Feedback: A Symptom of a Healthy System
I had a great time last weekend. I attended my University’s second International Alumni Reunion, where I gave a presentation on my career, caught up with old colleagues (I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since someone thought it was a good idea to give me a degree!) and met some amazing veterinary students.
Some of the most fun feedback on my presentation was people telling me they enjoyed it. And sure, who doesn’t feel good when people tell them nice things? The most useful feedback, though? For me, it’s when people tell me where I can do better.
When I get excited about a topic, I talk faster. When I’m excited to be someplace fun, I talk faster. So it should be no surprise that one bit of feedback was to slow it down a little bit.
There’s also photographic evidence of feedback. The event had a photographer, and some of my friends took pictures of me in full flow as well. I know I talk with my hands, and it wasn’t too much of a surprise to see that in a few of the pictures, I looked like a cross between Usain Bolt’s victory pose and an airplane taking off.
Entirely separately, I apparently make funny faces without noticing it when I’m expressing something. So I have a few items on the agenda to fix before my next talk. I’ll slow it down, for sure, and I’ll have a stab at keeping my face a little more chill. Taking control of how I talk with my hands? I’ve got a better chance of meeting space aliens, but at least I know!
The key to good feedback, of course, is being open to the feedback. “Don’t shoot the messenger” is a vital part of any feedback system, whether you’re doing a talk at your vet school, running a workplace team, or working with colleagues. If people learn that delivering bad news gets them into trouble, eventually the bad news stops getting delivered.
Feedback is a vital part of how any kind of system works. When you touch something hot, your nervous system needs to know, and you need to decide what to do about it. When you touch something dangerously hot, your brain doesn’t get much of a vote: your hand jerks back reflexively, and your systems have kept you safe. That’s negative feedback, and it’s useful.
Positive feedback is also something we literally can’t live without. The feeling of a cool glass of water when we’re very thirsty, or the taste of something delicious when we’re hungry, tells us that something is worth repeating. Without these signals, organisms wouldn’t reliably do the things that keep them going.
And that’s a vital lesson for organizations. Positive and negative feedback (good news and bad news) both need to get to the destination. When you’re setting up a new project, whether that’s a talk at a conference, a workplace project, or an entire business, the one thing you can’t afford to do is operate in isolation.
Being openly receptive to feedback is essential, because no news is not necessarily good news. It may simply mean you’re not being told about the problem.
A healthy system needs information about what is happening so that it can respond appropriately. Organizations are no different. Feedback, whether spoken, observed or built into the way we measure things, needs to be part of the systems we develop to keep our work and our lives on an even keel.
How are your feedback systems? If they need polishing, or need to exist in the first place, get in touch.