Transformation Pillar: Feedback Vehicle
About a 6 minute read
During a one-on-one with my most senior team member, I asked how they felt about the current state of our organization's Agile transformation. We were moving from a waterfall project management structure where projects were driven by business analysts (BA) acting as the project coordinators (project management was collaboratively handled by designated parties from the business and technical sides), and the role of the BA shifted in using Scrum, as did most roles. As a team manager, I had concern that analysts would not feel they were as impactful since projects became more team efforts (as they should be) rather than one or two individuals doing the heavy lifting. Sure enough, this analyst expressed a feeling of loss of purpose in the BA role, specifically noting the shift in project leadership. I asked this senior, respected member of the area how they had raised this concern within the team and reinforced their importance in helping shape what the BA role looks like going forward. The analyst stated they had not brought it up and were just going along, possibly feeling their sentiment went against what the organization was targeting with the transformation. In my eyes, this was a missed opportunity for the analyst to exercise indirect leadership, a gap in my coaching and change leadership, and a deficiency in the organization's culture where an experienced employee did not feel it was appropriate to share their opinion about the least controversial of topics. Here, we have an experienced leader who had legitimate questions and ideas but kept their mouth shut on an important topic until prompted to do otherwise. The potential for scenarios like this is why the sixth and final pillar exists: Feedback Vehicle.
"Feedback Vehicle" is the pillar that ensures those impacted by change or transformation have a path for input and then those in positions to address the feedback act upon that input, and it encompasses the method and frequency of feedback gathering. Providing opportunities to submit feedback supports ongoing engagement, which is important for change success, and as a change leader, you cannot sit idly and expect feedback to be offered. Even though there will be those who freely offer their opinions, they will be an exception. Additionally, only acting upon the feedback that is proffered creates a "squeaky wheel gets the oil" situation where the loudest, sometimes only voice, gets all the consideration. As a leader then, it is important to elicit feedback through consistent and equal means to get a truer picture of how things are going and overall sentiment. So, how does one go about doing that?
Prompting for feedback does not need to be complex, and there is a plethora of tools available to make the process, from prompting to analyzing responses, an easier lift. The best approach will depend on organizational size and the organization's culture around providing feedback. Anonymity can be important when attempting to acquire a higher quantity of responses. The quality of response, however, can be more thoughtful when individuals need to put a name behind their words, especially if feedback trends more toward whining than issue identification and solution ideation. Starting out, however, allowing for anonymity may be the smart choice, especially if aiming to gather feedback via survey or form. Speaking of which, surveys and forms are a common and straightforward way of asking for input: find an accessible medium, craft some questions, build a distribution list, set a deadline, and distribute.
While generally easy to use, surveys can be sneakily complex to set up and imperfect in the response data they provide. For one, surveys will typically only touch upon the material relative to the survey's prompts. This inherently leaves feedback gaps and may contain blind spots where the surveyors cannot cover what they don't know or are not aware of. Additional complexity is introduced when creating the survey's questions or prompts. A good survey will avoid bias or leading prompts. Even the slightest wording change, however, can alter how the survey taker reads and interprets a prompt, which, of course, impacts the quality of the feedback. These weaknesses do not invalidate the use of surveys as a feedback tool, but they will be most valuable when used in conjunction with other feedback intake types.
E-boxes or drop boxes are two passive feedback gathering mechanisms. Individuals can send an email or literally "drop" feedback into the drop box whenever a new idea comes to mind. Naturally then, someone or a group has responsibility to check the boxes and ensure feedback is gathered. Personally, I have not found such passive means of gathering feedback to be effective, but having and promoting a standing e-box for questions is an overall positive during any change or transformation to let impacted parties know they are available to reach out at any time.
Communities of practice are my favorite way to engage with groups during a transformation or change process. They require greater effort in organization and facilitation, but the opportunity to have earnest conversations and immediately address questions and suggestions is universally valuable. If you are unaccustomed to communities of practice, here's how a basic one goes.
Communities of practice (CoP/CoPs) can be established by role, focus area, or by any logical grouping that will be valuable, where all individuals in that grouping (e.g., product owners, managers, dev team members) are invited to participate in the face-to-face (in-person or virtual) real-time discussion. The CoP is lightly facilitated to start the discussion or address outstanding topics from previous CoPs. An important note here, there should not be a single individual always responsible for facilitation or else the group will look to that person to drive the experience and participation may be inconsistent. Ideally, the CoP is an open forum where any attendee can speak-up. Facilitation is in place to ensure conversation stays productive and the meeting logistics and governance (i.e., minutes, start/stop) are handled.
Once the group is assembled, sharing begins. The group should be looking for what is top-of-mind for the work the group is doing. Are there any pain points? What is leading to successes? Through sharing, CoP members are able to learn from one another and hopefully bring valuable learnings and feedback to the surface. Furthermore, this is not a one-and-done event. Communities of Practice should be regularly occurring so those desiring to attend have the opportunity and so the conversation can evolve over time.
That's it. That's how easy a community of practice can be, and it does not need to promise to be anything more. Some of the best successes I have seen coming out of a CoP are when an attendee will bring up what they feel is an issue or concern and hear how others have overcome the same hurdle, leading to immediate resolution or takeaways to apply going forward. Perhaps much of what those experiencing change see as issues are not really issues but rather something that has not yet been learned, which is resolved through feedback and speaking up.
Regardless of which method is used, as there are other and more creative ways to gather feedback than what I have mentioned in this post, the main thing to remember is how important regularly gathering and utilizing feedback is to the change management process. Having an accessible feedback vehicle present is the best way to gauge the sentiment of those being impacted by change and to minimize the potential of overlooking an area of need.