Welcome to our first newsletter of 2018. I hope the year has got off to a good start for you.
I signed off in December with the cryptic comment that there is ‘such a thing as too much feedback.” This comment was prompted by a number of articles extolling the virtues of ‘crowd-sourced evaluations,’ and ‘frequent feedback discussions rather than annual, or semi-annual ones.’ Every time I get off a plane, walk out of a shop, or restaurant, or click ‘pay now,’ I am asked for my feedback ‘which is so important to us.’
Do you also loathe this constant bombardment to say what you thought of your experience? And pity the poor recipients of this feedback. Moreover, in some organizations now, there is a constant stream of automatically generated emails asking colleagues what they want you to stop, start or continue, or words to that effect.
I am a great advocate of the importance of feedback, and of assessment, but I fear we are getting a bit carried away with ourselves here. You can have too much of a good thing with the result that constantly being asked for your feedback is a turn-off, and on the other side of the coin being constantly assessed and commented on is massively stressful. Big Brother or what?
Bring back the annual, or twice-yearly review? Well, maybe not but some balance is required here.
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Janice Caplan
29 January 2018
©Copyright Janice Caplan 2018