Streamlining Collaborative Decision-Making: A Solution for Approval and Feedback Loops.

In today’s fast-paced work environment, effective decision-making is crucial. However, even when trust exists among team members, the approval and feedback process can become a labyrinth of confusion and delays.

In this blog post, we’ll explore common challenges faced by teams when it comes to approvals and feedback and introduce you to a game-changing solution. Follow these tips to transform your team’s decision-making process, making it more efficient, collaborative, and hassle-free, even when clients or external stakeholders are involved.

The Approval and Feedback Predicament

Let’s dive into the four main issues that teams frequently encounter:

1. Unclear Communication

• Often, team members share documents or proposals with vague subject lines like “for your review,” leaving recipients puzzled about their specific objective. A review of what? Do I need to review the copywriting, and the proposal itself? This confusion results in unhelpful comments in a document that hinder progress.

2. Overwhelming Requests that Get Lost

• Managers and team members receive a barrage of requests for approvals, reviews, or feedback, which can easily get lost in overflowing inboxes. This leads to additional meetings to ensure accountability, adding unnecessary complexity to the process.

3. Fragmented Feedback, Decisions, and Insights

• When multiple stakeholders need to provide input or approve a proposal, conversations tend to splinter. This fragmentation can create gaps in understanding and decision-making, leading to delays and incomplete insights and gaps that can increase risks later on.

4. Lack of Clarity on Deadlines

• Despite deadlines being mentioned in emails, they are often not clearly defined. This lack of clarity results in ongoing reminders, delays, and responses that arrive long after the team has moved on.

Or do you even know when people need things back?

Which one resonates with you?

Let’s talk about a few tips that you can implement immediately.

Collaborative Decision

To harness the power of collective decisions effectively, teams need to establish a set of norms and practices.

• Clear Communication: When a team member needs to gather feedback, request reviews, approvals, or maintain records, they should follow these steps:
• Share a link or video (or both) to walk through the proposal, and provide the information you would provide if you were in a meeting.
• Clearly state the objectives and specify what they need from collaborators (review, approval, feedback, etc.) Do you need to get something approved? If yes, by whom? When? Do you need feedback? What type of feedback? About the copy, the format, the design, the proposal? Do you need additional ideas? What do you need? Add specific questions regarding the type of feedback required.
• Set a timeframe for responses. When do you need this feedback? Tomorrow?
• Encourage team members and other stakeholders to ask questions or provide additional feedback. Give them space to provide more information, because maybe there are some concepts or risks that you haven’t considered yet.
• Clearly identify who needs to provide feedback, especially if there are multiple stakeholders that are involved, but not all of them have the same weight in the decision-making process.

In general define What, How, Who, and by When.

Make this a team rule! Proposals, designs, feedback requests, etc without a clear goal, a clear stakeholder responsible for providing input or approving it or without a timeframe will not be reviewed.

Here’s how Nova can help facilitate this.

Let’s say you need feedback. As an example here’s a tool you can use: the Idea Feedback Tool

Idea Feedback tool — Nova & Loom

This tool provides a template to get started!

Team members can create a session, choose the tool, and automatically receive a template. They can add information about the idea, proposal, design, or anything that requires feedback. Additionally, they can incorporate a video using Loom or any other platform.

While the template includes default questions, you can customize them or add additional ones to suit your specific needs.

To adhere to the previously mentioned rules, the team member initiating the session should clearly state their objectives.

CRC Tool — Nova

Furthermore, the team members must ask questions to ensure they gather the feedback they need effectively. Avoid asking just questions like “Any comments or questions?” That is a great question to ask then but doesn’t really help stakeholders know what exactly you need from them.

If specific people are key stakeholders, they should be explicitly mentioned. For the approval step, the team member can direct specific individuals to answer questions. So they don’t forget to answer because they see other people’s answers.

In general, if you are using a tool like Nova you will provide:

1. Clear Communication

• Team members can share links or videos, walking through proposals just as they would in a meeting, providing clarity from the get-go.
• Specify objectives and the required input: Is it for approval, feedback, or specific comments? Define the type of feedback needed to avoid vague responses.

2. Overwhelming Requests Tamed

• Nova helps set timeframes for responses, eliminating confusion about when feedback is needed. No more chasing down responses.
• Nova’s notification system ensures all stakeholders are informed, reducing the need for additional meetings.

3. Unified Feedback and Insights

• Nova centralizes feedback, ensuring that everyone has access to all insights. No more fragmented conversations!
• Team members can ask questions and provide additional information, encouraging comprehensive feedback.

4. Clarity on Deadlines

• Set clear start and due dates in Nova to ensure everyone knows when feedback is needed, eliminating the guesswork.
• Track who has participated and received the necessary input.

Tools at Your Fingertips

Nova offers a variety of templates tailored to your needs — all can be edited to better fit each objective:

• ICE Proposal: Assess contributions to goals, and confidence in success, and ask people to share additional ideas. Often great whenever you are still in the ideation phase.
• Proposal or Idea Feedback: Gather opinions, and suggestions for improvement, and identify risks or considerations.
• CRC Tool (Use Case, Risks, Costs): Evaluate proposals or designs based on these criteria: use cases, risks, and costs. While this tool asks questions related to use cases, risks and costs you can add additional questions if you think some of the questions work for you.
• Document Approval: Ensure expectations are clear when seeking document approval, eliminating delays and misunderstandings.

Let’s go over how this looks.

Nova

Here is how the CRC tool looks: First, you will see a video, a short description of the proposal, or even a link to the document. Then, it will ask questions about the use case, risks, costs, and even allow participants to ask questions. You can, of course, add or remove questions.

CRC Tool — Nova

CRC Tool — Nova

Here is the Idea Feedback Tool. This tool is ideal whenever you don’t want to start from scratch and you want to share a proposal or a new update to get a sense of how people feel about it and ask them to propose additional ideas.

Idea feedback

The ICE Proposal Tool is designed to help you evaluate how team members perceive a proposal and help the team get things approved, considering factors such as confidence and effort. It also requests additional suggestions and assesses potential risks.

ICE Proposal feedback

Here is a quick video:

If your team is not familiar with how to best facilitate meetings or asynchronous sessions and doesn’t know how to ask questions to achieve certain objectives and make progress, these questions can help them get an idea of the type of questions they will be asking:

A: Getting a sense of how people feel about it and whether you should move forward with it:

1. After reviewing this [proposal/design/other], how do you feel about it? Do you have any major concerns?
2. After reviewing this [proposal/design/other], how would you rate this proposal from 1 to 10, with ten being extremely good?
3. After reviewing this [proposal/design/other], what is the one thing you like the most?
4. After reviewing this [proposal/design/other], are we moving in the right direction?

B) Providing options and evaluating alternatives:

1. Among the options shared in the [video/document/above], which one seems to align better with our [objective]? Additionally, consider, “What if you had to choose based on [costs, effort, design, ROI]? Which one would you choose?”
2. We have also explored these alternatives, and I would like to share those with you. Which one would you choose? Is there anything from any of those alternatives that is worth exploring further?
3. Do you have any other alternatives in mind that we could consider for this [project/initiative/..]?

C) Evaluating criteria, risks, and other metrics:

1. In this [design/proposal/idea], we have considered a [specific use case] and prioritized [specific feature/design/concept/strategy, etc.]. However, our [product/service/business model] often encounters extreme or unique use cases. Can you think of any such scenarios that might not be supported by this [design/solution, etc.]?
2. When assessing the usability of this [design/proposal/..] and the user’s journey to accomplish [specific task], can you identify any potential gaps or risks?
3. As a team, we aim to develop the best solution for our clients while also considering the cost and potential challenges during implementation. Is there anything you believe should be changed or removed to reduce costs or simplify the [implementation and distribution phases]?
4. How challenging would it be to implement this? What level of effort would it require?

D) Generic questions:

1. Do you have any additional ideas or recommendations?
2. What would you suggest I add or improve?
3. What should I remove or avoid?
4. Do you have any major concerns, questions or comments?

E) Importance or approval:

1. How much does this idea/proposal contribute to our goal?
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that this will work?
3. After reviewing all relevant documents, would you approve of this [proposal, idea, …]?
4. This [proposal/project/design/..] includes [A and B], and [C] is out of scope. Our aim is to complete this by [date], and we will require [X and Y] to achieve the objective. Please review these details and either approve or decline this [proposal, idea, …] based on your expertise. If you choose to decline, please provide a note with additional information explaining why it was declined.

F) Clarifying Objectives and Scope:

1. What are the primary objectives we aim to achieve with this [proposal/idea/project]?
2. Are there any specific limitations or constraints we should keep in mind while reviewing this?
3. What is the expected timeline for implementing this idea or proposal?

G) Identifying Key Stakeholders and Collaboration:

1. Who are the key stakeholders for this initiative, and how should we involve them in the decision-making process?
2. Are there any external partners, clients, or third parties who need to be consulted or informed about this proposal?
3. How can we ensure effective collaboration among team members and stakeholders throughout the process?

H) Assessing Resource Allocation:

1. What resources, such as budget, manpower, or technology, will be required to execute this proposal or idea successfully?
2. Do we have a clear plan for resource allocation and management?
3. Are there any potential resource bottlenecks or challenges we should anticipate?

I) Risk Assessment and Mitigation:

1. What are the potential risks associated with this proposal, and how can we mitigate them?
2. Have we conducted a thorough risk analysis, including both internal and external factors?
3. Are there contingency plans in place to address unforeseen challenges?

J) Measuring Impact and Success:

1. How will we measure the success or effectiveness of this proposal or idea?
2. What key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics should we track to gauge progress?
3. What are the expected short-term and long-term outcomes of implementing this?

K) Stakeholder Feedback and Alignment:

1. How can we ensure that the feedback and input provided by team members and stakeholders are effectively incorporated into the final decision?
2. Are there mechanisms in place to address disagreements or conflicting viewpoints among team members?
3. What strategies can we use to ensure alignment and consensus among decision-makers?

These are just a few questions you can ask to better gain the information you need.

Nova: Your Decision and Collaboration Calendar

Nova empowers both managers and team members by providing a centralized platform to track approvals, reviews, meetings, surveys, tasks, and more. It ensures accountability, defines goals, and helps teams make informed decisions collectively.

Nova’s calendar

Say goodbye to the chaos of approval and feedback processes that hinder your team’s progress. Tools like Nova will help you revolutionize your collaborative decision-making, making it efficient, transparent, and productive.

Ready to embark on this transformative journey? Get started with Nova today for free — and experience the difference for yourself.

Thank you for joining us on this adventure towards more efficient and collaborative decision-making.

We look forward to sharing more insights in our next post, but feel free to share with us some of the strategies you use.

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