Category: Feedback Loop

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See-Do-Teach

Improvement implies change, and change implies learningl; so we need to understand how learning works to facilitate change and improvement.

When we learn, we acquire new knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Our ability increases.

Before we can do that we must see the gap between where we are and where we want to be, so that we can focus our attention on filling the gap with the required knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Our awareness must increase before our ability can.

We can sketch a diagram to illustrate the interaction between awareness and ability. The path of learning is shown by the green arrow which starts at the bottom left corner where we are unaware of our inability. Our goal is to master the new knowledge, understanding and wisdom to the point where it becomes second nature. When we can do it without thinking about it.

The first challenge is to see the gap, and to overcome that challenge we need to nurture three traits – willingness, humility and curiosity. We must be willing enough to test our knowledge; we must be humble enough to accept the feedback; and we must be curious enough to ask questions that challenge our assumptions.

Becoming aware of the gap creates an uncomfortable feeling because our awareness increases faster than our ability. But with respect for the ability of others, and with perseverance, discipline and practice we can gradually climb the ability slope to the point where we know how. From that position we can teach how. And over time time our new ability becomes intituive and we become less aware of how we are doing it. That is called “mastery”.

As our ability increases and our awareness decreases (the right hand side of the diagram) we feel a growing sense of confidence and excited anticipation for future learning, change and improvement.

For example, in health care systems it is common to experience what is described as “chronic chaos”. A typical example is a multidisciplinary outpatient clinic that requires the services of a range of specialists to provide specific elements of a patient’s care. The usual experience is a queue of patients waiting (often for hours) and busy staff running around trying to ensure that patients get what they need before the clinic finishes!

The know-how to diagnose and treat the causes of chronic chaos is available, but it is not intuitively obvious (because if it were, we would not have the problematic situation). It starts by making the complex flows within the clinic visible in a way that enables a diagnosis to be established and a plan to be formulated. That visual technique is called a diagnostic Gantt chart and it is over 100 years since it was invented by Henry L Gantt.

One of the most rewarding experiences in health care improvement is to see the surprise and delight on the faces of the staff when they see the behaviour of their clinic as a picture on the wall, and then clearly see a path ahead to a calmer and more productive service.

This is not achieved by someone doing it for them. It is achieved by someone with know-how gently raising a bit of awareness then supporting the clinic team to develop their own ability. This is called the study-plan-do cycle of learning which is the engine of the see-do-teach framework.

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Feedback

The phrase “A system is only as good as its feedback loops” is one that I commonly hear myself using, but what is feedback, why do we need it and how do we practice it?

Feedback determines our ability to sense, adapt, and improve. Without effective feedback we can become rigid, blind and prone to failure which in turn causes us to feel disappointment and frustration.  Failure creates additional work for us and fuels anxiety about our future.

To benefit from feedback, we just need to make a choice – to invite feedback and to reflect on it. With the insights we learn, we will be better able to offer effective and constructive feedback when asked.

This is a win-win strategy.

So, what can we do to develop this valuable skill and what is the theory and history that underpins the practice?

That is a great question to give an AI Assistant who will search the Internet for us and collate the most relevant information for us to reflect on, build on and share.

The Importance and Art of Asking for Feedback


1.1 Why Asking for Feedback Matters
Asking for feedback is a proactive way to support personal and professional growth. It enables us to understand how our actions, work, or behaviour are perceived by others, and it helps us to identify areas for improvement. Actively seeking feedback demonstrates our self-awareness, openness, and a commitment to continuous improvement; unlike passive feedback, which is often unsolicited and may lack context.


1.2 Timing and Context
The effectiveness of feedback often depends on when and how we request it. The best times to ask for feedback are:
→ Soon after completing a task, presentation, or interaction.
→ During or after key milestones in a project.
→ Regularly, as part of a learning or performance review cycle.
Asking for feedback can be less effective during emotionally charged moments or in group settings, where others may feel inhibited. Private, calm, and reflective environments often yield more honest and constructive insights.


1.3 Framing the Request
We need to be specific when asking for feedback because it improves the quality of responses. Vague questions like “What did you think?” often lead to vague answers.
Instead, use clear prompts:
→ “What’s one thing I could improve in my communication?”
→ “Did I handle that challenge clearly and professionally?”
→ “Was my behaviour  effective in that meeting?”
This signals to the other person that their feedback is valued and that you are looking for actionable insights, not just praise and/or criticism.


1.4 Choosing the Right People
The source of feedback matters. Ideally, feedback should be sought from people whose opinion you respect and who you can trust to offer a balanced opinion without bias or personal judgement:  
→ People with relevant experience or perspective.
→ Individuals who are honest, constructive, and supportive.
→ A mix of peers, supervisors, and subordinates (depending on the context).
Asking people who are overly critical or not invested in our development can be unproductive and even damaging.


Giving Feedback Effectively and Respectfully


2.1 The Purpose of Giving Feedback
Feedback is most valuable when it is aimed at growth, learning, and improvement, not at judgement. Constructive feedback helps others:
→ Understand the impact of their actions or performance.
→ Reveal blind spots they might be unaware of.
→ Strengthen their skills, behaviours, and strategies.
The goal is to build up, not break down. Poorly delivered feedback can harm relationships, reduce motivation, and create resistance.


Principles of Constructive Feedback


Be Specific: General statements like “You need to improve” are not helpful.
Focus on clear observations: “Your report showed great insight. The conclusion was unclear.”  Be careful about using the word “but” because it can signal a discount of what went before as in the commonly used response “Yes, but …”.


Be Balanced: Use a mix of positive reinforcement and areas for improvement. The “feedback sandwich” (positive–constructive–positive) can be effective when used genuinely, not mechanically.


Focus on Behaviour, Not Personality:
→ Say: “When you interrupted, it disrupted the flow of the meeting.”
→ Do not say: “You are always so rude.”


Use “I” Statements: Express your own perspective rather than making assumptions:
→ “I found it hard to follow your logic in that section,” rather than: “You didn’t make any sense.”


Make It Timely: Feedback loses value the longer it is delayed. Provide it soon after the behaviour or event, while it is still fresh and relevant.


Emotional Intelligence in Feedback
Feedback is a relational act. Being emotionally intelligent means:

→ Being aware of the recipient’s emotional state.
→ Reading nonverbal cues.
→ Adjusting tone and delivery style to reduce defensiveness.
It is essential to create a space where the receiver feels safe, respected, and heard.


Reflecting on Feedback – Turning Insight into Action


3.1 Why Reflection is Crucial
Receiving feedback is only half the process; reflecting on it is what turns the insight into real growth. Without reflection, feedback may be misunderstood, forgotten, or dismissed.
Reflection involves:
→ Analysing the feedback.
→ Assessing its validity.
→ Deciding what to do with it.
This helps differentiate between useful insight and noise or bias.


3.2 Managing Emotional Reactions
Even well-intentioned feedback can trigger emotional reactions such as defensiveness, embarrassment, or frustration. Common cognitive responses include:
→ Justifying one’s actions.
→ Blaming others.
→ Dismissing the feedback entirely.
To reflect effectively:
→ Pause before reacting to let emotions ebb.
→ Ask clarifying questions if needed.
→ Write down what was said to revisit later with a cooler head.
It is important to remember that feedback reflects the perspective of the giver. It is not a judgement or a verdict.


3.3 Tools and Techniques for Reflection
Journaling: Capture feedback and your reactions to it. Ask yourself:
→ What surprised me?
→ What do I agree and/or disagree with?
→ What patterns are emerging?
Feedback Logs: Maintain a running list of feedback received over time to track improvements and recurring themes.
Coaching Conversations: Discuss feedback with a mentor or coach who can act as a sounding board to help unpack and contextualise it.
Action Plans: Set goals based on feedback. For example:
→ Feedback: “You tend to dominate meetings.”
→ Plan: “I will consciously pause and ask others for input in the next three team meetings.”

Creating a Feedback Culture

4.1 Normalizing Feedback
When feedback is built into the fabric of an organization, classroom, or team, it becomes a normal, expected, and welcomed part of collaboration. This reduces stigma and anxiety around giving or receiving feedback. To support a healthy feedback culture:
→ Leaders and peers must model openness to feedback.
→ Mistakes should be treated as learning opportunities.
→ Recognition should be as frequent as constructive critique.


4.2 Encouraging Ongoing Feedback Cycles
Instead of viewing feedback as a one-time event, it should be seen as a continuous loop:
→ Action or behaviour occurs.
→ Feedback is requested and given (study).
→ Reflection and adjustment happen (plan).
→ New action follows (do).
This Study-Plan-Do loop supports agility, growth, and accountability.


4.3 Feedback in Remote or Digital Environments
In hybrid or remote settings, feedback requires extra attention:
→ Use video or voice where possible, to preserve tone and nuance.
→ Follow up in writing to clarify and confirm understanding.
→ Be intentional in requesting and giving feedback—do not let it become an afterthought.
 
We can use the same skills when requesting, giving, reflecting, acting on feedback within a group of people and between groups of people.  
 


In Summary

Feedback is not a one-sided activity; it is a dialogue. Whether we are asking for feedback, giving it, or reflecting on it, the key is to remain curious, respectful, and growth oriented. When approached with the right mindset and skills, feedback becomes one of the most powerful tools for learning, connection, and transformation.


The same principles apply to all sources of information that provide feedback on the effects of our decisions and actions.  Objective data is less value-loaded than subjective opinion, and we need to be just as mindful that objective data can be incomplete, biassed and distorted.


So, an essential action in any improvement programme is to design, build, test and embed the objective feedback loops that are both useful and can be trusted, and to use these as part of our feedback on the effects of our decisions and actions.

It is a win-win strategy.

      
Theory and History

Feedback loops determine a system’s ability to sense, adapt, and improve, so without good feedback, systems become rigid, blind, or prone to failure.


The phrase “A system is only as good as its feedback loops” is a commonly used expression in systems thinking and organizational theory, but it does not originate from a single definitive source. Instead, it’s a paraphrase or synthesis of ideas that have been central to several key thinkers and disciplines. It is a systems-thinking truism that is widely used in engineering, management, biology, and software development.

Here are some of the historical influencers:

Norbert Weiner – Cybernetics (1948)
Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, emphasized the importance of feedback in both mechanical and biological systems in his 1948 book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine he introduced the concept of feedback loops as critical for system regulation and control.


Gregory Bateson – Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972)
“The fact that we are part of the systems we try to understand, means that feedback is not just a mechanism – it is the pattern that connects.”
“The major problems in the world result from the difference between how nature works and the way people think.”

Bateson was a key figure in developing the theoretical foundation of feedback in social, biological, and psychological systems. His work helped broaden the application of feedback loops beyond engineering and cybernetics into ecology, anthropology, and psychology.  Bateson helped bridge cybernetics with the social sciences, showing how feedback mechanisms operate in families, cultures, and minds.  In his work with the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics (1940s–50s), he was instrumental in defining second-order cybernetics—the study of systems that observe and include themselves in their models.


Peter Senge – The Fifth Discipline (1990)
“Learning is only possible in the presence of feedback. Without it, we are cut off from the consequences of our actions.”

Senge’s work on learning organizations also emphasizes the importance of feedback loops for adaptive, responsive, and resilient systems—especially in business or organizational contexts.  His work focuses on how organisations (as systems) need feedback to learn, adapt, and grow—or else they stagnate or collapse.


Donella Meadows – Thinking in Systems (2008)
“Missing feedback is one of the most common causes of system malfunction.”
“A system with bad feedback is like a car without a speedometer, or a thermostat that responds a day late.”
“Information is power. When feedback is delayed, damped, or denied, the power to respond effectively is lost.”
“A system’s capacity to function well depends directly on the quality and timeliness of its feedback.”

Meadows, a major figure in systems thinking, wrote extensively about feedback loops in her influential book.  She distinguished between balancing/stabilising/negative and reinforcing/destabilising/positive feedback loops as essential mechanisms for the dynamic tension between system stability and change.

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Seeing-by-Doing

OneStopBeforeGantt

Flow improvement-by-design requires being able to see the flows.

We can see movement very easily, but seeing flows is not so easy – particularly when they are mixed-up and unsteady.

One of the most useful tools for visualising flow was invented over 100 years ago by Henry Laurence Gantt (1861-1919).

Henry Gantt was a mechanical engineer from Johns Hopkins University and an early associate of Frederick Taylor. Gantt parted ways with Taylor because he disagreed with the philosophy of Taylorism which was that workers should be instructed what to do by managers (i.e. parent-child transactions according to Eric Berne, inventor of Transactional Analysis).  Gantt saw that workers and managers could work together for mutual benefit of themselves and their companies (i.e. adult-adult transactions).  At one point Gantt was invited to streamline the production of US munitions for the First World War and his methods were so effective that the Ordinance Department was the most productive department of the armed forces.  Gantt favoured democracy over autocracy and is quoted to have said “Our most serious trouble is incompetence in high places. The manager who has not earned his position and who is immune from responsibility will fail time and again, at the cost of the business and the workman“.

Henry Gantt invented a number of different charts – not just the one used in project management which was actually invented 20 years earlier by Karol Adamieki and re-invented by Gantt. It become popularised when it was used in the Hoover Dam project management; but that was after Gantt’s death in 1919.

The form of Gantt chart above is called a process template chart and it is designed to show the flow of tasks through  a process. Each horizontal line is a task; each vertical column is an interval of time. The colour code in each cell indicates what the task is doing and which resource the task is using during that time interval. Red indicates that the task is waiting. White means that the task is outside the scope of the chart (e.g. not yet arrived or already departed).

The Gantt chart shows two “red wedges”.  A red wedge that is getting wider from top to bottom is the pattern created by a flow constraint.  A red wedge that is getting narrower from top to bottom is the pattern of a policy constraint.  Both are signs of poor scheduling design.

A Gantt chart like this has three primary uses:
1) Diagnosis – understanding how the current flow design is creating the queues and delays.
2) Agnosis – inventing new design options by suspending judgement and lateral thinking.
3) Prognosis – selecting and testing the innovative designs so the ‘fittest for purpose’ can be chosen for implementation.

These three steps are encapsulated in the third “M” of 6M Design® – the Model step.

In this example the design flaw was the scheduling policy.  When that was redesigned the outcome was zero-wait performance. No red on the chart at all.  The same number of tasks were completed in the same with the same resources used. Just less waiting. Which means less space is needed to store the queue of waiting work (i.e. none in this case).

That this is even possible comes as a big surprise to many people. It feels counter-intuitive. It is however a fact that is easy to demonstrate with a simple table-top game. The lesson we learn from this? Our intuition can trick us.

And the predicted and observed reduction in the size of the queue implies a big cost reduction when the work-in-progress is perishable and needs constant attention [such as patients lying on A&E trolleys and in hospital beds].

So what was the recipe for re-designing this schedule?

A dash of willingness, a splash of humility, a twist of curiosity – plus a few bits of squared paper, some coloured pens, a couple hours, and the assistance of someone who knows how to do it and teach it . The one off cost is peanuts in comparison with the recurring benefit.

 

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Anyone Heard of Henry Gantt?

Most managers have heard of Gantt charts and associate them with project management where they are widely used to help coordinate the separate threads of work so that the project finishes on time.

How many know about the man who invented them and why?

Henry Laurence Gantt (1861-1919) was an engineer and he invented the chart for a very different purpose – so that the workers and the managers could see at a glance the progress of the work and to see what was impairing the flow.  Decades before the invention of the computer, Henry Gantt created a simple and incredibly powerful visual tool for enabling workers and managers to improve processes together.

I know how simple and powerful the original Gantt chart is because I use it all the time for capturing the behaviour of a process in a visual form that stimulates constructive conversations which result in win-win-win improvements.  All you need is some squared paper, a pencil, a clock, a Mark I Eyeball or two, and a bit of practice.