The other day a buddy of mine made this observation about business:”You know what my company is really good at? Emailing crap around.”
He was talking about the unfortunate management habit of sending PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets around a company with the email message, “Please provide your comments.” These managers believe that this pointless process is the same thing as “getting feedback” but it is really just emailing crap around.
Don’t fall into the trap. Emailing your team a spreadsheet to be filled in is not “gathering feedback.” It is better classified as making busywork. Even if your team wastes their time filling out the spreadsheet, you still need to think about the time you’ll spend somehow compiling this “feedback.”
If you want real feedback, pick up the phone. If you want to compile votes on some question use a survey.
We’ll talk more about surveys tomorrow.
