John’s presentation can be found here: I’ve Got a Fever and the Only Prescription is More Feedback.
The Second City in Chicago, an improvisational comedy club that launched the careers of comedians from Chris Farley to Steve Carrell, has delivered a successful product to audiences nightly for almost 60 years. How do they do it? By recognizing the power of feedback. Brian Eno, a pioneer in the music industry who produced albums for U2 and Coldplay, relies on a feedback generation system to ensure the best performances of the bands he works with. Likewise, the work of Eric Ries (Lean Startup) and Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.) has uncovered a similar pattern of organizations that thrive on experimentation and learning. These companies recognize the value of feedback at all levels – from interpersonal communications to user behavior patterns – and structure their organizations to take advantage of that value. They systematically spread learning across all levels of the organization as a means to solve problems that other companies can’t. In this talk, John Krewson will describe what it means to be a feedback-based organization. He’ll demonstrate how to recognize and generate feedback at all layers of an organization using innovative techniques drawn from the entertainment industry, and he’ll walk through several practices for making that feedback actionable.