No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work

“Carol Sanford’s book No More Feedback is clearly on my Top 5 management books of the century to date. It is brilliant, readable, incredibly well researched, contrarian, and ridiculously important.  I would travel many a mile to hear her speak and pray that her audience would listen intently—and act decisively. The world would be the better for it.” 

Tom Peters,  Author of  “In Search of Excellence”, Best-selling Book of 25 Years.

Nautilus Book Awards - 2019Pinnacle Book Awards - 2019

Peer Review is the Foundation for Measuring Employee Performance 

But does it help employees realize their full potential? Does feedback improve a company’s bottom line?

No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work, book one in Carol Sanford’s new Toxic Practice book series disrupts commonly held beliefs to reveal: 

  • Why feedback undermines employee development

  • The impact feedback has on our 3 core human capabilities

  • The alternative that leads to self-regulating employees

Utilizing examples from Carol’s decades of work, learn the flaws in the feedback trap and build conditions for employees to flourish for long-term success.

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No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work

Tom Peters | Author of “In Search of Excellence”, Best-selling Book of 25 Years.

“Carol Sanford’s book No More Feedback is clearly on my Top 5 management books of the century to date. It is brilliant, readable, incredibly well researched, contrarian, and ridiculously important.  I would travel many a mile to hear her speak and pray that her audience would listen intently—and act decisively. The world would be the better for it.”

Max Shkud | Head of People Development for Microsoft Silicon Valley

No More Feedback is an incredibly powerful book that truly essentializes the meaning of ‘development’ and ‘developmental organization’ — bravo!  It is a blueprint for designing and building a developmental, self-managing organization. It shows how to move from magical thinking about self-management and flat organizations to outlining the capability-building work necessary to make the idea of a ‘culture of freedom and responsibility’ real. It is SO MUCH more than ‘no more feedback.'”

Zac Swartout

“The idea of giving people feedback is, by and large, commonly accepted in our culture. Carol dissolves this idea before our eyes. She encourages us to truly understand where this idea comes from, and see the damage it causes in our organizations and personal lives. Plus she gives a way to accomplish the intention but without the devastating side effects”

Jennifer Atlee | Principal, Atlee Research

“If you’ve ever been given feedback that has shifted you off-course or just didn’t sit right with your own knowing; if you’ve observed contrary results to feedback you’ve given to a colleague or child, or to feedback programs in your organization; but especially if you think feedback processes are an invaluable tool for effective teams — I urge you to read this book. 

Carol focuses our attention on the toxic effects of feedback in order to lift us out of un-examined patterns and invite us into a wholly different and far more effective approach to developing people. These times call on us to leap – to regenerate how we engage with each other and the broader living systems in which we are nested. We won’t get there by focusing on what others think of us. Carol shares premises for designing truly developmental systems that evolve our individual and collective capacity to take on radically bigger aims – by supporting us in developing our own internal capabilities for self-reflection, self-assessment, and self-direction. I have found this book applicable to both business and parenting. Read with care – you may not be able to “take feedback well” ever again, but you might just transform your home and workplace to the benefit of everyone in them.”

Connor Steadman | Principal & Head Designer, AppleSeed Permaculture and Professional Affiliate Instructor & Coach, Leadership for Sustainability Program, University of Vermont

“Carol Sanford’s No More Feedback is destabilizing in the best sense – its stories, examples, and frameworks patiently build a crystal-clear picture of the hidden impacts and harm of using feedback as a primary process for growth.  She unpacks the surprising intellectual history of feedback, and expertly illustrates how its unthinking application can lead to a serious loss of personal agency and individual sovereignty, and can in fact reinforce passivity, groupthink, and the status quo in any organization.  Carol then outlines compelling pathways and practices beyond feedback for building the capacity to think rigorously and systematically, and to genuinely observe and reflect on ourselves and the effects of our actions – all of which I believe to be essential capacities for leadership and affecting change in our complex and deeply challenging times.”

Antonio Vasconcelos | Coordinator of New-Next (strategy advisory team, Portugal) and Executive Director of The Natural Step International

“Carol makes use of one of the key toxic organizational practices for her – Feedback – to go back to her magic quest on educating others on how to disruptively lead to create a developmental organization. A new type of leadership made to serve, to capacitate people to think and act innovatively from their inner-self – and to avoid conditioning your management team. She always refers to powerful examples she really lived – and despite warning they should not be copied, but smartly proving such illustrations in building from the essence of the business are achievable. The approaches she recommends are life changing. Highly recommended reading, together with her previous books on retrofitting and regenerating businesses! On my side, as a strategy advisor, this makes me think I will need to evolve my role – to help raise questions to organizations rather than to show the (right) direction”

Mattias Axell | Social Labs Educator for Digidem Lab Gothenburg, Sweden

“This book is a profoundly important contribution in the field of organizational development on how to turn to a healthy path for development rather than the toxicity of feedback. No More Feedback demonstrates how we as humans can go from machine-like organizations to actual building of self-managing and developmental organizations. The book provides a very engaging read with a discerning look into the idea of feedback as well as stories from experiences we as humans can relate to. No More Feedback will be a source for me to turn to for a long time to come.”

Glenna Gerard | Senior Consultant, Interaction Associates Inc.

No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work by Carol Sanford provides a compelling case for the deletion of feedback as essential for any leader who intends to support learning, high performing teams, increased engagement, and innovative thinking within their organization.
She gives us clear examples, including research data, that demonstrate how feedback undermines the very capabilities essential to human development, growth and continuous learning and improvement.  The result: diminished self-awareness, lack of engagement, tunnel vision and an inability to self-monitor our own continuous growth and improvement…”

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“How did feedback gain such a strong foothold in our organizations?  Carol explains how the principles of feedback originally generated to keep closed mechanical systems (like a heating and cooling in your home) operating yielded not only invalid, but damaging, results when applied to the open living systems of human beings.   

In addition to making the case for No More Feedback, Carol gives us a clear and simple, if not easy, alternative path to creating cultures for conscious human development, growth, and living systems actualization.  She outlines Three Core Capabilities and provides numerous examples of people and organizations that have designed developmental systems and the results they have achieved. 

Take a journey with Carol into the history and integration of feedback into our daily cultures and be prepared to experience a paradigm shift that opens and expands how you think about your role in development, not only your own but that of any and all systems you reside and work within.”

Russell Wallack

“This book provides an invaluable discernment between “bad-better-best” approaches to work. This concrete exploration of the toxicity of feedback as a “better” practice hits home. As someone who has long depended on feedback as a means to a sense of self-worth and for growing my relationships, reading this book is another step towards growing my ability to self-regulate.”

How Toxic is Your Business?