Feedback loops exist in business, just like they exist in sports and in martial arts. Some are much more effective than others. A good question to ask from a business perspective is: Am I getting the right feedback at the right time to allow for countermeasures when an initiative drifts off course? It’s an important consideration, since they often do.
Here’s a fun scenario to get us going:
You’re an active person and you enjoy watching mixed martial arts. Over coffee, you and the CEO start bantering about the effectiveness of martial arts and decide the best way to settle the dispute is with a friendly sparring match. You agree to fight for three five-minute rounds today, and again next week. You’ve never fought before, but you’ve seen enough to know that you want to stay on your feet and use your reach to your advantage.
You head off to the park at lunch. You slap hands to start the round—and she immediately throws you to the ground, knocking the wind out of you, lands on top of you, and chokes you nearly unconscious before you finally tap her on the shoulder to release the choke.
When you shake off the tunnel vision and she’s standing above you, you may be a little confused. You try to piece together what just happened. Maybe you just slipped; maybe you made a mistake. Either way, you stand back up, dust yourself off, slap hands, and start again. But it’s the same outcome; she takes you down, gets in the mount, and chokes you nearly unconscious.
This happens again and again and again.
There is a pattern here, but I’m willing to bet that in your last match you weren’t using the same tactics that you used in your first match. By the last match you were adjusting your game and thinking about how to defend yourself against the takedown—or at the very least about protecting your neck.
Once you’ve finished up for the day, there are probably a few things you would do. There’s a good chance you would replay the matches in your head. You might consider all the things you did, sorting out what worked well and what didn’t work so well. You would probably think about next week and what you might want to work on between now and then, like improving your takedown defence, upping your cardio, or keeping your hands close to your neck.
In the above scenario, the CEO was a jiu-jitsu black belt, and going into the fight there was no question in her mind as to how the fight would end. Her confidence and competence weren’t based on years of punching in the air against an imaginary opponent, wondering whether and hoping that her technique would work in this situation—much like what happens when products or services are launched into an emerging market where no historical data exists to inform their trajectory. Instead, her approach was based not just on the thousands of rolls she’d had in the past but also on her opponent’s actions and reactions during the fight—which allowed her to change position, direction, and intensity as the fight progressed so that she could fully leverage her knowledge and experience.
Now, the questions for today:
How confident are you that your initiative is going to deliver and that you’re not already flat on your back?
How confident are you that your latest decision doesn’t require any course correction for several months and that you’ll be able to react before the lights go out?
How much of your answer is based on reality and real-time feedback and not just punches in the air against an invisible target?
In a nutshell, the attempt-to-success ratio of your initiatives matters.
And being hamstrung by a feedback loop that’s largely disconnected from reality, broken, or protracted will only serve to widen that ratio.
My suggestion is that you literally go take a free jiu-jitsu class. Get yourself choked out ten or twelve times and really experience what it means to receive immediate feedback on a course of action. And then come back to the office with fresh eyes for your performance metrics.
Remember, you want lead and lag visibility comprised of past-, present-, and future-facing metrics with a balance of Customer-Centricity, Finance, Operations, Employee-Engagement, and Innovation metrics.
Until next time—
See you in the boardroom or maybe on the mat…
Mike is the Founder and General Manager of Redshift Consulting, Founder of Praetorian Code, and Board Member to the International Business TRIZ Association. He holds a Masters in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (UMD) and a Bachelors in Psychology and Education (UCSB). He is a Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (UTS); Certified Practitioner of Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ); former US Army Ranger and a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fanatic.