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  • Catalog of Feedback Failures

    How to make better decisions
  • Founder: Empiricus

    ,

  • Who We Need
    People who make decisions, historians, engineers
  • How to join
    Use or help create a catalog of instances where bad decisions were made.
  • Mission
    • Feedback seems simple.  But if we were really good at feedback we wouldn't have very many problems.  In reality, feedback is very complex, but we can make some inroads toward understanding it.
    • Consider the following sequence of events: the world was a certain way, and someone did something.  After a while that something led to other changes.  Someone eventually noticed those changes and interpreted them as requiring a change in action, they became motivated to make that change, they convinced others of the change that was needed, a collaborative action was taken, that action had an effect or not, and that effect (or lack of effect) was noticed.
    • This is not the only formulation of how feedback works, but notice that every step introduces the possibility of failure or delay. 
    • The twentieth century was characterized by a reduction in the lag between misguided action and corrective response.  We've gotten better.  We need to improve even further if we are going to survive the superthreats intact.
  • What we can accomplish
    • We need to work through the whole sequence, improving our ability to make good decisions without unnecessary delay.  We need a catlog of feedback failures.
  • How this superstruct works
  • Other information

    • DO WE NEED TO DEVELOP A STRATEGY FOR MAKING THE ADMISSION OF FAILURE SOCIALLY DESIRABLE/ACCEPTABLE? This is such a great idea -- I wonder how we can seriously support people taking thoughtful responsibility for failure. It seems to me a very scary task. I have lots of failures I could ruminate on, but to be honest, I worry about the social and professional impacts of breaking down exactly how stupid certain decisions were. At some level, I know this kind of brutal honesty would be commended and appreciated, but who wants to admit to making the world a WORSE place? I'd like to see some social psychology brought into play here. If someone with social psychology expertise can give me some insight on the social benefits of identfying and publicly cataloging one's failures, I personally will be the first (or one of the first) to enter a mistake into this catalog. -- POSTED BY AVANTGAM

      PEOPLE NEED MOTIVATION. We reward success, so people highlight their successes and hide their failures. Very predictable and Pavlovian. So, how do we provide motivation to 'fess up about failure? Awards! Provide money and recognition and people will become much more willing to dish the dirt on their worst errors. Where can we find a major donor to endow an award highlighting the most illuminating failures of the year? The spokesperson for a "winning" failure is given a fellowship to travel the country speaking about what s/he and his/her company learned from the failure, and their thoughts about how it could have been prevented. Or what elements might have been a success if done differently. My motto--test ten stupid ideas every week because one of them may turn out to be a winner. But that means tolerance for the other nine...--posted by Elizabeth Merritt

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