Acting on feedback

For feedback to have any real effect, you need to act on it.

All the best quality information and the most careful sense-making and planning can result in not much if you don’t use it. So, let’s get started.

By this stage, you’ve got a plan, and that plan is easy to access and right in front of you while you’re working with your feedback. You’ve worked with some of the emotions that can come up. Now you need to do it.

That last point – you need to do it – is worth highlighting. No amount of fancy strategies will help if you don’t get in there and just do what you’ve identified needs to be done.

As you go through this process of doing, there are a few things to keep in mind.

_{Give yourself enough time}

When you receive a lot of comments from someone else, it can take significant time to implement them. You need to factor this into the whole process of doing the work.

In large projects that involve feedback and consultation there are often weeks or even months allocated to seeking comments from interested parties. The implementation of that feedback also needs a significant amount of time.

_{Check if you are actually making your work better}

It’s easy to trust some feedback providers, especially if they are highly credible and/or persuasive. But even the best feedback providers aren’t able to fully imagine what the results of their comments may be. It’s up to you to try them out, and see if they make the work better.

Consider keeping two copies of an important section of your work, one that you keep as it is, and another that you change as radically as you see appropriate in response to the feedback. After you’re done, ask yourself (or even someone else) which one is better.

_{Refine your understanding of quality}

As you work with the feedback comments you’ve received and apply them to your work, you might notice that parts of your work you thought were great are actually not so great. Take note of these observations. What do they tell you about quality of work in your field in general?

_{Refer back to the original feedback comments}

There can be a bit of a drift from the original comments someone gives on your work, through to your interpretation of them, through to the changes you make in response to them. If the stakes are high, and that same person might be evaluating your revised work, it may be worth going through the original comments again and identifying how you have (or haven’t) addressed them in your revisions.

Practise your skills

It’s time to do what you’ve identified needs to be done! No more distractions; get in there and action something from some feedback that you’ve received.

Then make a post below, just a short one, letting us know that you did it, and reply to someone else to congratulate them on taking action as well.