Why Feedback Consolidation (Literally) Makes Sense
By Samantha Weatherly
Senior Project Manager
The riskiest points in any relay race happen when 1 runner passes the baton to the next. A poor handoff can slow the runners. A dropped baton can mean disaster.
The same is true of passing feedback on to your agency partner. Feedback that’s effectively delivered, like a well-passed baton, keeps the project moving forward efficiently and effectively. On the other hand, when your partner has to circle back for clarification or, worse, misinterprets your feedback because of conflicting directions, your project can lose focus, accrue additional costs, and even miss deadlines.
The good news is that the solution to delivering effective feedback to your agency is surprisingly elegant, simple, and effective: Consolidate!
Sorting opinions, refining directions
The benefits of internal collaboration, which include greater insight, creativity, and problem-solving, are undeniable. That said, the same process that fuels a team’s innovation can make it difficult to effectively provide feedback to an outside agency. This is because opinions are sure to differ whenever multiple stakeholders review a project. If all these diverging ideas find their way to the agency, confusion is sure to ensue.
In my experience as a senior project manager, inadequate feedback coordination is the chief stumbling block that slows a project down. If, as a leader, you don’t have a process in place for harnessing your team’s ideas, the directions you provide to your agency can easily become a mix of competing opinions.
Six steps to providing better feedback
Follow this process to consolidate your feedback and avoid the problems brought on by conflicting directions.
1. Align with your agency partner on the review and feedback process.
- Ask early on if your agency has any preferences for receiving your team’s feedback, such as technological tools, communication styles, etc. This is particularly important if it is the first time you have partnered with this agency.
2. Select 1 person from your internal team (I’ll assume here it’s you) to be in charge of consolidating the feedback.
- Though some teams are able to successfully collaborate on the review and consolidation of feedback, there is a much greater chance for efficiency when 1 person is assigned to lead.
3. Provide clear directions to your internal team that explain exactly what you need them to comment on (eg, Please review the attached video and provide feedback on the accuracy of the voiceover.).
- Be clear when explaining how you want reviewers to provide their comments, specifically how they should not directly update the piece itself. This will help avoid version control problems.
4. Set and enforce a deadline for all internal team members to return feedback to you (not directly to your agency partner).
- Create an easy way to keep track of who on your team has reviewed the project. For example, if you are sending an individual file to each team member, label each file name with the initials of the reviewer.
5. Review your internal team’s feedback before sending it to your agency partner, keeping an eye out for notes that may contradict each other.
- If you use a shared document to collect feedback, be sure that your agency does not have access to it until all contradictions have been resolved and it’s ready for them to start updating.
6. Consolidate your team’s feedback into 1 document that:
- Resolves conflicting directions
- Deletes unnecessary or repeated directions
- Ensures all directions are precise and clear
- Expresses a single overall vision for the project
If you are having difficulty consolidating comments, it can be a good idea to have a 1:1 meeting with your agency in which you share the file over a video call. As the deliverable creators, your agency will likely have insights that can help you resolve conflicting directions. Working in real time on the video call is usually more efficient than the back-and-forth of email.
Supporting all stakeholders
Effectively communicating your team’s feedback can have enormous benefits. First and foremost, consolidation enables your agency partner to work more efficiently. Clear directions ensure that your agency won’t need multiple rounds of review or additional meetings with you to gain clarification. As a result, all of your requested updates are more likely to be completed in 1 round, saving you money and time.
Just as important, the consolidation process will strengthen your internal team’s partnership by inviting all members to weigh in on, and take ownership of, the project. To foster greater collaboration, consider asking all the members of your team to comment on a shared file that allows reviewers to see and respond to each other’s feedback. Working with a shared document can also save you time when consolidating, since you won’t need to sift through multiple files when reviewing the team’s feedback.
Whether you use a shared document, multiple files, a single consolidator, or a team consolidation process, the overarching benefit remains the same: feedback consolidation never sacrifices collaboration for clarification. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Consolidation invites all members of the internal team to contribute their ideas while also preventing the volume of these opinions from clouding a vision that will—with the help of your agency—ensure lasting success.
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Samantha Weatherly has more than a decade of experience as a training agency partner within the life sciences space, supporting product launches, new hire training, and sales and sales leadership development. As a senior project manager at Encompass, she is passionate about building relationships with clients and driving results through strategic planning and collaborative problem-solving.
