Analyzing Feedback Effectiveness

How can you tell if your employee listening programs are any good? At Google, we had a simple question we used to evaluate our own programs: Is the employee feedback representative, constructive, heard and considered? Let’s unpack each principle: 1️⃣ Representative: Are you hearing from a true cross-section of your workforce? Can leaders trust the data? Effective listening goes beyond the usual survey respondents. It actively seeks out diverse perspectives across demographics, departments, tenure, and management levels. When feedback is representative, you gain a holistic understanding of your organization's pulse, enabling more inclusive and impactful decisions. When it’s not, your results won’t have enough credibility to effect change. 2️⃣ Constructive: Is the feedback you're gathering actionable and solution-oriented? Will leaders know how to utilize the data? While it's essential to have channels for critical and negative feedback, you must ensure that it's shared in a way that helps turn insights into actionable improvements. “Employees are unhappy” is not a constructive insight, but  “High-performing employees were twice as likely to be dissatisfied with their opportunities for internal mobility” is much better. 3️⃣ Heard: Do your employees know their feedback is being used?   Acknowledging receipt of feedback is crucial. Simple communication, like "we've received your input and are reviewing it," can significantly boost trust and encourage continued participation. Silence, on the other hand, can breed cynicism. Always share feedback back. It doesn’t have to be question-by-question results (great if it is though!)--but at least share what the key lessons are that leaders have taken away from the feedback. 4️⃣ Considered: Do employees understand how their feedback was evaluated? If their feedback brought change? If not, why? Employees need to see that their feedback is genuinely taken into account. This doesn't mean every suggestion will be implemented. Still, it does mean transparently communicating how feedback is being analyzed, what themes are emerging, and how it's influencing programs and policies. When employees see that their input makes a difference, they become more invested. When they don’t, they become cynical, which can lead to distrust of leaders and undercut business performance. 👩💻 Hi, I'm Mary Kate Stimmler, PhD, and I write about using social science to build great workplaces and careers. (Image created by Whisk/Gemini Labs)

Using Customer Feedback Can Mislead Your Actions Instead, focus on this: Customer feedback is crucial, but acting on it without deeper analysis can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities. Often, feedback describes symptoms, not the root causes of a problem. To solve effectively, you need a root cause capability—and one proven approach is the 5 Whys method. Here’s how it works in practice: 🚩 Feedback: "Your website is frustrating to use." Stopping here might prompt you to overhaul the design—but by applying the 5 Whys, we can pinpoint the real issue: 1. Why is the website frustrating? "It's hard to find the right product." 2. Why is it hard to find products? "Filters don’t narrow down choices effectively." 3. Why don’t filters work? "They're set up based on product features, not customer preferences." 4. Why are they feature-based? "We didn’t gather data on how customers search." 5. Why didn’t we gather this data? "We lacked processes to capture and use feedback systematically." Root Cause: A lack of structured feedback mechanisms and customer-centric filtering. Instead of focusing on aesthetics, the solution is building better data processes and refining search tools to align with customer behavior. The root cause analysis is essential to sustaining improvements and preventing recurring issues. When organizations develop this capability, they reduce firefighting, lower costs, and deliver what customers truly need. Key Takeaway: Treat feedback as the starting point—not the destination. Building a root cause capability like the 5 Whys empowers you to fix the right problem and drive lasting impact. How are you identifying root causes in your customer feedback? Share your insights below! 👇 #RiseUP #CustomerExperience #CX #Experience

Getting the right feedback will transform your job as a PM. More scalability, better user engagement, and growth. But most PMs don’t know how to do it right. Here’s the Feedback Engine I’ve used to ship highly engaging products at unicorns & large organizations: — Right feedback can literally transform your product and company. At Apollo, we launched a contact enrichment feature. Feedback showed users loved its accuracy, but... They needed bulk processing. We shipped it and had a 40% increase in user engagement. Here’s how to get it right: — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟭: 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 Most PMs get this wrong. They collect feedback randomly with no system or strategy. But remember: your output is only as good as your input. And if your input is messy, it will only lead you astray. Here’s how to collect feedback strategically: → Diversify your sources: customer interviews, support tickets, sales calls, social media & community forums, etc. → Be systematic: track feedback across channels consistently. → Close the loop: confirm your understanding with users to avoid misinterpretation. — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟮: 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘇𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 Analyzing feedback is like building the foundation of a skyscraper. If it’s shaky, your decisions will crumble. So don’t rush through it. Dive deep to identify patterns that will guide your actions in the right direction. Here’s how: Aggregate feedback → pull data from all sources into one place. Spot themes → look for recurring pain points, feature requests, or frustrations. Quantify impact → how often does an issue occur? Map risks → classify issues by severity and potential business impact. — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟯: 𝗔𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 Now comes the exciting part: turning insights into action. Execution here can make or break everything. Do it right, and you’ll ship features users love. Mess it up, and you’ll waste time, effort, and resources. Here’s how to execute effectively: Prioritize ruthlessly → focus on high-impact, low-effort changes first. Assign ownership → make sure every action has a responsible owner. Set validation loops → build mechanisms to test and validate changes. Stay agile → be ready to pivot if feedback reveals new priorities. — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟰: 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 What can’t be measured, can’t be improved. If your metrics don’t move, something went wrong. Either the feedback was flawed, or your solution didn’t land. Here’s how to measure: → Set KPIs for success, like user engagement, adoption rates, or risk reduction. → Track metrics post-launch to catch issues early. → Iterate quickly and keep on improving on feedback. — In a nutshell... It creates a cycle that drives growth and reduces risk: → Collect feedback strategically. → Analyze it deeply for actionable insights. → Act on it with precision. → Measure its impact and iterate. — P.S. How do you collect and implement feedback?

Conversations of consequence are substantive conversations that allow us to directly address issues, resolve problems, and deliver great results. If we're not able to have these “conversations" at work, it’s likely that we aren't communicating effectively as an organization and limiting our ability to accomplish big things. Perhaps more importantly, when we don't have conversations of consequence, feedback is not getting to the right people at the right time. Feedback (information, data, stories) that are critical to making decisions and understanding how the business is performing in the moment. To help us all, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has created an easy to understand and use model for people within organizations to have these kinds of conversations. The "Situation, Behavior, Impact" (SBI) model is a framework designed for people on your team to provide clear and actionable feedback. It helps individuals give feedback in a way that is specific, objective, and focused on observable behaviors rather than personal attributes. The model is particularly effective in professional settings, where clear communication and constructive feedback are crucial for personal and organizational growth. Here's a breakdown of each component of the SBI feedback model: Situation (S): Start by describing the specific situation where the behavior happened. This provides context and helps the recipient understand when and where the behavior took place." Example: "During our team meeting this morning..." Behavior (B): Describe the person's actions clearly and objectively, focusing on what they did without making judgments or assumptions. Example: "...when you interrupted me while I was speaking..." Impact (I): Explain the effects of the person's behavior on others or the situation. This helps them understand the consequences of their actions and how it made you feel. Example: "...it made me feel like my contributions were not valued, and disrupted the flow of the discussion." The SBI feedback model is effective because it makes the feedback clear, specific, and actionable. It avoids generalizations or personal attacks, focusing on observable actions and their consequences. Using this model, feedback is delivered in a non-confrontational way, helping individuals clearly see how their behavior impacts others. It's especially useful for those looking to improve, as the feedback is specific, constructive, and directly linked to real situations. This model can be used in many situations; performance reviews, in cases of resolving conflict, and daily communication. It can help to strengthen relationships and support personal and professional growth. Now that you have the SBI framework, try it out. It should bring a new level of confidence to those "conversations of consequence" we need to be having. #leadership #situationbehaviorimpact #CCL #execution

In our new book, my co-author Sandra Mashihi, Ph.D. present a performance feedback coaching model based on "the big two" behind social evaluation: -Interpersonal Competence (warmth, friendliness, empathy) -Competence (ability, reliability, achievement oriented). We suggest that delivering performance feedback without the "Ouch!" can be considered successful if it accomplishes 3 specific criteria: 1. It is clearly understood (e.g., how direct feedback in some cultures is misinterpreted or misunderstood if the country uses low vs. high context communication style). 2. It is accepted vs. rejected (e.g., feedback that is clear but doesn't motivate an employee to "buy into it" or is "blown off" and disregarded based on the way the message was delivered or the trust that exists in the relationship between leader and employee). 3. It is acted upon (e.g., feedback results in a motivated commitment to change behavior that is observable to others). https://lnkd.in/gPdzEzuu Leaders using our performance feedback coaching model are provided a diagnostic way to categorize and strategize specific approaches to delivering feedback that accomplishes all 3 of the criteria above resulting in specific changes in on-the-job performance and effectiveness: https://lnkd.in/gJXYrjX8 However, new research suggests that employees who view leadership behaviors that change as a result of feedback might not always evaluate such attempts to change behavior in a positive manner. In fact, when behavior change immediately follows feedback given to a leader and it appears to be just an attempt at placating the employee, the leader is viewed as being less authentic and manipulative eroding trust between the two. Even when motivated, behavior change in all of us takes continuous effort over time (60-90 days of deliberate practice) so when significant change occurs too fast in leaders for employees to believe, it can actually undermine the relationship: https://lnkd.in/grBwVwr9 When requested behavior change in leaders is hard, complicated, or difficult, rapid attempts to change contribute to an "authenticity penalty" which undermines employees’ willingness to voice their concerns or risk sharing feedback to the leader in the future: https://lnkd.in/ddrFsyBD A "gold standard" of feedback is the observation that what is shared with others will result in a willing openness to act on it. As the study by these authors suggest, not all actions by leaders following feedback (doing something more, less, or differently) will always be viewed in a positive manner. Orginal Citation URL: https://lnkd.in/dYQkwJW6