Feedback is valuable to a business. At least it should be. So what’s its cost, and what’s it worth investing to get it?
The reason that this is an interesting topic for me at the moment is that I recently spent a week attending a course as part of my self directed CPD. The course was covering a subject that I knew a little about. It was at a London University, it was accredited, and frankly as it turns out, it was pretty terrible. At one point during the week I was asked to fill out an evaluation sheet, something I usually do with no problem. This time I refused. I was so angry and frustrated that this University was operating so ineptly and was taking my time and money in the process, that I didn’t feel like giving feedback. Bacause for the first time I felt like I would be mugging myself.
Years ago I trained with a company called TAP to coach people and also to design training material. Their approach and training was excellent and as a result, I feel confident that I know something of coaching and designing training material.
Giving feedback to the University would mean me analysing the horrible experience they were creating and running it through my hard earned filters and giving them the benefit of that analysis so that they could improve (or probably not) their paid for training and sell a better experience to the next set of candidates. Quite frankly that felt like a double whammy, pay to have a poor experience and then give away the insight needed to make it better for someone else, so that the University and strangers benefit. All at my cost.
I couldn’t reconcile it, so I decided I had already spent too much resource and it was probably wise to cut my costs asap.
This experience has made me realise just how precious feedback can be and how valuable it is on both sides of the exchange.
For all that the week didn’t give me I have drawn some conclusions that I am happy to share:
As a business don’t expect quality feedback for nothing, and don’t assume that “no news is good news”!
As a consumer, don’t necessarily give valuable insight away for someone else to exploit.
As a final note of caution, if you are considering the Prince2 practitioner qualification, don’t do it at an institution that doesn’t live up to its web site claims, or that only manages to give you your first sight of a prior test examination with all of the correct answers 50 minutes prior to taking the actual exam. It won’t be a good experience, trust me!
How do you know until you have paid your money and spent yout time which is likely to be quality training and which isn’t? The very problem that I realised too late that I didn’t adequately address. Without direct experience or a trusted recommendation what do you do? Pay your money and trust to luck. I honestly hope that if you do you are luckier than I was.
