Make continuous feedback a part of your company's culture

Feedback is one of the most important aspect of building a great team to realize a company’s mission. Making feedback an integral part of your culture can easily have a huge positive impact in your company’s trajectory.

I recently came across this talk by Shery Sandberg at Stanford for graduate students. She talks about consistent feedback that she requested Mark to do, when she took up the post of Chief Operating Officer at Facebook:

When I joined, I asked Mark for a commitment that he would give me feedback every week so that anything that bothered him would be aired and discussed quickly. Mark not only said yes but immediately added that he wanted it to be reciprocal. For the first few years, we stuck to this routine and met every Friday afternoon to voice concerns big and small. As the years went by, sharing honest reactions became part of our relationship and we now do so in real time rather than waiting for the end of the week.

Getting such feedback, not just from your boss, but also from everyone in your team, is very important. Feedbacks might not always be the best thing that you will hear from someone, but it is definitely something that you wouldn’t want to ignore.

Continuous feedback as a part of your culture is going to benefit in identifying problems right then and there while maintaining a positive environment in the company. It also ensures that everyone is aligned to the company’s vision.

But, it’s not simple to just call everyone up for an all-hands-meet and tell them that they should be giving feedback to everyone they work with, consistently. Sometimes, you might have to force it on people, and that’s never fun.

A CEO or a manager’s job is not only to frame the company’s culture, but they must be provided with tools that helps them achieve it. UnderstandBetter helps people express their thoughts and brings teams closer together. It makes parts of your job which require a repetitive presence easier.

1. Every Monday, it asks everyone in the company about the plans for the week.
2. Every Wednesday, it asks everyone a question about something personal. This helps the entire company know each other better, bringing in a more transparent environment.
3. Every Friday, UnderstandBetter asks how their week was, with a simple poll that will tell the higher management an idea about the company’s stress levels and employee happiness.
4. Also, companies get to set their own schedules and questions, to gain more insights into how the organization is running and ways to improve them.

---

My life’s mission is to create products that help companies run better, with the highest level of employee happiness. UnderstandBetter is the tool I built to get one step closer to my mission.