Feedback Analysis — What I Learned
Feedback Analysis is a method to write down what we expect a decision of ours will lead to, in 6–9 months or more. It helps review and compare actual outcomes with ideas and plans.
Peter Drucker: Managing Oneself
Some background on this. Peter Drucker wrote the first version of the Managing Oneself classic article in Harvard Business Review in 1999. The article was released in book form in 2008 (affiliate link). I find that it continues to offer me new insights from every read. I chime in with others expressing it’s likely the best self-help text/book ever written. It contains a brief expression of Feedback Analysis. I struggled to apply the learning and searched for more.
The source of Feedback Analysis is allegedly from a totally obscure 14th century German teologian. His practice got picked up independently by John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola some 150 years later. Drucker mentions that it formed such effective habits and performance in their followers that the practice lead the Jesuit order and the Calvinist church to dominate Europe within 30 years.
Feedback Analysis sounds more complicated than it is
Turns out, to apply Feedback Analysis is not that hard. The key is to self-monitor well enough to know when we are about to…