Nishank Bhatia, D2C Head, JustOrganik

Nishank Bhatia is currently heading the D2C division at Just Organik. He is a business influencer, consultant and a growth strategist.

With a decade of experience in business building, scalability & strategic innovation, his expertise lies in delivering sales, marketing and business development solutions to organizations leading to increased profitability and overall growth.

He is passionate about leading, training and managing teams. He guides and mentors new startups. He is an avid speaker at public forums across the University of Delhi and has given 200+ business speeches across India.

His interests lie in exploring the world and impacting it with his ideas. He encourages organisations to switch from employee to intrapreneurship model.

In this Interview, Nishank shares his views on the impact of feedback in an organization:

What is your view on documenting/recording the feedback process as a part of an organization?

Documenting feedback is necessary for decision making on various aspects like promotion, appraisal, timelines, deals etc.
For employees, it’s an account of their work history with performance and for managers/organisations, it’s also a record of their leadership performance. A great company is built on transparency, feedback processes always keep a reality check and expectations in sync.

What are the key identification points for good or effective feedback and bad or ineffective feedback?

Good essentially means Effective. The goal is to move forward in cohesion. Hence, feedback that leads the organization/team forward is good.
Also, it must be communicated in the right way. A good feedback must be specific, should solve a problem and should have clarity of purpose. It could be a genuine concern too.
Negative feedback tends to be on the side of bringing someone or a process down and must always be avoided. One of my mentors taught me very early in my career never to share or ask for feedback while you are in a bad mood.

What are some ways to ensure that post feedback, negative feelings like vulnerability or frustration do not set in among the givers and receivers of feedback, in an organization?

Everything has to do with the daily working culture and it starts from employee onboarding. The goal should be to encourage participation in feedback activities. Everyone should understand that an organisation’s business development is as internal as it is external. Setting clear expectations between managers and their teams is the first step. Giving prerequisites on the operational procedures and practicing feedforward can minimize disappointments and hence keep the negative feelings in check.

What are some ways that you think we can ensure that past bias does not impact the quality of feedback?

This is the reality of workplaces. Past bias always comes in front with the present. Everything an individual does is stacked up, more in their minds rather than documents. To ensure this, I ask my team to close the feedback communication loop then and there only. Once communicated and worked upon, should not come in any other conversations. Secondly, when everyone’s objective is to upskill their inner working circle, the quality can’t be compromised.

How should negative/critical feedback be approached in an organization? Any best practices that you would like to share.

Firstly, everyone should understand it’s coming from a human. Robots at workplaces are not entitled to form opinions. Hence, it must be welcomed. And then afterwards should be scrutinized and worked upon. I always ask my teammates or managers to share it individually as mostly it comes from personal experience. If any of the parties feel it’s unnecessary or invalid, they can communicate it with each other

What are the key questions that an organization must ask its employees to get honest feedback about itself?

It’s subjective. Different for startups and big corporations. For us, it is more of a conversation rather than an assignment.
I like to ask if they are happy with their performance and project engagements. Whether they would like to work on a new dimension or not.
I go deep on culture. I ask their likes and dislikes about it. The third would be to ask them about clarity and understanding of the organisation’s goal and whether they feel aligned with it or not. Then it will be about their salary. Also. I believe employees must be asked if they are in sync with their leaders or not. Productivity is mostly dependent upon clear communication between them.