Earlier I made a plea for Performance Management 2.0. One of the crucial elements of Performance Management 2.0 is more direct feedback.
Here we can learn from the Chinese. When you enter China through Shanghai airport, and you go through customs, you can rate the customs employee by pushing one of the four buttons on the voting machine that is attached to the booth.
On a recent trip I pushed “Greatly satisfied” going in and going out. Both times I got a genuine smile from the customs employee. I did not dare to test what happens when you push “poor customer service”. Maybe a next time..
I see great applications for this simple Chinese voting device and I am considering ordering a batch to start experimenting. Let’s call it: the Feedback Device, the FD1. We could put an FD1 on the desk of every manager who still has a desk. Managers who do not have a desk will be asked to carry the mobile version of the FD1 (the FD1m). When the experiment is successful, we could consider asking the Chinese to develop the next version, the FD2. The FD2 will be a strip that can simply be attached to any person. After any kind of interaction one of the buttons on the strip can be touched to provide direct feedback.
[prototype FD2]
