Why are Feedbacks important ?

I am always surprised with the power of little things that we can practice in our daily lives. Its no rocket science to predict that a person who is disciplined with a good routine can develop the power of being incredibly consistent in things that he does and will do in future , which will result in many tangible and non tangible results based on the things that he works. Unfortunately , we don't come across such people more often . Why is that ?

As someone who is in to continuous improvement , I always try to teach this to people at my client sites, about the power of doing little things consistently whenever we discuss about starting a new activity . Honestly , I see a lot of enthusiasm in the beginning , but as time passes, it somehow loses the momentum. I have always thought about this and so decided to write here today.

Why are we not consistent ?

1. Measuring the wrong metrics : One of the key reasons that I think why we are not consistent at our workplace is because we fell in to the behaviour of the majority of the people. ie, the culture of the organization doesn't allow you to do things that you needed or wanted to do consistently even if you have the will to do it. This is because in many organization , there is no structured methods or processes to ensure that everyone is consistent and thus the little things loses its importance very soon as these organisations try to measure only the metrics of the outcomes and not the metrics of the process itself.

Let me give you an example , In a retail store where there are many salesmen trying to sell their products to the walking in customers , the performance metrics that are usually measured are the number of people attended by each salesmen and the sales figures that the salesman have brought in. There is nothing wrong in doing so , but if you introduce a process step like " directing every new customer to the new products section " , you will have to develop a different metrics to measure if it is done consistently by all of the salesmen . Instead , if you still measure the output metrics , you will almost lose the consistency. To make it clear , here is two lists of examples

1. Lack of feedback and follow up system : This is one of the major reasons that I think that many organisations are failing to sustain any improvement efforts that has been initiated with great enthusiasm at the beginning . If you do not have a proper system of timely feedbacks and follow ups , the amount of time that you have invested in training and implementing new initiatives will be of little value in the future. If you look at how new changes are introduced in an organisation , it would be something like this.

If you do not have a proper system of timely feedbacks and follow ups , the amount of time that you have invested in training and implementing new initiatives will be of little value in the future

The problem with this method of implementing changes is that it does not make sure that the changes will stick as the way it should be in the long term. Although , useful metrics are derived and monitored continuously , often the results does not seem satisfactory because of the lack of proactiveness from the team. This may be due to practical hurdles that comes along the way or a bigger problem arrives so that the attention of the management goes to it leading to complete abandonment of the previous initiatives ! It is also important to note here that just monitoring things does not necessarily change things.

How can we be more consistent ?

There is no silver bullet to this question . There should be a culture of disciplined work where a strong routine is maintained , repeated works are standardised and every need for changes are clearly communicated , understood and accepted by everyone in the organization. This can only be created by those who are in the power , ie the Top management by supporting their team to provide an environment where people would feel intrinsically motivated to maintain and improve every new changes that is introduced in the organization. For more details on this topic , I suggest you read "The Science of Workforce Engagement - Turning "Have to" into "Want to" " by Lonnie Wilson.

Having said that , I also think that there should be a system of Feedbacks and Follow ups to every changes that is intended to make. This can give an opportunity for the workers to communicate any practical problems in the implementation or in the long term execution and also helps the management to improve the support system thats needed to sustain the change !

The above process makes sure that a lot of feedbacks are drawn back to the management from the team thats actually working on the new changes that has been introduced . Although this may take some time to get really implemented on the floor , it also makes sure that the changes will stick and the organization will benefit it from the long term. You can see that the most important part of this process is not the implementation of the change , rather its in the follow ups and feedbacks that allows the management to make sure the initiatives are sustained.

That's it for today , Hope you have enjoyed it . Also, please feel free to comment or suggest anything that could be worth discussing or writing in the future, Thank You !