We don't want to grind away here and slow down and never get into action.
Rob:But at the same time, we want to bring in as much feedback as we possibly can. We then move from there into creative action. We're actually building this thing. We're taking a plan. We're putting it into action.
Rob:There's tons of feedback opportunities here. Is the plan good? Are we on track? Are we building what's expected? There's so much feedback here that is, you know, I wouldn't be able to do it justice in this podcast.
Rob:And during this process, at some point, we're gonna ship. We might be shipping things weekly, daily, monthly, or annually, whatever. Doesn't make a difference. We're gonna ship something. And again, there's feedback opportunities here.
Rob:Did we ship what was expected? Did we ship what customers wanted? And then finally, if we get this right, we're gonna get some value. The value that we thought we would get when we invested in this idea in the first place. Now there's four types of value.
Rob:I'm not gonna go through those in this episode, but this is, of course, the ultimate feedback loop. If we expected to sell a 100,000 units or versions or licenses of this thing that we built and we only sold four, that's feedback. If we did this because we were trying to keep the lights on and be compliant with some regulation and we're not, well, there's feedback there. And of course, there's feedback of learning. There's the value of learning in everything that we do.
Rob:Now in a good company, a company that is flowing towards this value consistently and smoothly and utilizing and using carefully those finite humans resources as well as money, they are constantly checking the right signals for feedback all the way through this at any one of those stages. They're checking the information coming from the markets, from the customers, from the tooling, from the systems of record, as we call them, the the tools that we use within a business to manage finances and work items and, you know, people and all the other stuff, they're all giving real time information, usually if we've got decent tooling that is. And the goal of all of this is to narrow the gap between doing something and getting feedback over whether that thing we have done is moving in the direction that we wanted in. That's all we're ever trying to do with feedback. Is the plan correct?
Rob:Is this investment correct? Is the activity, the busy creative action, people's time, energy, attention building something and turning this nebulous idea into something real? Is that adding value? Is it good use? Are we building the thing that we expected to build?
Rob:And if not, we need feedback so we can pivot. We can change. We can stop if we have to do something else. Now I think if you sit down with leaders, managers, anybody in a business, you'll know that most people realize they're not getting the feedback that they need. So it's a case of working out, what do I need right now to make a decision that I don't have, and maybe plug that gap.
Rob:Now be cautious here. This isn't a case of measuring everything, because just because we can measure it doesn't mean that it's useful in making a decision. And bear in mind that when we do choose to measure something, there is a cost to that. Defining it, capturing the data, analyzing over time, somebody's got to keep an eye on this. The more information that we have does not mean that we make better decisions, and it can be quite a costly affair in itself.
Rob:But the one bit of feedback that I think leaders and managers miss the most is it's the feeling, the observations, the things that people in the business notice that quietly frustrate them, that tell them that something is not quite right. This feeling is often put to one side because it's hard to measure. It's, you know, a bit fluffy for some people. But how people feel in the organization, Not necessarily their emotional feeling about work and the people they work with, but the frustration that comes from trying to do a good job in a system that might not support them. Feeling that things could be better is a very valuable signal to listen to, and the best leaders and managers that I've ever worked with are the ones that create the climate, that safety, that space, that meaning, that shape, and that attention that allows people to surface problems, to air concerns, to be honest, to put forward their perspective without fear or retribution.
Rob:That climate generates some of the most insightful, wonderful, and useful feedback so that you can move forward towards value. I always say that the people doing the work, they know how to make that work better, to make the system better, to make the processes better, to make the culture better. If only people would listen to them. Now, of course, we don't want to pander to people's preferences for how they want to work and change the culture and remove some of the commercial drive that is happening in organizations, make it such a great place to work. But we don't actually deliver value.
Rob:We've got to tread that line carefully. That signal, that feedback coming from people in the mix doing the work should be treated with just as much importance as the measures and the metrics and the KPIs and the OKRs that we're getting from other places. In other words, the shorter the feedback loop between doing something and seeing whether that thing is having the effect that you think it should, the better placed we are in order to pivot, to move, to ultimately make a decision and make the business better in the process. Now, in the article over on Cultivative Management, I talk about the four different types of measures, the buckets of measures, should we say, that I use. There's all sorts of links out to some of the stuff we've talked about, like the creative climate, you know, things about the four different types of values.
Rob:So you can find a much richer in-depth article over on cultivatedmanagement.com. The link will be in the show notes. But here's the thing, and here this is almost like a, I guess, a quiet truth that I've seen through consulting and working in organizations for about three decades now. The organizations that learn to read the signals from people, systems of record, from data from markets, wherever, usually learn it the hard way. They discover at the quarterly review that what they thought they were building in week three wasn't what the customer wanted.
Rob:And by week 12, they've kinda shipped it. They've carried on. They've not done anything with those signals, or they never even received that signal in the first place. And now they've gotta go back and rebuild it. They've gotta do it again.
Rob:They've got to deal with loss of sales. There's all sorts of consequences for getting this wrong over sort of a twelve week period, when the reality is we probably could have found this out in week one, week two, week three earlier on, where the cost is not as significant. And that's what feedback is. It's a signal, and those signals coming together provide you with a compass. And those compasses aren't loud.
Rob:They don't shout. There's no alerts. There's no sort of bell that goes off. It is the reading of that compass that's important. It points in the right direction.
Rob:Those who check it often usually arrive where they intended to arrive. And of course, if you want to know more about this topic and the idea to value system, you'll find the links in that show notes, and you'll find all sorts of other resources over on cultivatedmanagement.com. Some free, some paid for. And with that, I'm gonna go and enjoy this wonderful, wonderful, beautiful spring day here in The UK. We've had a couple of days of glorious sunshine, and you know this wouldn't be a here's an idea worth playing with podcast if I didn't talk about the weather.
Rob:Sitting out in the garden, the sunshine, everybody feels good, the vibe's different. Spring, I think, finally, hopefully, eventually, at last, has arrived. And with that, I will catch you in the next episode. You take care of yourselves, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye bye.