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Relentless improvement and a focus on the positive

W- asked me the other day, "Does everything need to be positive with you?" I thought about it for a bit, and I realized that yes, I firmly believe in the power of focusing on what’s positive and what’s actionable in order to grow. (So much so that I translate what other people tell me!) I think that focusing on the positive helps you build people up instead of tearing them down. I love Sam Decker’s description of one of Bazaarvoice’s workplace practices:

Quarterly performance feedback (our "3/3/1" process), including "upward" feedback for the managers from their staff – to help all of our employees rapidly grow and reduce the anxiety in our organization (everyone always knows where they stand); I have been told by many of our employees and managers that they have learned more at Bazaarvoice than anywhere else they have worked.  Our feedback is balanced (the 3/3/1 is a simple email form to document the 3 things you did well that quarter, the 3 things you could have done better, and the 1 initiative you are going to focus on as a result).  The upward feedback from staff illuminates blind-spots on our management team, many of which have never been discussed with them in previous companies because the feedback process was too poor to generate intensely constructive dialogue.

Sam Decker, myventurepad: Total Leadership and Bazaarvoice’s Amazing Culture

3/3/1. The three things you did well, the three things you could have done better, and the one initiative that you’re going to focus on as a result. Relentless improvement that gives you energy and opportunities to celebrate what you’re doing well and envision where you want to go. Good stuff.

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/4895
  • http://randell.ph/blog/ randell

    Hi Sacha! May I add you to my blogroll?

  • http://sachachua.com Sacha Chua

    Feel free. I’m honored! =)

  • http://www.moneymakingthoughts.com Ely

    “…firmly believe in the power of focusing on what’s positive and what’s actionable in order to grow.”

    It is in our nature to grow. To NOT grow would be going against ourselves, I believe. To grow effectively, we should just focus on the positive. :)

    I agree with you here.

  • http://randell.ph/blog/ randell

    Added. Thanks! :)

On This Day...

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  • 2010: Weekly review: Week ending May 24, 2010 (Victoria Day long weekend) — From the previous week’s plans: Work [X] Launch and facilitate two Idea Labs [X] Give “Remote Presentations That Rock” v2 presentation [...]
  • 2008: Some thoughts on reading — Ben Casnocha’s blog post about how to find new books to read (sparked by a blog post by Tyler Cowen [...]
  • 2008: WordCamp Philippines: September 6, 2008 in Manila — From my WordPress dashboard: WordCamp Philippines is On. Unfortunately, I won’t be in town for it. =( Glad people are [...]
  • 2006: Philippines 2.0 — Joey de Villa posted a very interesting article on how to be Silicon Valley. Geeks at home: read this and [...]
  • 2006: Cooking — My cooking misadventures always seem to draw the most comments. I guess it’s because people here don’t want me to [...]
  • 2006: Linux Device Driver Kit — Always wanted to write a kernel device driver but never got around to it? Now you have no excuse! Check [...]
  • 2005: Not a gamer — We impulsively bought The Sims 2 at Data Blitz earlier. Now, I liked the first Sims. I had so much fun [...]
  • 2004: planner-el development version now available through darcs — To get the initial commit: darcs get -m "Initial commit" http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/darcs/dev/planner/ To get succeeding patches: darcs pull http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/darcs/dev/planner/ And then afterwards: darcs pull If you want [...]
  • 2003: Friends I need to get back in touch with — - Richi Plana (I know where you are; I just haven’t gotten around to writing. ) - Ernest Baello III (Seems [...]
  • 2003: Core servlets and Java Server Pages — Free book download at http://pdf.coreservlets.com/ . Thanks to Dominique Cimafranca for the link.

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