Much has been talked about the importance of giving and seeking feedback within the team and from outside the team. There’s no denying that.
But what is feedback? Feedback means the gap between expected output and actual output. In controlsystems or in machinelearning, the expected output is accurately predictable whereas the actual output is accurately measurable. And because of this, feedback adds a lot of value.
However, management lacks this level of precision. As a result, measuring the performance of your team or business can be difficult.
Here, the expected output is highly biased by manager’s/ organisation’s expectations about the team or team member. On the other hand, actual outcome is hardly accurately measured. It’s very difficult to come up with a measure by which a manager can accurately measure team’s performance.
Therefore, in order to accurately identify this gap (called feedback), the first step is to come up with not just measures (like SMART goals and what not) which are objective and focused towards outcome, but also coming up with measures that quantify the efforts the team have put in.
Our outcome oriented metal set up only allows us to think of efforts as inputs. How can we measure, for example, how much passion team has demonstrated in terms of working extra hours, learning extra things? How to measure how much compromise each member had to make for the sake of a team? How to measure collaboration? After all, each member puts in his effort towards making the project successful.
It feels glad to see the increasing awareness to recognize and reward the efforts nowadays. As we say love begets love, efforts beget efforts!
So what is feedback in management? A gap between expected efforts and actual efforts! The true reward of effort is when the effort becomes or feels like effortless!
Reinvent The Self! 