Feedback: It's Not Monkey Business

If your growth strategy doesn't include multiple approaches to getting feedback, keep reading. When reading an email newsletter called More Clients, by an incredibly bright and honest guy named Robert Middleton, I got a real jolt.

Imagine my surprise when Middleton, who radiates transparency and connection, described himself as "arrogant" because his pattern was to believe he knew what his clients wanted and needed, instead of asking them. Dialogue is far more than two-way conversations. It's actually fueled, especially in client relationships, by asking for feedback and then acting on the responses.

When I'm working with clients on creating strategies, I occasionally feel like a preacher - and sometimes a loud and persistent one at that! Convinced for years that every business needs more dialogue, less monologue, I sometimes go so far as to provoke discussion about why more dialogue needs to happen by impersonating a leader whose entire conversation sounds like "me, me, me."

To help keep the focus on your clients, think AAT, ATT --- "All About Them, All The Time." Also helpful is direct inquiry. While many organizations now incorporate questions through surveys into much of their work (at What Matters, we're huge advocates of SurveyMonkey), most companies use them before starting work with a new client, and occasionally on the completion of a project. There's even more power in seeking feedback during the work process. Take the feedback, analyze it, and use it to tweak your current work to improve the experience for your client.

Here's my thinking about integrating feedback into strategy:

Timing Matters. Our work can always get better and asking for feedback as we work allows for continued improvement in ways that matter to those we're serving. Waiting for a client's feedback until the work is finished doesn't offer nearly enough potential for increased excellence.
Encouraging Negative Feedback is Essential. While there may be a small number of crabby, whiny potential clients out there, most people put on agreeable, pleased-with-everything faces. I'm not suggesting in any way that they should change their attitudes. But I am aware (as a typically sunny, positive person myself) that most of us are more likely to share displeasure or concern only when authentically asked to give it.
It's Not Ask, Then Do. A results-based strategy needs to include summarizing feedback, developing an action plan for change, and then informing the respondents of what's next. While this involves progressive steps forward, I also see it as a continuous loop, a widening circle of insight. It's not a one time ask and do.

The other side of feedback--- giving it to others--- is just as important. Done in the right way, it is part of a good, honest relationship.

Before giving feedback, think about your motivation. If you just have the urge to criticize, stop. If you want to help someone's business grow, then make sure your feedback is well thought out, that it has value to them, and then deliver it in a sensitive, positive way.

How are you getting and giving feedback that helps shape better strategies and produce better results? The more ways we learn to ask, the more ways we learn to receive, the more ways we learn to do something with feedback, the more we grow. Otherwise, maybe we're just monkeying around.

Now give me some feedback.