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Feedback Fatigue – Is Just One Question Best?

Requests for feedback into my inbox have risen considerably recently. Invariably an email or a text will request my opinion for a product, service or even just a single phone call! This is frustrating and ironically can turn me off the organisation concerned.

That said, I firmly believe that feedback can drive up performance. Sites like Trustpilot, Tripadvisor and Google’s reviews should be enabling the consumer to have a voice, louder than the advertising and the cut-price offers that certain unscrupulous airlines, hoteliers and retailers have relied upon to attract naïve customers. We also know that asking just one question is more effective than asking several. That question being:

Would you recommend this product to a friend?

Also known as the net promoter score, this single question invariably provokes more people to respond and generates more honest and therefore accurate data. Why then do organisations persist asking multiple questions regarding insignificant interactions such as a single telephone call?

Employers are no different, every year we expect our people to complete a detailed employee engagement survey, ignoring the fact that results will be skewed by:

– Fear that negative feedback will be career limiting

– Only engaged staff will complete the survey, disengaged staff disengage from the process

– Disbelief that the process in anonymous

– Frustration that previous years surveys have had little impact

Wouldn’t it be better to ask just one question? Like the net promoter score for consumers, a single question that clearly indicates whether people are engaged. But what is that question?

Some mimic the net promoter score by asking:

‘Would you recommend working here to a friend?’

This works well until the role or the organisation is specialist. In which case, unless your family and friends are also biomedical scientists or property tax accountants then the question has limited impact.

We could ask:

‘Do you feel valued by the organisation?’

Or

‘Do you feel good about the work you do?’

Or

‘Are you proud to work here?’

Or

‘Do you often consider working elsewhere?’

All good questions but do any of them really get to the truth? I’m not sure they do. Engagement is fluid, variable and hard if not impossible to measure by a questionnaire. Maybe we shouldn’t rely quite so much on feedback tools and instead, engage with people one to one, have a conversation, ask whatever question seems appropriate and demonstrate that we care enough to give our time.

Salesforce Fiasco – Pride before a salesfall

Along with many of their customers worldwide, I have been having some trouble with Salesforce recently.

My issue began prior to the worldwide outage last Friday. It was a familiar case of arrogance from a Goliath-like supplier toward a small, though loyal customer.

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Why Great Leaders Say No

We seem to be living through a time when elected leaders at least, have succeeded by telling people what they want to hear.

Is this really leadership? We’d say it’s not. True leadership requires the courage and wisdom to say out loud, the truths that people don’t want to hear. It’s not fun, it upsets people and makes the leader unpopular. In the short term for sure and often, for much longer.

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2 Steps to Overcoming the Time Poor Trap

More than ever it seems that increasing numbers of us are overwhelmed by an ever-growing and never-ending to-do list.

Just as we seem to get some time to catch up, urgent requests pings into our inbox and yet another well-intentioned day is high-jacked. For many of us, this has become our normal state, thereby creating more urgent requests as critical tasks slip through, only to pop up again a few days later as urgent priorities.

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An Unlikely Leadership Truth

Way back in March 2016 we wrote about the appeal of maverick leaders. At that time Barak Obama was US president, David Cameron was UK Prime Minister and the Zika virus was striking fear into travellers.

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Space for Adventure

Ranulph Fiennes, Ben Fogle and Dervla Murphy live lives filled with adventure. Whilst the closest many of us get is a visit to Cotswold Outdoors, during our lunch hour.

We have every intention of adding another adventure to our existence, yet we rarely seem to find the time, weather and suitable location to wear the Goretex we bought during that optimistic lunch break. Acquiring the kit is the easy bit, the greater challenge is finding a few days to escape to the wild.

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Don’t just slow down this bank holiday, stop.

A Bank Holiday with the chance of having a 3 or 4 day weekend to recharge is something that every looks forward to. These enforced Bank Holidays should result in a more rested and energised work force but it seems most of us are using these long weekends to keep working and catch up on the backlog.

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Should managers encourage workplace friendships?

In business, there is always a risk when it comes to forming friendships with colleagues, with an added distance making it easier to have those tough conversations if one colleague holds a more senior role. Yet there’s a body of research which suggests that the stronger the bonds are between colleagues the more successful the organisation.

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Stop Working, Start Storytelling

Movies, plays, novels, even jokes are forms of storytelling and EVERYONE loves them. There were two brothers, one adored opera, his brother loved pantomime. Different genres, both with stories at their core, there’s not a person alive who doesn’t enjoy a good story, though we may differ in our preferred style of storytelling.

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Is Your Job Pointless?

In his recently published book anthropologist David Graeber suggests that up to 40% of jobs have little meaning and purpose. His theory is backed by a 2015 YouGov survey which found that 37% of respondents believe that their jobs make no “meaningful contribution to the world”.

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