Monday, September 19, 2011

How did that work out?

We make plans and decisions all day long but tend not to pay much attention to how they work out. If we don't get feedback, how are we supposed to learn?

A simple feedback plan

Here's a simple plan for feedback on decisions and plans.

• When starting something new, write down a short description of how you think it will turn out. What do you expect to see by when?
• Save it.
• Mark your calendar for critical times in the future to compare expectations with reality.
• Consider what might have been done better.

Most improvement plans talk about charting some parameter over time. For example, you might chart your weight daily or weekly to see if your weightloss plan is meeting your goal. But a lot of the things we do are one-time events without handy parameters to chart. For example, today I decided that we will attend a trade show in Little Rock. So I wrote down my expectations: how many customer contacts we'll collect, how many product demos we'll get from those and how many sales we'll get. I scheduled reviews of the expectations for our first staff meeting after the conference and another for two months out by which time sales decisions will probably be made.

Students learn from feedback

If we are the students of the effectiveness of our own processes, we must devise our own feedback and keep learning.

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Keywords: continuous improvement