Throwing Custard Pies of Feedback

The slight, bespectacled figure of Agatha Hamm whispered apologetically into Sally Gulliver’s office.

Sally Gulliver beamed at her, and I sensed she was about to make the same mistake most people made when they met our Chief Operations Officer.

‘So Agatha,’ Sally began, winningly, ‘What was the feedback you said you had for me?’

‘Well dear, I do hope you don’t mind my saying...’

‘Fire away!’ boomed Sally, encouragingly.

‘Well, let me put it like this.’ Agatha’s soft, gentle voice was barely discernible above the tense rustling of my leaves. ‘The feedback I have is, you don’t seem anywhere near good enough to be our Head of HR.’

I winced. Sally Gulliver jolted as if she’d been shot. Wisps of white hair escaped from Agatha Hamm’s bun, like smoke from a smoking gun.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Sally weakly.

‘It’s perfectly simple. From what I’ve seen so far, you don’t seem anywhere near good enough to be our Head of HR.’ Agatha smiled shyly at us.

Not for nothing did some of our colleagues nickname Agatha ‘The Killer Librarian’. Her deceptively mild manner hid a rigorous, intellectually unforgiving mind.

‘Let me explain, Sally. In your job, perhaps more than any other, it’s vital you understand the business deeply and instinctively. And yet when have we seen you on the factory floor? How many of our key people have you spoken to, or more pertinently listened to, since you joined four months ago? How have you attempted to influence the direction of our business?’ 

Punch drunk, Sally Gulliver reeled.

‘Just thought I’d mention it,’ said Agatha Hamm, and slipped unobtrusively out of our office.

Metaphorically, Sally Gulliver picked herself up off the floor and gingerly felt her bruises. ‘If feedback is a gift, how come every day’s Christmas day?’ she moaned.

‘Of course, you realise the worst thing,’ I growled.

‘What?’ muttered Sally Gulliver.

‘That she is absolutely right.’

‘That’s quite enough feedback for one day, Bingleby,’ wailed Sally, knowing I had a point.

Evidently it is possible, after all, to have too much of a good thing.

Next Friday: Your Business Is My Business   

@BinglebyinHR

  
Bingleby was confiding in Richard Goff