How to Translate Feedback to Actionable Plan (with Examples)

In an ideal world, the feedback you receive would come with an action plan. In reality, it is up to you to translate constructive criticism into an action and improve.

Actionable Feedback

Getting feedback can be a drag when it’s not positive. Yet, without it, we can’t improve. In fact, it’s not only you who is not enjoying the situation. Managers hate giving critical feedback too. As illustrated in this study, the feedback managers were providing naturally without too much thought was often not actionable and, at times, led to defensive reactions and hard feelings. An example of this would be a statement such as “you should be more professional” or “you are a poor communicator”. 

Actionable feedback leads to learning and performance improvement. 

I have received some feedback after I finished an internship, and I was lucky because it was actionable in this sense. It wasn’t a personal attack, and I understood the skill I should work on is communicating with a non-technical audience. Rumour has it that this is often an issue for engineers and scientists, and I think it is something we don’t take too personally in general. 

I had that conversation so many times: “I should improve how I talk to non-experts”; “Yeah, me too”. It tends to end there. On the other hand, if someone had told me that my technical skills were an issue, I would make plans to improve immediately. Translating feedback into actions is not rocket science. Still, it can be challenging for those intangible “soft” skills. 

Therefore, I would like to take the notion of actionable feedback further and go through what you as a receiver can do to improve. 

Here is the process I followed

1. Dissect the Skill
2. Brainstorm Activities
3. Plan Improvements
4. Execution

I will stick to communication, but you can do this with any skill.

Dissect the Skill

As with any problem, the first step in solving it is to think about how you can dissect it into smaller pieces. For example, my feedback was about communicating with non-expert audiences. Are there any types or more specific contexts? 

Another question I asked myself was whether I needed to improve my communication in general. As mentioned above, it’s better to receive specific feedback “improve communication with non-experts” versus general “improve your communication”. On the other hand, I understand that this is done more so that I don’t feel too bad about myself. Hence, when I start to think about how to improve, it can be helpful to go one level up and start dissecting “communication” instead of “communication with non-experts”. If nothing else, it can help you come up with more activities you could do.  

It can be helpful to create a mind map with all the initial categories like this one:

Brainstorm Activities

Next, expand on your initial ideas and associations - brainstorm all possible activities that you associate with the skill you need to develop. You can think of it as potential micro-habits. For instance, you can ask yourself, where do people speak publicly? Brands and organisations look for content all the time; maybe you could give a talk at a local event or a meet-up. What about written communication? Write a white paper or a blog for general audiences. Write down everything that comes to mind.

You can keep perfecting the categories and new clusters as you think about it more, but a perfect structure is not the most critical part. Here is what I ended up with:

As you can see, there are some overlaps, and that’s fine. Once you feel like you can’t think of any associations or find more activities online, start choosing what to do and when. 

Plan Improvements 

How do you start implementing your ideas into your life? First of all, set up a calendar reminder to review your progress regularly, e.g. every two weeks or once a month. Regular review will help you assess whether you need to put more effort and give you a chance to celebrate your progress.

Then, think about all of those activities and be honest with yourself about how many you can start doing at the start. For me, I started with the easy ones. What’s easy depends on your personal preferences, where you live, and what you have access to. 

Another aspect is to think about how you can measure it. Now, that doesn’t mean you need to put a number on it. It could be qualitative. For example, when something is difficult for us, we tend to procrastinate on such a task more. You could use your feeling as an indicator.

I would recommend you put your map somewhere where you can see it. Whether it’s in an application online or in a physical notebook, make sure you can keep adding notes and capture any data.

Execution

The last point I want to make is that you shouldn’t be afraid to make a bold move and maybe join a new community. Whether you are improving on a technical or a soft skill, a community provides a level of accountability and keeps you on track. Going through this process, I ended up applying to Hackernoon Blogging Fellowship, and I continue to work on my communication skills. 

I translated my actionable feedback into an even more actionable one, and you can do it too.