Many charities claim to accept and even enjoy feedback (both positive and critical) but I find charities have two kinds of set-ups for feedback:
There is a huge difference between these two but people often think both of these make an organization open to feedback.
Studies have shown that people are convenience maximizers and want to put in as little effort as possible. If something is a step harder there is generally a huge drop off rate. For example if you ask someone to give feedback but make it inconvenient or subtly discourage it, the amount of real feedback you get will be a small fraction of what would have been given if it was easy. If I wanted to make it seem like I was accepting feedback but I did not really want to receive or take into account large amounts of feedback (particularly negative feedback), I could do a number of things
If I see an organization doing these kinds of actions in regards to feedback, I get the sense that they do not really want to improve based off others' suggestions. Taking negative feedback in particular can be hard but its an important skill to learn and it allows ideas to be improved much faster. We will never be able to solve the really important problems if we cannot admit that we are not doing everything perfectly. |
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December 2016
You also might be interested in our operations blog that details: our month to month organizational progress, the more technical ideas we have, and our board meeting minutes
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