I will keep this brief because I got a plane to catch.
What is a feedback loop?
Feedback according to the dictionary; outputs of a system
are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a
loop.
Think of your business or life as a system. Whenever you
produce something out of that system, you will get a reaction back, thus the
cause and effect. For every action, there
will be a reaction.
Can this be either negative or positive? It is both.
There are several ways this happens; One way, is by direct
feedback from another individual. Another way
is indirect feedback from the environment.
This is a hypothetical situation:
Harry is a server at Jim’s Restaurant. He collects the food
order from his table and returns back with the wrong order. The direct feedback
would be for the customer to tell Harry that his order was wrong, the indirect
feedback would be for the customer to never return and leave a bad review
online about the service.
How does a feedback loop help us?
We absolutely love to be in control, I know I do. However,
we all know that we can only control our own actions (internal) rather than the
actions that are happening around us (external). The feedback loop is important
in our everyday life and business because this is a way to deploy control.
How? By listening and paying attention.
“When you are coming
out with a product the best thing you can
do is market it at its early development
stages. That way you can get immediate feedback and adjust the product to fit
the market.” Ryan Holiday
Whether you create a product or service or you do something
for your sibling or your wife, pay attention to their reaction. The ‘market’ is
always right. The end user will either like what you are offering or hate it.
When someone hates what you are putting out, it is
completely your fault. You weren’t paying attention to what they want. It is
possible that they are not educated about what you are offering. It is still
your fault.
Soon as someone loves your output you still have to pay
attention. Why did they like it? What did they like about it? Will other’s like
it too?
We know that the feedback loop can be both positive or
negative. Does the time of the feedback loop matter? Absolutely.
You want to keep the feedback loop very short. The faster
you gain an understanding of how the
‘market’ (the reason I put to market in a
single quotation is because the market can be your friend, girlfriend, parent,
sister, and a complete stranger) reacts to your output (product or service) the
sooner you can improve that product or service.
Let’s say you are writing a book. You don’t want anyone to
throw you off track so you keep the work to yourself. You spend 2 years writing
and editing. You finally publish and release 10,000 copies of your work to the
market. No one buys your book. Can you see how the feedback loop can be your
best friend?
Now imagine this scenario.
You start writing your book, you begin to send out snippets
of that book to the ‘market’ (in this scenario the market are the people that
are buying similar books of the genre you are writing) to collect their
feedback. You send out edited versions to other authors to ask them to leave a
review for the book. Now you can choose to either leave it on your shelf or to
continue with design and finally place a large order of copies to be
distributed.
Let me give you a relevant case scenario. My company
performs a steam cleaning service We ask for direct and indirect feedback.
Direct feedback; We do a walk through with the client to make sure the work is
to their satisfactory level. Indirect feedback; we ask the client to leave a
review online about the service for others to see.
This is where I wanted to take this post to.
As important as it is .... come finish here, you will get a ton of value. Karasingroup.com
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