30% and 90% Feedback: The Feedback Method All Managers Need to Use

The ability to give and receive feedback, and instilling that into your team’s culture, is one of the most powerful things that a manager can do.

If we strip everything back, your job as a manager is simple. Get the most out of your team, leading to high performance and results.

I’d argue very strongly that this isn’t possible if you can’t deliver feedback to your team.

Feedback enables someone to improve their performance, skills and confidence. Without it, your team is kind of flying blind and their improvement will be more down to luck and figuring things out themselves as they go along.

So, the question becomes: how do you provide effective feedback as a manager?

There are a number of feedback methods that you can use and I’ve shared a few before such as:

Today, I want to introduce you to a very, very simple method that I don’t see many managers use.

The 30% and 90% feedback method.

What is the 30% and 90% feedback method?

Put simply, the 30% and 90% feedback method means that you’ll check in with someone once a task or project is about 30% finished, then again when it’s 90% finished.

The idea is that you set clear expectations with your team as to when you’ll be checking in with them to see how things are going. Then the type of feedback you provide will be slightly different based on the point at which you give it.

The reason that this feedback method works so well is that you can keep a task or project on track without your team feeling like you’re not giving them enough autonomy and as a way to avoid micromanagement.

The other reason that it works so well is that it helps to avoid that awful situation where you don’t check in and get to the end of the task, right before the deadline, only to find out that the work has gone completely off track and is in no condition to be sent to the client or stakeholder.

In this scenario, it may be too late to fix things and you need to miss the deadline. Not to mention that a lot of time has been wasted because you’ve let the team get all of the way through the task before receiving any feedback.

30% feedback

At the 30% stage, which should be delivered at a time where 30% of the time for a project has been completed (roughly, it doesn’t need to be exact!) For example, if a task is expected to take around ten hours to complete, you should check in once around three hours have been spent.

Here, the work has gotten well underway, but there is still a long way to go before it’s completed. So your feedback should take this into account and focus on answering these core questions:

  • If we stay on the current course, will we succeed?
  • If not, what needs to change?

This is your chance to catch if the task is going off track at all or if the brief hasn’t been understood. Enough time has passed to allow you to see the direction of the task and for the team to explain where things are at. 

You’re not too worried about the minor details at this stage, you’re just trying to understand if the task or project is broadly on track and meeting the brief.

As a result, your feedback at this point could be quite intensive and pretty influential on the outcome of the task. If the task is clearly off track, then you need to intervene with enough feedback to get it back on track.

On the other hand, if things are looking good and the task is in hand, then you may just need to give light feedback to tweak things a little. But you should also point out why things are on track and what’s been done well so far. Be clear what the team is doing well. Tell them what to keep doing and how to stay on track.

90% feedback

This step happens when the project or task is nearing completion but there is still some time left. If you’ve done a good job at the 30% stage and your team has done their job, there shouldn’t be any unpleasant surprises at this point. 

Instead, you’re just ensuring that things are in a good place and the main question that you need to ask at this stage is:

  • With the time we have left, what improvements can we make to add even more value?

You’re looking at the smaller details here and offering feedback that tweaks and refines the work, not completely overhauling it.

The important thing to keep in mind here is that the volume of feedback that you deliver needs to be proportional to the amount of time that is left. If you give too much feedback, then you run the risk of the deadline being missed and ironically, the quality of the work dropping because the team is rushing to incorporate too much feedback in a short amount of time.

When is the 30% and 90% feedback method most effective?

You can probably use this feedback for most situations, but for me, it’s most effective when used on:

  • Day-to-day deliverables and projects.
  • Career progression against a timeline.

For day-to-day deliverables and projects, they usually have a timeline and a deadline attached to them. This means that you can map your check in points against them. This type of work is also fairly tangible i.e. you have something very concrete to give feedback about and a brief to check against.

This feedback method is also useful when it comes to someone’s career progression as well. For example, if you set some goals for your team within their personal development plans and they have three months to work towards these goals, you can check in after one month to see how things are going. This gives you a chance to catch any big issues early and help get them back on track.

How do I implement the 30% and 90% feedback method?

The great thing about this method is that you can be very open about using it with your team. You can set the expectation that you’ll check in with them at specific times during the project but apart from that, you’ll give them autonomy to get on with things.

So to implement it, you simply need to make it part of the brief when you delegate a task or talk to your team about it at the beginning.

Set reminders for yourself to actually check in and tell your team how you’ll do it. For example, you may book in a call or meeting to chat with them about how things are going. Or you could ask for them to share their work at various times for you to look at.

This can be fairly flexible and depends on the type of work being done and how you feel it’s best to deliver this feedback.

Can I check in at other points instead of 30% and 90%?

Absolutely.

I’ve seen other versions of this feedback method such as 5%, 30% and 90%.

So it’s really up to you as to what you feel works best here based on the task itself, the person that you’re working with and how often you feel that you should check in. For example, on a much longer project, let’s say one that lasts six months, you may want to check in formally at least once a month.

The main thing to remember is to find that balance between checking in and offering useful feedback to ensure a strong piece of work vs. micromanaging and not giving trust and autonomy to your team.

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