How to Give and Receive Feedback About Creative Work. Executive Summary Feedback is crucial for learning and improving, but it’s rarely fun to be on the receiving end of it when it’s critical. This is particularly tricky when it comes to creative work, which requires direction that can build up ideas, rather than critiques that can tear it down. Research shows two things are critical: asking for broad feedback out of curiosity and offering feedback based on subjectivity. Importantly, managers need to understand that their opinions provide only potential trajectories a creative worker might try — not the “right” road to take. Feedback is crucial for learning and improving, but it’s rarely fun to be on the receiving end of it when it’s critical.
So what might good feedback for creative work look like? Identifying this requires understanding how creativity works. At the same time, creativity does require feedback. Asking for feedback out of curiosity. Provide feedback based on subjectivity. How to keep your mouth shut. I have a genetic disorder known as “can not keep my mouth shut.” If I think someone is full of it, my arm raises, and my mouth engages, well before my brain can calculate the possible damage.
I have been in recovery for years and am here to share what I’ve learned. As a rule, if you insist on speaking your mind, you will inevitably find yourself in an environment where everyone hates you. Most people can not handle the truth. And the more you shove it in their face, the easier it is for them to ignore you. The trick to keeping your mouth shut is to hold the desire to effect change above your desire to tell people how wrong and bad they are. Back in my early days at Microsoft I worked on strong, confident teams where you were expected to have opinions. But later, in a new job at Microsoft in a group known as MSTE, I discovered a world of dysfunction, despair and passive/aggression. Before I knew it, I was that guy. In my egocentric view, the work around me was well beneath the bar. Lower Your Cost of Change. Change is your best friend. The more expensive it is to make a change, the less likely you'll make it. And if your competitors can change faster than you, you're at a huge disadvantage.
If change gets too expensive, you're dead. Here's where staying lean really helps you out. The ability to change on a dime is one thing small teams have by default that big teams can never have. This is where the big guys envy the little guys. What might take a big team in a huge organization weeks to change may only take a day in a small, lean organization. And remember: All the cash, all the marketing, all the people in the world can't buy the agility you get from being small. When it comes to web technology, change must be easy and cheap.
Emergence Emergence is one of the founding principles of agility, and is the closest one to pure magic. A classic example of emergence lies in the flocking behavior of birds. Simple rules, as with the birds simulation, lead to complex behavior. Keep it small. Less Mass. The leaner you are, the easier it is to change The more massive an object, the more energy is required to change its direction.
It's as true in the business world as it is in the physical world. When it comes to web technology, change must be easy and cheap. If you can't change on the fly, you'll lose ground to someone who can. That's why you need to shoot for less mass. Mass is increased by... Long term contractsExcess staffPermanent decisionsMeetings about other meetingsThick processInventory (physical or mental)Hardware, software, technology lock-insProprietary data formatsThe past ruling the futureLong-term roadmapsOffice politics Mass is reduced by...
Just-in-time thinkingMulti-tasking team membersEmbracing constraints, not trying to lift themLess software, less codeLess featuresSmall team sizeSimplicityPared-down interfacesOpen-source productsOpen data formatsAn open culture that makes it easy to admit mistakes Less mass lets you change direction quickly. Change Management 3.0. No matter how big the CEO’s desk is, an organization is not a hierarchy. It is a social network. People interact with each other across all levels. And even though delivering a software product is quite different from handing over the butter at the lunch table while you chitchat about the weekend, in both cases there are social networks involved. This makes every organization a complex adaptive system comprising individuals and their interactions within a certain environment. Sometimes you would like to change something in that social network.
Sometimes you want people to be nicer, more mindful, or better disciplined. When you want to change behaviors in something as complex as a social system, you have to understand the four aspects of change management: First, Adapt to the System A social network is a complex adaptive system. Second, Lead the People Understand that people are the crucial parts of the social system, and that all people are different. Third, Work the Network. Lean Change Management by Jason Little, a new approach to change management | Happy Melly. Happy Melly's first publishing project is Lean Change Management by Jason Little. In this post, Jason explains why he wrote this book, and what problems he has been able to solve by employing the ideas in the book. Read on for the details and leave questions to Jason in the comments I’ve cited this study about change initiative failures and also questioned its validity.
I have observed that the core problems change management professionals and Agile coaches run into are (a)the projectification of highly uncertain pieces of work and (b)how organizations measure performance. These approaches work actively against the success of change initiatives. The ‘pieces of work’ I refer to above could be the change programs themselves. I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with the change management and organizational effectiveness people at a Fortune 100 company and we talked about challenges they have with managing change programs. Some of the issues we talked about were: