Better Feedback, Better Decisions

Most of you would have read about how US president Obama managed to get the US health reforms bill passed. Definitely a feather in his cap as it will benefit millions of Americans across the society. The most important part is that he is reported to have taken the opinion of the citizen while drafting the bill. Now how cool is that ??!!

Now why can’t we in our own little spaces do exactly that? Why do we try and solve problems without involving people who are facing it?

So in a typical BPO set up when the Ops guys complains about the quality of hires, instead of finding why this happens and addressing the root cause most organisations get the Ops person involved in recruitment. (so at least he will stop complaining since now they have made him ,partner in crime) But the bigger question is if the Ops person is busy doing recruitment who is taking care of Ops?

My ex colleague returned my call after 4 hours today and explained that she was in a day long meeting on building retention strategies. My obvious question (since I am very passionate about the subject) was “Do you know why people are leaving?” and she said “No”. So what were they doing? , deciding on a compensation structure for new recruits to get them to stay for longer. “Will it work?” “No one knows”. “Shouldn’t you be instead focussing your energies on understanding why people are leaving before building action plans?” No answer.

The fundamental solution to solving any problem is to gather more feedback, the more feedback you have, the better decisions you will be able to take.