What do Amazon, PayPal, Walmart and BIC have in common?

Survival Is Not Enough is a book written by Seth Godin, and it’s excellent. He basically says what you’ve heard before about change:  Get used to it, embrace it.  The old-school c0gs-in-the-machine-factory methods don’t work any more. Change or be willing to become insignificant, etc etc etc.

But he also talks about what made Amazon, PayPal, Walmart and BIC famous. The answer is feedback loops.

The right feedback loops will help you lead the pack, and continue to change and evolve in small movements.  Set up loops to:

1. get feedback from your employees and team.  Use a simple system involving email, a poll, voting, a suggestion box, a best-idea competition, whatever.
2. get feedback from customers.  Billing hourly or project rates that allow the client to mark up your invoice by 10% (for good work) or mark it down by 10% (for disappointing work) is a feedback loop that works for professional services.
3. give feedback to employees.  Throw the annual review out the door – provide feedback consistently and periodically and see what happens.
4. measure the success of your meeting, website design, marketing campaign, sales initiative, fund raising drive, employee application process, or receptionist phone-manner.

With the data you receive, make incremental adjustments.  Learn from it. Communicate good feedback from people who are doing it right, to people who need to improve.

Asking for feedback stimilates creativity because you’re getting more opinions from more people with more collecting experience.  You’re seeing what does work, and what doesn’t.

Giving feedback provides accountability and benchmarks to measure performance.

Giving feedback can be easy, fast and cheap.

Where can you install a feedback loop, personally or corporately?