Most feedback loops aren’t loops.
Imagine telling an employee in a supermarket that the price on the shelf doesn’t match the price at checkout.
The employee apologizes. Perhaps they correct the price for you. They might even inform their supervisor.
Problem solved?
For you, perhaps.
But will someone correct the shelf label? Will anyone investigate why the discrepancy occurred? And if it keeps happening, will the organization change anything?
The organization has received feedback and responded to it.
But has it learned anything?
When Feedback Travels Backwards
Organizations have developed countless mechanisms for collecting feedback.
Customer complaints, retrospectives, quality metrics, incident reports, assessments and lessons learned.
We collect information, discuss findings, make decisions and initiate improvement actions.
We call these feedback loops.
But information travelling backwards through an organization doesn’t automatically create a feedback loop.
The information must be capable of influencing the subsequent behaviour of the system.
That doesn’t mean every observation must result in a change. Sometimes feedback confirms that everything is working as intended.
What matters is whether the system can respond when the evidence warrants it.
Closing Actions Is Not Closing the Loop
Consider an organization that identifies a recurring problem.
An improvement action is agreed upon, assigned to someone and eventually marked as completed.
The action has been closed.
But did it solve the problem?
Perhaps the intervention addressed a symptom rather than its cause. Perhaps it introduced new problems. Perhaps it worked in one situation but not in others.
Unless someone evaluates the effect, the organization doesn’t actually know.
And if the next occurrence of the problem leads to the same discussion and another improvement action, the organization may be repeating a process without learning from it.
A feedback loop requires more than information and intervention.
It requires evidence about the consequences of the intervention.
Closing an action is not the same as closing a feedback loop.
When Organizations Become Good at Responding
There is an interesting paradox here.
An organization can become highly effective at handling individual problems without becoming better at preventing them.
Customer complaints are resolved quickly. Incidents are closed within agreed timeframes. Retrospectives produce action lists. Assessments generate improvement plans.
Every mechanism appears to be working.
Yet the same underlying problems continue to occur.
The organization has optimized its ability to respond.
But perhaps it hasn’t developed an equivalent ability to learn.
This distinction matters because responding to a problem and changing the conditions that produced it are different capabilities.
The first restores normal operations.
The second improves the organization’s ability to operate.
Both are valuable, but they shouldn’t be confused.
Where Does the Loop Close?
Perhaps we should evaluate feedback mechanisms differently.
Instead of asking how much feedback we collect, how quickly we respond or how many actions we complete, we might ask:
What can actually change as a result of this feedback?
Can it challenge existing assumptions? Influence priorities? Change practices? Redirect investments? Improve organizational capabilities?
And when something changes, do we evaluate whether the intended improvement was achieved?
These questions concern more than the existence of feedback mechanisms.
They concern the organization’s ability to use evidence to adapt its behaviour.
Because a process doesn’t become a feedback loop merely because information travels backwards.
Perhaps the loop doesn’t close when we act on feedback. It closes when we learn whether our response actually worked.
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