In this three-part series of articles, we have discussed cultivating feedback culture as a way to keep a finger continuously on the pulse of a company or organization, as opposed to stepping in periodically to collect feedback (e.g., post-project reviews and employee evaluations). Feedback culture is an emerging organizational philosophy with lots of advantages for companies and organizations–the main advantage is that feedback becomes a more-powerful tool for progress and constant organic improvement.

At Pulse For Good, it’s our mission to enable owners and managers to always know the “pulse” of their organizations. Pulse For Good’s kiosk tools and apps can bring feedback culture to your company or nonprofit in an easy-to-use form with immediate benefits.

In the second part of this series, we explained that continuous feedback can be beneficial only if it is meaningful. Here, in this third and final part of the series, we continue the discussion with a few additional ways to make your organizational feedback meaningful, useful, powerful, etc.

1. Meaningful feedback requires kindness.

Feedback should be honest and frank, but it should also be kind. Managers should teach, lead, and provide good modeling, and organizational feedback is a way to do all of those. Instead of feedback that seeks to impugn or accuse, allow (and require) your organization's feedback to instruct. Instead of, “You need to improve your writing skills,” try something more like, “When I needed to improve my writing skills, I tried this…” Also remember that the core intent of feedback culture is to improve the organization, not expose weaknesses. If your feedback seems to be off-message the next item may be helpful.

2. Meaningful feedback requires training.

Not everyone is able to give, receive, or work with feedback right out of the gate. Starting with management, training on how to best implement and effectively utilize training tools should be a regular feature of your feedback culture. And having observed the implementation of effective and easy-to-use feedback tools in numerous types of organizations, Pulse for Good can certainly assist with this.

3. Meaningful feedback requires curation.

If your company is not equipped to store long-term data that is accessible and useable, this should be a step in your integration of feedback culture. Real-time feedback is going to produce lots of data you can use to guide decisions, track improvements (or declines) introduce new initiatives, and improve the overall health and effectiveness of your company–but only if it's accessible and protected in a long-term data arrangement.

4. Meaningful feedback requires the proper tools.

Feedback culture requires not only that members of the organization receive training in how and when to provide feedback, they must have the right tools to easily and effectively participate. Incorporating and encouraging feedback culture within an organization can only be effective if everyone has access and the ability to participate. One objective of Pulse For Good is to supply these tools to organizations. With our system of kiosks and applications, we can assist organizations of any type and size in implementing all the benefits of feedback culture today.

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