Invariably we are taught that when working with people we should give them plenty of positive feedback whenever they do something right and be very careful with negative feedback. I've never completely bought into this hugging hippie attitude, but it seems there is a good point there: if we're all nice to each other and keep a positive spirit, we get more done right? The problem with this approach is that it doesn't take into account that it might be important to not get something done. Some ideas are just terrible and they should be killed off as soon as possible. When I had the idea for this blog I thought it would fit on twitter. "Positive feedback induces brilliance, negative feedback prevents disaster. The latter is sadly undervalued." i twote. It seems this could use a few backing arguments and today I've made time to provide them. I will explain why negative feedback is important and how you can apply it to your advantage. What's the problem with positive feedback?
Positive feedback induces brilliance. Like the brilliant glow of a nuclear meltdown is caused by positive feedback. If you're doing something absolutely great, positive feedback will cause you to do more of it and it will cause others to try and emulate your behavior. Brilliant right? But what if you're doing something that is ever so slightly off target? Will positive feedback make you augment your course? Will it make others slightly vary your behavior before emulating it? I don't think so. You need negative feedback to change. I have a background in physics and some electronics and signal analysis is part of that background. In electronics positive feedback doesn't have the credits that it has in social studies. It is viewed as a destructive force that will ruin your signal, make your appliance useless, or even destroy things. Let's look at the example of a feedback loop in it's most generic form:
Positive feedback induces brilliance. Like the brilliant glow of a nuclear meltdown is caused by positive feedback. If you're doing something absolutely great, positive feedback will cause you to do more of it and it will cause others to try and emulate your behavior. Brilliant right? But what if you're doing something that is ever so slightly off target? Will positive feedback make you augment your course? Will it make others slightly vary your behavior before emulating it? I don't think so. You need negative feedback to change. I have a background in physics and some electronics and signal analysis is part of that background. In electronics positive feedback doesn't have the credits that it has in social studies. It is viewed as a destructive force that will ruin your signal, make your appliance useless, or even destroy things. Let's look at the example of a feedback loop in it's most generic form:
In the diagram you see input being processed by a system G the output of G is connected to its input via a feedback loop. If the feedback is negative or zero, the output will be strictly related to the input. If the input drops, the output goes to zero. If the feedback is positive two things can happen: first, if the feedback is less than the input, the output will eventually go to zero, but it takes more than one loop. In audio this is called an echo. It's not dangerous, but it can pollute the output if the echo is of a sound that you didn't want to hear. If the feedback signal is stronger than the input, when the input drops the output will continue to increase. In audio this is called a feedback loop, the typical symptom is a high frequency tone that gets louder and louder until either the speaker gives or the amplifier can't go any louder. This is not considered a good thing generally.
If we apply this model to human interaction, it still works. Let's say the input is an idea by developer Joe, G is the team. Let's say the idea is to improve quality by adding more test cases. Let's say the idea pays off the first loop and everybody is very happy. This causes some serious positive feedback. The feedback will say: "More testing is good". And more resources will be invested in testing. Depending on the positive attitude of the team this will lead to more and more resources being spent on creating tests, until there are no more tests to write or the team is out of resources. As much as I like tests, that's crazy. So developer Bill will come with the great idea to spend less time on testing. The first loop this will get positive feedback because the team gets stuff done again and the tests are in place to keep them safe. Two loops later we're in the hole again, quality is crap, coverage is abominable, we're stuck. Rinse and repeat. Does this really happen? You bet!
There is a dangerous psychological phenomenon that is entirely caused by positive feedback in groups, dubbed Group Think
The reason that people fall into this trap in my opinion is that they have the instincts to give positive feedback and act on it. Also our education system is based on it because it works well on small children. But in fact getting only positive feedback makes you lazy and stupid. What can we do? Simple: introduce negative feedback.
I thought negative feedback was bad?
If negative feedback means bashing then yes, it's bad. If negative feedback means using force, it's bad. If negative feedback is used to block others, it's bad. But it doesn't have to be that way. In the case were Joe suggested testing the first iteration good things happened, but then it spun out of control.
The team lost track of the goal: working software and started focussing on some symptoms like test coverage.
In the next image the green arrow are the actions the team is taking, the red arrows are the negative feedback that is applied to reach their goal instead of overshooting it.
The important thing is not to stop the team from doing what it's doing, just to stop it from doing it too much. Make the team do it better instead of more. In some cases a really terrible idea comes up and no time should be wasted on it. In those cases people usually have no problem killing off the idea. The problem arises when a good idea comes up but the implementation is not completely right. It's only human to want to move forward when you're going strong and that makes it very easy to overshoot the goal entirely. The trick is to gradually apply more corrective negative feedback once the team gets closer to a goal.
Thinking about decision processes using this metaphor works for me. I hope you find it useful too.
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