Ready for some feedback?

Posted by John Foster,

21880 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/2009/09/11/rypple-ideo-learning-collaborative-kickoff/Ready+for+some+feedback%3F2009-09-11+14%3A40%3A12John+Foster

In August, we held the first session of the Rypple Learning Collaborative at Mozilla’s new HQ in Mountain View.  In addition to Mozilla, we had participants from Method Home, Pixar, The Federal Reserve Bank, Kiva, Littler Mendelson, Electronic Arts, the Stanford d.School, Facebook, and IDEO.

We hope this collaborative learning effort generates some new insights and ideas that help people do a better job asking for and giving feedback.  So, we spent much of our first time together  sharing our direct experiences with people giving and receiving feedback and generating a list of observations about what seems to work and what doesn’t.

We framed our discussions with the idea that feedback involves not only the person asking/receiving and the person giving/providing, but a “crowd” of people around that pair.  Traditionally, much of the attention given to this topic is on the mechanics of the interaction between the two obvious players.  We included the third role to push our assumptions with a social systems view.

Feedback involves 3 roles, not just 2

We all shared stories describing real feedback situations to help us recognize some patterns in real behavior.  Once we get a good picture of how people actually behave (not how they should behave), we will try to uncover what works well and what causes people problems.

An early insight from our shared stories is that it makes a positive impact on a feedback exchange when a person is ready for it.  That is, when a person is asking for feedback, they seem to be more able to handle it well than when a person gives it.  So this prompts the question, “What makes someone ready for feedback?”

Our next step is for LC members to begin conducting feedback experiments within their organizations.  From these experiments, we will expand our observations and gather more ideas to push our thinking.   We’ll start posting them in a few weeks.

Tags: Electronic Arts, Experiments, facebook, Feedback, ideo, Kiva, Learning Collaborative, Littler Mendelson, Method Home, organizational development, Pixar, Rypple, stanford, The Federal Reserve Bank

Introducing the Rypple Learning Collaborative

Posted by John Foster,

9922 commentshttp://rypple.com/blog/2009/06/10/introducing-the-rypple-learning-collaborative/Introducing+the+Rypple+Learning+Collaborative2009-06-10+16%3A40%3A38John+Foster

John is head of talent and organization for IDEO, where he leads internal efforts to help the firm stay at the leading edge of design and innovation consulting.  John also works on IDEO client projects to assist and guide organization design components.

I’ve just starting working on a new project with the folks at Rypple. You may have heard about them recently as they are getting some great coverage from traditional media like The Economist and Business Week, and blogs like ReadWriteWeb. We’ve been using it at IDEO and finding it very useful.

One thing I love about their approach is that it’s free for individuals, which makes it very easy to, well, just start using it. And once you start using it, you get nearly immediate benefits, so you are likely to keep using it. These benefits are summed up well by one of their CEO users: “Those who learn fastest win.” Rypple helps you learn faster.

But when you consider “pushing” Rypple into an enterprise context, there are some important issues to consider:

• Cultural implications: How do you get more people to use such a tool without corrupting the self-directed ethic? Are there unique cultural issues when a person asks for feedback within each organization?
• Group dynamics: Is it possible to use the information discovered by the individual for more than personal awareness? Can you use it to assess groups of people on engagement or decision making?
• Performance management: Could it be used to construct learning or performance goals that effect performance evaluation? Is it possible that this platform could supplement or even replace other enterprise tools used in employee assessment or (dare I say it?) performance management? We think so. In fact we don’t do performance management any more. I’ll post more on that another time.

So I’m very excited to announce that we’re launching the Rypple Learning Collaborative (the LC). Recently co-founded by IDEO and Rypple, we expect to publicly announce some very interesting member organizations as soon as we’re able. The LC will be an exclusive set of forward-thinking organizations that will work together in a design process to explore and share their experience of Rypple in the enterprise context.

• What are the goals? The LC will push the boundaries of giving and receiving feedback in companies. We will help each other get better at this important capability. These ideas will also feed into Rypple for further product development where appropriate.
• What does this mean for you? Feedback is an integral part of every successful business, yet it is very illusive and difficult to cultivate. Learning to listen to the ideas and opinions of those around you is a critical step toward high performance. The LC will be exploring these topics and sharing them so that people everywhere can benefit.
• How can I get involved? I’ll keep you posted here on what we’re doing as the whole thing unfolds and we welcome your comments, suggestions, and feedback. If you’d like to be more involved, possibly as a member of The LC, please contact me.

Tags: ideo, Rypple, rypple learning collaborative, the LC