Feedback is a powerful tool – make sure you're getting it right
Twenty years ago, the team who wrote the Agile Manifesto realised we were prioritising the wrong things when it came to how we work. They came up with a set of values that form the Agile Manifesto and in turn, changed the way organisations work around the world.
Since then, agile has helped teams work more collaboratively, brought businesses closer to their customers and made work environments more dynamic. And yet, agile enterprises are still asking employees for feedback through occasional anonymous surveys.
We set out to fix employee feedback for agile enterprises. To make it something that supports an agile mindset and reinforces agile principles.
Over the past few years working with agile enterprises, we’ve come to realise that in much the same way, the solution involves rethinking what we place value on when it comes to employee feedback.
So we wrote a new manifesto, The Agile Employee Feedback Manifesto:
Despite years of surveys the consistent employee belief is "nothing ever changes". This is because employee feedback has centred on measurement first, and in turn, reduced people to statistics.
Instead, start with the question. How could feedback advance our business outcomes? Employee feedback is too valuable (and finite) a resource to be squandered on HR only. Stretch beyond measuring engagement. Apply feedback to many business outcomes – crowdsourcing change, adoption of new processes, shifting culture.
Also, preoccupation with measurement is a bedfellow of obsession with benchmarks. Benchmarks narrow your application of feedback, and ensure you aim for the average.
When an employee leaves anonymous feedback they abdicate responsibility for that feedback. It becomes "someone else's problem".
Also, psychological safety is a defining feature of successful agile teams [Project Aristotle]. Only ever asking for feedback in secret sends an opposing message – feedback here is unsafe.
Instead, the goal is to help everyone feel comfortable giving and receiving feedback. Feedback should focus on outcomes rather than being ego-bruising. Feedback should encourage empathy, honesty and ownership.
Traditional feedback gets aggregated to a subset of leaders who create high-level programs in response. Aggregation destroys useful opportunities for individual action, and it removes ownership for outcomes.
Many individual actions will have an impact greater than a few macro programs. As a result, action will happen faster.
Feedback systems shouldn't just aggregate feedback up the hierarchy. They should direct feedback to where it's most useful, and often that means to multiple places.
Not only to leaders, but to subject matter experts, within squads, to coaches. And if teams reconfigure often, historical feedback needs to move to where it's relevant.
Traditional feedback systems are built on statistical assessment. They ask rating questions with precise language to get to very specific measurements. This is often at the expense of reading age and inclusion.
Instead of asking questions, start conversations that encourage dialogue, and prompt action. Rather than statistical analysis, use natural language processing to extract insights.
Employee feedback programs fail if they are not useful for employees. Feedback should give employees a voice that they can see is heard, includes them in change, and gives them ownership of their own experience of work.
Joyous have developed a library of employee feedback questions and conversation starters specifically for Agile Enterprises. Download a copy of the open-source guide here.
