IN ALL MEETINGS, all communication, in organizational life in general, and in nature too, you will find feedback cycles. They are organic and fundamental to life.  This is the way we humans come to understand things, through give and take, discussion, and deliberation. In small teams, this cycle happens easily and frequently.

As groups get larger or more dispersed, feedback cycles slow down. It becomes too difficult to bring everyone together, even on conference calls. Small team dynamics don’t scale-up. Many cycles don’t get completed – even critical ones. Communication becomes one-way, down and out. The large scale works against everyone. Eventually, more and more people are left out of the cycle and performance as a team collapses. But this problem is addressable.

The figure at right shows how to accelerate feedback cycles in order to include everyone’s input in an actionable time frame.

To accomplish this acceleration realistically, you need the right tools and effective processes. In Step 2, using groupware and facilitated processes, hundreds of participants can give their feedback simultaneously to information they’ve just heard or read. In Step 3, again using groupware and specific processes, hundreds of ideas or points of view can quickly be distilled and disseminated to all members. By accelerating Steps 2 and 3, Step 4 becomes possible and represents true dialogue in a very large or dispersed group. Without acceleration, in large groups, only a few members are able to contribute to Step 4, or it may take days or weeks to complete, or as is often the case, it never gets completed.

In this model, we can see the results of repeatedly completing feedback cycles in a short time-frame. The results accumulate. Some clarity breeds more clarity. As more members reach personal understanding for themselves of the critical issues, additional cycles bring about a “mutual understanding” – an understanding of what the whole group is feeling. In this way, repetitions move group members – however many or far-flung – up though these levels of understanding collectively, quickly and efficiently.

Through accelerated feedback cycles, organizations can reap the benefits of large or dispersed groups functioning like small, high-performing teams; enabling these outcomes ...

  • Greater shared understanding
  • A true sense of ownership within the group
  • Better decisions for the long-term
  • More actionable strategies
  • Excited, focused, and engaged members
  • Engagement of much larger groups (50-5,000)
  • More ambitious agendas accomplished in shorter timeframes

This is achievable in large and very large groups, it is scalable, and with attention and continuing cycles, organizations can reach new levels of capacity and efficiency.