Brave enough to collect and take feedback
February 28th, 2011I was watching foundat.io/n earlier today and Philip Rosedale (founder of SecondLife) was on talking about a survey he runs every quarter.
The survey collects anonymous responses to these questions:
1) Do you think I should remain as CEO or be replaced?
2) Regardless of the above have I improved / gotten worse at my job?
3) Why?
Philip then relays the numbers of the first two questions back to the team. With the insight that at some point he should leave the role as CEO and at that point he probably won’t want to go but the trend of the numbers won’t lie.
Secondly he would sit down and review the Why responses (after a couple of drinks). It is easy to brush off feedback when it comes from someone you know but when (as he says) you get the same feedback from seven different employees who don’t know one another you can’t argue with that.
Are you brave enough to collect and take feedback?
It’s a classic case of just holding your breath and doing it. The feedback helps everyone, those you ask, you and your company. We do it for our customers and it was amazing to hear three different customers give us the same feedback. Like Philip said it is a universal truth when you hear it in that manner.
—
Note: Foundat.io/n videos are released once a month, if you are a subscriber (like me) you get them early. Watch the Foundation Vimeo channel for the video to come out.