Continuous Feedback, Continuous Improvement

Congratulations! You’ve hired well, set excellent goals, and created team norms! Now we just have to wait for the success fairy to come along and put good metrics under our pillows!9

When I put it that way it sounds ridiculous, but many people act as if that were the case. They spend a ton of time finding that perfect hire, but no time coaching them. They set goals, but don’t check them weekly. They set norms, then forget them as the team slides into old habits (and arguments). You need check-ins, so the team can live their intentions.

The cadence here is weekly: the weekly one-on-one, weekly status email, Monday commitment meetings and Friday brag sessions, weekly retrospectives. These rituals are where the team starts to learn how to hold each other accountable, how to question each other’s decisions, and how to work together toward a shared goal.

The chart below is from Amy Edmondson¹⁰. As you can see, the team leader takes on two critical functions: setting the goal and creating psychological safety for the team. I’ve described setting the goal sufficiently.

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9 Apologies to everyone who doesn’t have a tooth fairy in their cultural mythos. You’ll have to search it up. Yes, American children really do believe this. It might explain a lot.

10 International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working. Michael A. West, Dean Tjosvold, Ken G. Smith, eds.,John Wiley & Sons, 2003, pp. 255-275