“The world has never gone this fast… And it will never go this slow again.”
Feedback Loops are key to capturing the benefits of this speed in communication!
Traditional management relied on mechanisms of control— managers, supervisors—to ensure quality and shape interactions. These are expensive and inefficient to grow to scale.
Communication Feedback Loops operate differently:
- Receivers are not just passive absorbers of messages.
- They receive the messages and respond to them.
- Feedback is the audience’s response.
- It enables team members to evaluate the effectiveness of their output and messaging.
To stay healthy, every aspect of a business needs feedback loops. So why do some forget to use this important tool?
A feedback loop is a process in which outputs of a system are circled back and used as inputs.
In business, this refers to the process of using customer or employee feedback (the outputs of a service or product) to create a better product or workplace.
In teams, consistent feedback loops turn the conversation from an apology and an excuse to an acknowledgement and action plan. For team performance, as teams gather feedback signals about quality of content in their work, obstacles or opportunities emerge in the system in which they work. Subsequent work efforts become increasingly efficient.
Feedback loops are simple to understand:
- Produce something
- Measure information on the production
- Use that information to improve production
- Around it goes—a constant cycle of monitoring and improvement
For an example, here is a 2 min video message (from last month’s blog) to a client applying feedback loops to a situation they were experiencing.
Call to Action:
- Build your Feedback Loop habit with your team members.
- Make your workplace a better place!
Onward and Upward,
Steve
