Part of being a successful business leader is to make sure you extract maximum learning out of your week, month, and quarter. In this article, I’d like to share with you the easiest, most effective way to generate the powerful insights and instant feedback you’ll need to grow and scale your business.
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Notice that phrase, “Next Time.” You aren’t asking yourself, “What went wrong?” Instead you’re asking, “What did I learn? What insight did I gain?” That positive framing is a crucial part of this tool.
So the next time you finish a project, pause and ask yourself what you liked best and what you’d like to do differently next time. These two questions are simple, but they’re powerful and they can help you in a wide array of scenarios — on your own, in groups, and one-on-one.
After the event, I got stuck in the airport for a while, waiting for my flight back home to Jackson, Wyoming. So I took that time to generate some insights and feedback.
There are all sorts of times when you might want to do a group debrief. You may want to debrief with your key team members after a big client engagement. Or maybe you’re reviewing how a particular system is working in your company — for instance, how, operationally, a system influences the way that you produce your core product offering.
You can ask your team what they liked best — what’s really working. And then you can ask what they’d like to do differently next time, perhaps to produce more efficiently or deliver more consistent quality.
I also recommend that you focus on one column at a time. First list out all of your Liked Bests, then all of your Next Times. This will help the group stay focused and maximize the productivity of the exercise.
For instance, let’s imagine that you have a direct report named Natalie who’s in charge of all of the receivables in your company. You can sit down with her for a check-in and ask what she likes best about the current process that she’s using to collect receivables. Then ask her what one or two things could change to make the process even more efficient and effective.
In that coaching scenario, it’s important to limit the number of Next Times that you share. You can list as many Liked Bests as you can think of — those will make Natalie feel great about her work — but, when it comes to Next Times, you want to restrict yourself to no more than three items. And if you’re meeting with her especially frequently — say, bi-weekly — you might even want to keep that list down to just one Next Time that she can actually put into effect before your next meeting.
Remember, one Next Time that actually gets implemented is infinitely more valuable than a hundred Next Times that don’t get implemented. Really long lists of Next Times tend to do more harm than good: they’re overwhelming, they create a sense of failure, and they’re difficult to implement.
This tool is at once incredibly powerful and incredibly easy to use. It helps you generate feedback and maximize your learning whether you’re working in a group, one-to-one, or on your own.