The importance of prompt and consistent feedback

Business is like a living thing. The business environment, customer opinions, product capabilities, competitor offerings, etc. are all changing constantly. So, running a business is like surfing; riding a wave. You might be able to surf well, but when it comes to business, it is as if you have to surf as a team consisting of many people, and needless to say, that would be exponentially more difficult.

At business school, they teach the importance of having a company vision and a business model in creating a successful business. However, I have realized that the more important and challenging aspects being managing continuous passion from the managers and the employees to make a real difference. Recently, a concept from a book I have been reading called "Great at Work" struck me. The book describes the results of a scientific study on 5,000 workers and bosses from different levels and industries; factors that significantly contributed to creating outperformers.

Some parts of the book insisted the importance of giving feedback instantly. Most companies tend to have one or two employee performance evaluations per year giving the results in a written form or grades. That is what we have been doing at e-Jan too. In this case, the learning style is mere repetition of what you or your boss intuitively think is the right way, giving hints to adjust only once or twice each year. Thus, employee performance has been improving at a slow rate. So, if you really want your staff to improve faster, swift enough to surf in a team, they need to get feedback much more frequently.

Now I understand why our systems have been effective for the growth of our business. One system is "Morning Mail," a system in which everyone writes their daily report in the evening and gets my comments the following morning. The other is "Ten Minutes Conversation," a short one to one meeting with myself or one of the leaders every month. They each function as a system to give feedback to everyone promptly and frequently. This way, we have been able to deal with the delicate part of human communication, resulting in giving open feedback in a quick and frequent manner. Now I understand the improvements we can make to the systems; encouraging everyone to give feedback to peers and bosses openly and right away. It is the right way to go!