LinkedIn Templates: Work

Running a business is all about learning and evolving.

Here's what fuels that fire for me: a continuous feedback loop.

Inside the Team:

► We actively seek feedback from our team.

► Their insights help us understand the challenges they face.

► We don’t just listen, we act.

► We refine our processes.

► We leverage technology.

► We strive to create a work environment that empowers everyone.

Outside the Team:

► Our customers are our best critics and our biggest supporters.

► We engage with them at every stage of their journey.

► Their feedback helps us understand their needs, expectations, and experiences.

► We use this knowledge to improve our products, services, and customer relationships.

The pursuit of excellence is a never-ending journey.

Every piece of feedback, every insight, every suggestion is a step on this journey.

We learn, we adapt, we improve. We turn feedback into action.

P.S. What role does feedback play in your organization?

Let's hear your thoughts in the comments!

#ctrlp #feedbackintoaction #customercentric #empoweringteams #customerfeedback

Build in processes that automatically hold your team accountable and everybody will be better off.

This means that there should be key elements to your client deliverables that are dependent on team members putting in real thought and strategy. Pulling data and analyzing that data. Then presenting those findings.

A great example of this is a QBR.

Another example of this could be an onboarding audit.

A third example could be a creative production roadmap.

Whatever it is, build a repeatable process to empower your team to do it as easily as possible. Empower them with this so that they can show you what they can REALLY do.

With this process in place your team will learn new skills while also feeling more empowered. Not to mention that whatever client you are serving will be impressed.

This is the opposite of the sink or swim mentality when it comes to finding your best employees. These processes give employees the guardrails to operate within and the tools to accomplish the job well.

You will still see your best performers rise to the top but you also eliminate the risk of client priorities falling through the cracks because your process becomes the bare minimum expectation rather than something only high performers produce.

How I was told to give feedback:

→ Focus on past mistakes.

→ Point out what went wrong.

→ Rehash errors they've made.

What I actually did to support my team:

→ Discuss solutions for the future.

→ Identify areas for growth.

→ Frame feedback as a learning tool.

Feedback about past mistakes doesn't fix problems.

↳ Dwelling on mistakes breeds fear.

↳ Fear kills engagement and innovation.

↳ Focus on past failures stifles growth.

How do we pivot from criticism to solutions?

To create a team that truly learns and grows, shift the conversation towards future-focused solutions.

Consider this scenario:

↳ Something didn’t go to plan.

↳ You’ve been told your team made critical mistakes.

You acknowledge that dwelling on mistakes hurts your team's morale and stops innovation.

You want to support your team.

So make the shift and ask yourself:

"How can we improve going forward?”

Take the time to reflect:

→ Were there hidden obstacles?

→ Did the team lack resources or information?

Share your thoughts:

→ Ask your team for creative solutions.

→ Their insights might surprise you.

Use your insights to empower and strengthen your team:

→ Help them identify strengths that emerged despite the mistake.

→ Encourage them and show them how to proactively use these strengths going forward.

Here's your action plan:

1. Break down the mistake:

Analyze each step to find where things went wrong.

2. Create a "Lessons Learned" document:

Capture key takeaways for future reference.

3. Encourage proactive information seeking:

- Empower team members to ask questions.

- Help them flag uncertainties at project conception and before problems arise.

- Encourage them to share expertise with each other.

**The Takeaway**

Traditional methods often promote harsh criticism instead of solutions.

True collaborative success comes from fostering a culture of learning and growth.

P.S. Ever feel pressured to improve your team without knowing where to start?

Share a time when focusing on past mistakes backfired.

Let's learn from each other! Share your experiences below 👇

Struggling to scale? Before pointing fingers at clients or your team, consider this: the real culprit might be lurking within your processes.

When you're scaling, you have to worry about reaching your goals. Often times you're too focused on the client, thinking the client is the problem and that's why they're unsubscribing, taking a long time to give feedback, or getting mad. Or maybe you think it's your team.

Often times it's your system of procces. So take a look at the machine you're building and see what part of it needs fine tuning. Maybe it's how you're sending work for feedback and you have no reminders setup for them.

Maybe you're onboarding employees without an SOP, so they're lost in the quality you want. You're not wealthy until you can leave the business and it runs itself. Systems and processes will help you build that machine that keeps running even if you go on vacation.

And when you're trying to identify problems, sample size matters. 1-2 clients/teammates isn't big enough. It can be insightful and always trust your gut.

Subject: Improving Our Collaborative Process for Better Results

Dear Client,

I hope you are doing well. I wanted to take a moment to discuss our recent projects and share some thoughts on how we can work together more efficiently. We value the importance of agility in our process, which allows us to make iterative progress while remaining flexible. However, I suggest that there is a distinction between agility and unorganized work.

Agility means having a structured approach that enables us to adapt to changes while keeping clear goals in sight. This approach allows us to refine and iterate based on your feedback, ultimately leading to better results. However, unplanned changes and numerous iterations can disrupt our workflow, causing potential delays and increased costs. This, in turn, can affect the quality of the final product.

We advise setting clear objectives and planning feedback sessions at critical milestones to maintain a healthy balance. This way, we can address necessary adjustments while maintaining an efficient and effective process, leading to the best possible results for you.

We would love to talk about implementing this approach to streamline our workflow and achieve our mutual goals. Please let us know your thoughts on this.

Best regards,

Your Well-wisher

Lots of companies do 360 reviews, but they’re unique at Amplify Data.

For one thing, when we do these reviews, our small team makes the experience a true 360: everyone in the company gives feedback to and gets feedback from everyone else.

That includes my co-founder Ameya Pathare and myself.

As another unique consequence of being a small team, our feedback is naturally non-anonymized, so when we do 360 reviews, everyone feels empowered to give direct feedback with their name attached to it.

We treat it as a privilege to get feedback from every single person in the company. In larger companies, you might only get feedback that’s specific to your department or function, so we think this is a major benefit to being small.

We’re proud to give and get feedback because we know it will help us grow.

Ever find yourself dreading the infamous "$hit Sandwich" feedback?

One reason this method -- which sandwiches constructive criticism between two compliments -- feels so yuck is that people tend to give very general, vague positive feedback, but very specific, concrete negative feedback.

Consider this: "You did a great job organizing the program yesterday, but during your talk you spoke too fast, had a typo, slides 14-16 were extraneous, and the call to action was weak -- but nice work!"

The positive feedback loses its impact amidst the detailed criticism.

But giving people concrete, specific positive feedback is powerful, helping to sustain motivation and reinforce recent learning and growth. It also just feels nice.

So, skip the $hit Sandwich. Vague praise is not helping anyone. But find opportunities to tell your people specifically what they are doing well.

This post was inspired by Wes Kao's recent newsletter on how to give effective feedback, which I highly recommend.

~~~

Hi, I'm a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in developing incredibly effective, scalable products. I design solutions around user experience, behavioral science and product testing. My expertise includes learning, memory, decision making, habits, attention and motivation -- all fundamental to scalable digital products.

Do you need product development strategy? Let's talk.

#founder #femalefounder #behavioralscience #neuroscience #cognitiveneuroscience #productdevelopment #feedback #userexperience

How to receive feedback like a boss

I gave this talk at CTO Craft Conf in May 2023, and it was a fantastic experience. I'm sharing the talk with my network because it is the one I'm most proud of - there is some work to do on my presentation skills (some uhm and ah here and there). Nonetheless, I'm very happy with the final result.

The introductions cover why receiving feedback is more important than giving.

The talk's core is a step-by-step guide to getting the best out of every time we receive feedback and how to encourage feedback culture showing how to receive it.

Video: https://lnkd.in/eZV9cNMZ

Slides: https://lnkd.in/eQ47Cdki

Thank you to Rachel Thomas and the CTO Craft team for supporting me as a speaker. David Seddon for listening to an early stage of the talk and suggesting the creation of an acronym for my method (at the beginning, there was no SERIF, just a list of things to do).

Everyone who came to me after the conference to discuss feedback. It was amazing to receive feedback (pun intended) from so many of you.

What's your best tip to receive feedback? Please write it down in the comments. - I would love to add other people's experiences in future iterations of the talk,