feedback let’s first take a look at what
this title does to you maybe if you’re
thinking about Friday all of you are
gonna go yeah it’s gonna be the weekend
soon it’s thank God it’s Friday
or a casual Friday we all have positive
emotions associated with Friday whereas
if we go to the words feedback let’s do
a quick show of hand who he in here
really really enjoys giving feedback and
loves giving feedback to other people
yeah we have a few courageous hands here
but not very many people said yes this
is what I love to do and in a lot of
cases when you talk to people and ask
them why don’t you like giving feedback
they’re saying well I don’t really want
to hurt the other person I don’t want to
insult their feelings I might say
something that hurts them but if you
think about why feedback is essential so
let’s say I do my job I work in
marketing and I do the same thing over
and over and over again nobody will ever
tell me to do something different nobody
will ever tell me what I’m doing well
what I’m doing wrong nothing I will not
ever be able to grow
I will stay the way I am maybe I’ll
notice at some point that some things
could be better but it will be minimal
change so what you’re actually doing is
you’re hurting the person you’re not
giving feedback to by not giving them
feedback and not allowing them to grow
so you’re actually doing something much
much worse than maybe hurting their
feelings in a little moment where you’re
telling them something that they can
improve on and you’re not alone all of
the people in my organization when I
started working there
although feedback was something that
they knew was important it was mainly
given an annual performance reviews so
this yearly talk that where you sit with
your boss and you go through all the
things that went well or didn’t go well
and apart from that well we do have a
very open communication culture it still
wasn’t very common to give feedback to
colleagues to bosses to
everyone all year long and we realized
this in a workshop and realized that if
we want to improve and we want to really
get better and better serve our
customers we need to make feedback a
regular thing so I went out of this
workshop with the tasks a daunting task
it’s now your task to have us as a whole
department and remind us regularly about
why we should give feedback and you will
manage to change this and you go out
they don’t think oh god what am I gonna
do I can’t magically change something
overnight I tried a few crazy ideas so
for those of you living in Germany for a
while you probably know the thing at
called advanced calendar we get
chocolate every day before Christmas and
I had kind of exchanged feedback for
chocolate sing which works really well
everyone loves chocolate but it’s not
really something that’s sustainable
I can’t feed people chocolate all year I
can’t do that to all my 30 60 100
colleagues so I needed something that
was a little more scalable I needed
something that would also work worldwide
with all of our colleagues and I needed
something that was a little healthier I
didn’t want to make everyone fat so
essentially what I came up with was
something that I called feedback Friday
which is the weekly email that I sent
out to all the colleagues in my
department which is around a hundred
people and in that email what I do is I
highlight something that I’ve observed
through the week or some situation that
I know about I then give them a task so
this would look something like I’ve
observed that in this meeting with our
regional colleagues we are not really
doing well because we never say what we
really mean to say so for this week
please pick one colleague in a different
location and give them feedback on how
you think we could improve in our
interaction and then I would usually
give link to a topic so for example
intercut how is feedback handled in
different cultures or how can feedback
me down over the phone and essentially
also because I thought other topics
would be interesting
than just feedback itself I also
highlighted communication topics and
things like that and I remember the
first time that I sent out the email and
you can imagine kind of I work at a
technology company you have the average
engineer sitting there thinking about
how to design this high-tech product
into a customer application thinking
about electric circuits and not really
about something else
and now this engineer gets an email
every week reminding him about why it’s
important to get feedback or how to
improve communication culture or how the
brain works or why to do yoga at your
desk let’s just say the reactions were
mixed so the first time I send out the
there was a colleague sitting right next
to me and I remember distinctly I send
out the email and two minutes later he
stands up and she says Johanna seriously
this email that’s stupid I’m not gonna
have extra time to do this and I don’t
want to really give feedback to the
colleagues it’s not gonna work out
anyways you should just not do that yeah
that’s a nice feedback to give or to get
and I hadn’t really talked to my boss
about sending an email to the entire
department so um I figured okay this if
everyone reacts like that that is going
to be interesting and I still progressed
and over the next few months I learned
that some people never read the email at
all others figured I don’t have time to
do the exercise I’m just gonna skip it
so there were parts that were really
really frustrating nevertheless there
were parts that we’re really positive so
some people and this was really
interesting depending on which topic I
picked it went into a completely
different direction and different people
would respond to it so for some topic I
would get all of our development guys to
come back to me and say oh this is
really interesting some topic was maybe
more interesting for extroverted people
who tend to be a lot in marketing and
things like that so it was really
interesting to see which topic triggered
which personality nevertheless I soon
realized it was
something I was going to have to work on
for a really long time because if I only
reached a few people every now and then
and not everyone in the department it’s
going to take a while for change so why
didn’t I just stop there I could have
said okay this is too much of an effort
I need to research topics every week
come up with an email that I write I
need to convince people I’m getting a
lot of negative feedback as well and
maybe it’s not worth it for the other
ones so why not just stop well for me I
decided there’s something really really
important that I want to change and
change doesn’t really come easy ever we
all know that change is hard and it
takes time so there are two learnings
that I want you to take away and apply
to anything you want them to apply them
to any thing that you have in mind that
you want changed anything that is your
passion that you want to work on first
of all don’t ever be afraid don’t let
some guy with a negative feedback stop
you from getting a message out that you
think is important don’t let them stop
you from changing something don’t be
afraid don’t let fear or rule anything
because yes you will have negative
feedback but it will always be
outweighed by the few positive responses
that you get and the impact that you
make on those people and that impact by
the way also multiplies so don’t be
afraid and second of all be persistent
when I first started this it was two
years almost two years ago and I thought
oh god well I’ll try this out for a
little bit but then I realized what
often times what we have in mind is
change that comes overnight we think we
just need to snap and there’s a change
we’re not an earthquake and we don’t
want to be we don’t want to destroy
things while changing them what we want
to be and I like to think of that think
of a river a river is not going to
change its riverbed overnight but rather
it will flow through the riverbed and
over time it will carve out pieces of
the rock and I will change the riverbed
in its way
so whatever you do it doesn’t need to be
big it just needs to be persistent and
you need to stick with it every for me
it’s every week every week I send out an
email and if I forget it once I go back
and send a send out another one and
that’s what has made it successful and
by now I can really see the change in
people I can see that colleagues are now
coming back to me and offering feedback
I actually had someone coming up to me
and said oh I have awesome feedback I
just needed someone in the department to
share it with and then I was able to
share that feedback on and feedback
Friday so it all is starting to roll in
and you see individual people in the
organization changing so it’s always
worth it so what I want you to do now
and to do today is go out of this
session and this TED talk let everything
sink in but then pick a topic that you
think is important don’t maybe
necessarily pick something that you you
don’t want to rewrite the strategy of a
large corporation or change an entire
country but pick something small that
you can start with tomorrow or on the
weekend and pick that thing don’t be
afraid and stick with it
so go out find your feedback Friday and
change your world [Applause]