negative feedback | Human-Centered Change and Innovation

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of March 2024 Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are March’s ten most popular innovation posts:

Agile Innovation Management — by Diana Porumboiu
How to Re-engineer the Incubation Zone — by Geoffrey A. Moore
It’s Not Clear What Innovation Success Is — by Robyn Bolton
How Do You Know If Your Idea is Novel? — by Mike Shipulski
How to Tell if You Are Trusted — by Mike Shipulski
Innovation is Rubbish! — by John Bessant
Celebrating the Trailblazing Women Pioneers of Innovation — by Art Inteligencia
Thinking Differently About Leadership and Innovation — by Janet Sernack
The Remarkable Power of Negative Feedback — by Dennis Stauffer
10 CX and Customer Service Predictions for 2024 (Part 1) — by Shep Hyken

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in February that continue to resonate with people:

What Differentiates High Performing Teams — by David Burkus
How well do you know your customers? — by Howard Tiersky
Does Saying Innovation Make You Sound Stupid? — by Robyn Bolton
Can You Become the Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company? — by Shep Hyken
Powering the Google Innovation Machine with the World’s Top Minds — by Greg Satell

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

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Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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The Remarkable Power of Negative Feedback

GUEST POST from Dennis Stauffer

The most effective innovators—entrepreneurs, scientists, new product developers, and advocates of social change—are adept at seeking feedback. But not just any feedback. They look for a particular type of feedback that may surprise you. They actively seek negative feedback, feedback that tells them when they’re wrong.

That probably sounds counterintuitive. Who goes around wanting to fail? The whole field of positive psychology has convinced many of us that to be successful, we need confidence and plenty of positive reinforcement. There’s some truth to that. Entrepreneurs understandably want their businesses to be successful. Scientists don’t win many awards for failed theories.

But deficits matter. One crucial flaw can torpedo the best of ideas. In the real world there are always many things that can go wrong. Figuring out what those shortcomings are can save you a lot of time and wasted effort. Negative feedback tells you when the strategy you’ve chosen isn’t working, so you can adjust, either by overcoming some obstacle, or adopting a different strategy.

Seeking only positive feedback predisposes you to confirmation bias, when you tend to see what you expect, or hope will happen. It feels good, but it may not be telling you what you most need to know, to be at your best. Savvy investors—and my own research—have found that those innovators and entrepreneurs who most actively seek negative feedback, create by far the greatest value.

Almost any feedback is better than none. You need feedback to get a clear take on the realities you face, so you can respond effectively. But only seeking positive feedback ultimately fosters false-confidence and insecurities. It’s always looking for validation and simply wanting to be right.

Negative feedback can be humbling, but you can build confidence in your ability to respond to setbacks and failures, rather than pretending they aren’t there. Accomplished innovators can handle the bad news because they’ve done it many times before. When you’re trying to bring change, it comes with the territory—and it’s always an opportunity to practice being creative and resourceful.

The next time you face some challenge, hoping for success is understandable, but the best way to make sure that success is real is to look for indications that what you’re doing isn’t working.

That’s the fastest way to make sure it is working.

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