Feedback: what if the examples do not represent the work?
In precision industries, feedback conversations often centre on a rejected component, a successful batch or a memorable incident. The management question is specific: how can we prevent the cases selected for feedback from distorting the picture of everyday work?
What the literature establishes
Jerker Denrell (2003, Organization Science) shows through theoretical analysis how the underrepresentation of failures in observations can produce misleading beliefs about the practices that lead to success. The problem does not necessarily lie in misinterpreting visible cases, but in the absence of others. Applied to feedback, this mechanism suggests examining where examples come from before drawing an overall assessment.
An event does not supply its own lesson
James March, Lee Sproull and Michal Tamuz (1991, Organization Science) analyse how organisations learn when their experience contains few directly comparable events. Their analysis highlights the role of interpretations and hypothetical experiences in that learning. For a feedback conversation, this suggests separating observations from possible explanations and asking whether the lesson would remain plausible under different conditions.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that exceptional cases should be excluded and only average work discussed. That would confuse representativeness with importance: a rare incident can warrant immediate action, particularly where quality or safety is at stake. The distinction is to address the incident without turning it, in the absence of further observations, into a judgement about the employee's usual performance. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these studies do not demonstrate
These articles concern organisational learning, not trials comparing different feedback conversations in Neuchâtel's industry. They illuminate a selection risk without establishing that a particular sampling method would improve performance. Moreover, available records are not neutral: a nonconformity may be documented precisely while a successful adjustment remains largely invisible.
A practical check in Neuchâtel
As part of SHR's « L'art du feedback » programme, a proposed exercise for a microtechnology, watchmaking or precision microelectronics team in Neuchâtel would compare the cases cited in feedback conversations with production records for a period defined in advance. For the same family of operations, record separately the proportion of nonconforming cases among the examples discussed and among recorded cases, retaining the underlying counts and checking the coverage of the records. A discrepancy does not prove that the feedback is unfair; it reveals a selection whose purpose the manager should explain. The next check is to distinguish explicitly in the written summary between examples selected for their severity and those used to describe everyday work. To go further: explore the The Art of Feedback training in Neuchâtel in the canton of Neuchâtel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: The Art of Feedback in Neuchâtel
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