3TT: What Agile Software Development Taught Me About Feedback
Coming from the world of technology to work in international development, I had to discard some habits and practices, but kept a few with me.
Ecosystem Op-Ed blog posts present creative new ideas and visions for the feedback field. They weave together evidence, theory, and lessons learned by the feedback community to discuss current issues in a thoughtful and accessible way. If you would like to suggest a topic for an op-ed or write a guest piece, please reach out to us at info@feedbacklabs.org
3TT: What to Do When You and Your Citizens Have Different Priorities
It cannot be disputed any longer: citizens’ participation in governance is vitally important. Integrating citizen voice into decision-making practices has established a feedback framework between citizens and development practitioners.
Is Feedback a Movement?
In our first blog of 2017, we shared our Feedback Resolutions with you. It was a fun and useful exercise, a way of sharing a little bit of our personalities on the blog and a chance for each of us to reflect on what it takes to keep improving our personal feedback practices. And it was heartening to see others in our network take up the idea, sharing their own commitments to feedback in the new year.
3TT: Choreographing a Blindfolded Reveal
Participants have a pretty good idea of what is working and what isn’t in the projects that affect them. There are few better ways to answer the ‘attribution problem’ (what changes were result of our project intervention?)
3TT: Resist the Temptation of the Big Reveal
A few years ago we had a novel idea—what if we could reward organizations that were actively focusing on learning and improving with more funding from GlobalGiving?
In Honor of the Mighty Groundhog
It has been quite the week, particularly in the US. We here at Feedback Labs are reflecting on how protests, movements, executive orders and checks and balances relate to feedback, and we’ll be sharing our thoughts in future pieces on this blog.
3TT: You Name, We Fame: Citizen Feedback in Action
We recently completed our global Integrity Idol campaign – an annual TV show and citizen movement to find, film and celebrate honest government officials. It shifts the negative conversation around corruption from “naming and shaming” the wrong-doers, to a positive “naming and faming” public servants that are building accountability.
3TT: Listening Better, Taking Action
At LIFT a nonprofit supporting low income families across the US, we recently released a report describing our experience collecting member feedback. Listening Better outlines LIFT’s top ten lessons for designing and implementing a feedback survey targeting the people you serve through your work.
What Barack Obama teaches us about selfish feedback
Sometimes gathering feedback from those we seek to serve can feel like a selfish thing. It can seem like an investment in our projects, our goals, ourselves. I need to listen to feedback so I know how to convince villagers in Malawi to sit on my village committee.
3TT: How to keep your New Year’s Resolutions
Many of us have already given up on our New Year’s’ Resolutions and we are only two weeks into 2017. If fewer than 10% us are likely to succeed in meeting our individual New Year’s resolution goals, how many of us are likely to succeed in our public sector transformation initiatives, like affordability, open governance, and homelessness?