Feedback at Scale: How we get real feedback from our growing 75,000-person team

I recently held a meeting (combination of in-person and virtual) with 600 leaders from our Deloitte Consulting team. At meeting’s outset, I made this challenge to the group. That we show up:

• Proud, but not complacent
• Critical, but not cynical

I went around the virtual and physical rooms, asking for examples - moments of pride as well as critique and concerns. Some leaders stood up in the room to share their thoughts while others wrote comments in the meeting app, in which we had enabled chat (not moderated) for all to see. Through this combination, we heard from more than 70% of those 600 people (with many others following up by email).

Upon reflecting on all the real-time, thoughtful, unfettered, authentic feedback I received, I realized this exercise summarizes one of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a leader-in-training: The people on your team hold the key for unlocking how to make your organization/team better. Period.?

As someone in management or a leadership role, you are responsible for collating the experiences of your team (in my case 75K+ teammates and counting), debating the implications for actions, and making decisions that reflect the diversity of experiences and opinions.

As a CEO, I can say that even for our highly agile Deloitte Consulting team, the pandemic made the challenges more complex and came at us faster than ever. We needed the voices of every single teammate, to trust me and our management team that not only did we want to hear from them, we needed to hear from them as we faced decisions that would shape the future of our organization and culture. And our people needed to trust that we’d do something with their feedback.

Some believe that an organization of 75K+ people is too big to genuinely engage in multi-way feedback- and that efforts to do so are more theater/charade than authentic conversation. Or that the only way to get feedback is from an annual survey or pulse checks. I disagree. We’ve been able to solicit real-time feedback consistently and agilely to make impactful improvements. How we’ve done it can apply to an organization of any size. First, it starts with asking for it, constantly and in a variety of ways, and then – and here’s the most important part – making changes in response to that feedback. ?

Feedback isn’t one size fits all

I’m sure you’ve been on a call when you or someone else asked for feedback on what was presented. And there’s silence. It is an uncomfortable moment. It might be easy to take the silence as agreement and move on. That’s a missed opportunity. Maybe the issue wasn’t that people had no feedback; maybe it’s that you’re asking for it in a limited or singular way. The way people give feedback often aligns to personality traits and communication styles.

Alternatively, what if you asked for people to put their ideas in the chat? You may hear from a few introverts who rarely take the mic. Or if you sent a follow-up note or set up one-on-one conversations after the meeting? Or ask more specific questions, like what they would change about a certain idea, or which one they liked the best?

Feedback at scale is similar – you need to create a variety of ways for people to actively engage in the discussion. Many times, when leaders are faced with a large group, they revert to delivering that one-way, top-down communication to their team and, as a result, don’t hear much in response. That lack of response isn’t because there aren’t opinions or ideas – it’s because there aren’t the mechanisms in place for two-way dialogue and the gathering of that sentiment.

Small Decisions Can Foster More Valuable Feedback

Something my team and I learned early-on in the pandemic was the need to be intentional about which virtual meeting features to “turn on” to maximize feedback channels. Before each virtual town hall, we’d discuss different features of the platform we’d want to use based on our meeting’s goals. For example, if we wanted people to feel completely comfortable sharing how they felt, we’d set chat comments to anonymous. Other times, when focused on generating ideas and solutions, we would keep the name identification feature on so that we could recognize people for their contributions or follow-up with them to learn more.

These choices may make leaders uncomfortable because feedback isn’t always positive. Our people have pointed out changes they want to see in our organization, raised big issues, and there was often disagreement. But to me, what’s even scarier or more uncomfortable than disagreement is making decisions without the feedback.

Foster and Embrace Debate – It’s Where the Good Comes From

People can be intimidated by the word debate so let me explain. Think less high school mock trial and more a group of people with a spectrum of opinions framed with some polarity that forces people to make clear choices. Here’s an example of how we applied this (and a relatable topic for most):

About a year ago, after the emergence of the vaccine, organizations were asking themselves how/when/why do we return to the workplace? Everyone had (and still has) an opinion, and a lot of people had opinions about how they thought other people felt (e.g., “young people miss the office” or “parents like the flexibility of work from home”). All completely anecdotal with no data. And there was no single right answer.

For our team of 75K+ geographically dispersed individuals, we had to frame the decision in way that wasn’t overly simplified (to stay home or go into the office). We had to create a space where the complexity, the nuance, and the spectrum of opinion could be surfaced. To understand the moments where our teammates would need and place the highest value on flexibility versus the times where they would be clear and tangible benefits to create ‘in-person moments’ – wherever those may be.

With that framing, we held both live, virtual, and asynchronous debates moderated by team members who were asking key questions and collecting feedback.

I was so proud of the discussions our team had. The conversations were educational and informative, but most importantly they were human -- with our teammates learning from each other. We also gathered meaningful data and trends from the debates, dispelling some of the assumptions about how people felt about return to workplace. And ultimately, it shaped our approach to figuring out what work looked like. For us, that meant adding in-person expectations to project descriptions where applicable so people could make decisions about their work in a way that best fits their lives, plus creating ways for people to meet and connect in person safely outside of those projects.

We’ve used this framework many times since then, on the topics that we know there is a ton of passion in the system, with no clear right answer – and frankly without feedback, the management team is bound to struggle with decisions or have an incomplete picture of the nuances at play.

Two-Way Dialogue Matters Even More Now

Call this most recent trend in work what you want (I prefer “The Great Re-Evaluation”), but it’s clear we find ourselves in a unique (and I believe fantastic) moment where top talent has the most career choices in history. And so as “leaders in training” like me get the chance to shape the future of our working world and find new ways to build culture/connection…the importance of feedback has never been clearer.

As you ask for feedback, here’s the summary of the three things to keep in mind. ?

1. Don’t assume silence means agreement or no feedback. Actively give people many ways to share their thoughts.
2. Use digital platforms intentionally to help you get the type of feedback you’re looking for.
3. Encourage debate. When there is no right answer, present all sides. And when the decision affects everyone, ensure everyone has the chance to give feedback so you as a leader have a pulse on the differing sentiment.

My hope is that, whether you lead a team of 10 or an organization of 100,000 people, you begin to engage in more two-way dialogue, find new ways to solicit feedback and embrace different opinions. When framed and used intentionally, feedback will unleash the ways your team is proud but not complacent, and critical but not cynical. And the more feedback you get, the better your decisions and organization will become. ?