How Much Work Does Your Feedback Create?

One of the hats I wear is Project Management and Facilitation, and it is actually one of the hats I genuinely love wearing. I enjoy the challenge of bringing different people together, working through different opinions and trying to get somewhere useful at the end of it.

Feedback is a big part of that because you need people to challenge the work. I certainly don't want people agreeing with something simply because I wrote it or because I happen to be leading the project.

When you are facilitating a project, you need people to challenge the work. I certainly don't want people agreeing with something simply because I wrote it or because I happen to be leading the project.

But over the years, I have become increasingly conscious of the difference between receiving feedback and receiving something you can actually work with.

“I don't like that.”

“No.”

“Change that line.”

“Can we do something different here?”

They are all feedback, but they can also create a surprising amount of work.

If somebody tells me they don't like something, I now have to work out why. Is it technically wrong? Is something unclear? Is there a genuine concern behind the comment, or would they simply have written it differently? Then I have to work out what they actually want instead.

Get either of those things wrong, and it is very easy to miss the bullseye. I make the change I think they wanted, send it back and discover that wasn't really what they meant. Another email follows. Perhaps we have a call. Another version gets produced and goes around again.

The original comment might have taken ten seconds to write, but understanding what to do with it can take considerably longer.

When an Observation Is Enough

There is an important distinction here because I don't think constructive feedback means everybody has to arrive with a solution.

If a relatively new Operations Manager says to me, “Something about this doesn't feel right, but I can't quite explain why,” I want to hear that. They may have noticed something important, even if they haven't yet been able to properly understand or explain it.

It would be ridiculous for me to dismiss the concern simply because they couldn't tell me exactly what was wrong and hand me the solution at the same time. Sometimes the

If it matters, spending some time together trying to understand it isn't wasted effort. That is part of the work.

But that is different from somebody who has the knowledge and experience to explain their concern, giving me little more than “change this”. If you know why you think something should change, tell me. If you have an idea about what would make it better, tell me that too.

I'm not expecting you to do my work for me. I just don't see much value in spending my time trying to guess something you already know.

What Makes Feedback Constructive?

I tend to find the most useful feedback contains some combination of three things:

Observation + why it matters + recommendation, if you have one.

I don't see that as a formula. The recommendation might not exist, and the reason might initially be little more than a concern or a feeling that something isn't right. How much somebody can reasonably contribute also depends on their knowledge, experience and involvement in the subject.

If I ask a group of experienced safety professionals to review something within their area of expertise, I think it is reasonable to expect more than “I don't like this”.

I want to understand what they have seen and why they think it matters. If they also know what they think would improve it, that information is incredibly useful.

I may not agree with the recommendation, but at least I now understand what the person is asking me to consider. We can talk about it, challenge it and decide whether anything actually needs to change.

Sometimes There Is Nothing to Add

There is another side to this that I think we sometimes overlook when we ask people to review our work.

You don't have to find something wrong. If somebody has genuinely reviewed what I have done and doesn't have anything useful to add, I would rather they tell me that than manufacture a change because they feel they ought to contribute something.

Changing something isn't evidence that you have added value. Sometimes what is already there does what it needs to do.

Equally, if all you have is an observation, give me the observation. Don't manufacture a solution simply because you think constructive feedback requires one.

For me, it is about contributing as much useful information as you reasonably can.

Feedback Moves Work Around

This is the part I have probably become more conscious of through facilitating projects. Vague feedback doesn't make the work disappear. It usually moves the work somewhere else.

The person receiving it now has to interpret the comment, investigate what might sit behind it, decide whether it matters and work out what happens next.

Sometimes that effort is absolutely worthwhile because the feedback has uncovered something important. But sometimes we create a whole loop of emails, conversations and rework because the person giving the feedback spent ten seconds saying something that needed another thirty seconds of explanation.

There is also a risk that we don't just create more work; we create the wrong work. If I misunderstand your comment, I can spend an hour fixing something you weren't actually asking me to fix. We haven't simply used more time. We have spent time and energy moving in the wrong direction, only to eventually come back around and try again.

That energy has to come from somewhere, and it lands in somebody's time, attention and capacity

Good Feedback Can Create More Work

I don't think the answer is to judge feedback by how much work it saves. Some of the best feedback I have received has probably created more work for me because somebody spotted a genuine weakness, a technical issue needed investigating or a different perspective exposed something the project team hadn't considered.

If it matters, then the extra work is worth doing. That is one of the reasons we ask people for feedback in the first place.

So perhaps the test isn't whether feedback creates work, but whether the work it creates has value.

Constructive feedback should help us spend our energy understanding and improving something that matters rather than trying to guess what somebody meant. That is why I increasingly think there is a responsibility on both sides of the conversation.

The person receiving feedback needs to be willing to listen and be challenged. But the person giving it should also think about what they are handing over.

If I have noticed something, I should try to explain what it is and why I think it matters. If I have a recommendation, I should share that too. And if I genuinely don't have anything useful to add, perhaps it is okay to say that.

Feedback can take seconds to give. The work it creates can last considerably longer.