Feedback loops

One of the unsung advantages of employment is that the workplace has a socialising effect.  Sooner or later we are all made to face the consequences of our words and actions (and inactions).  It can be as subtle as feeling vaguely excluded around the coffee machine or as blatant as someone sitting you down and telling you a 'few home truths'.  When newly self-employed people talk about things like 'missing the team environment' this is mostly what they mean - an absence of those million little signs to be read and adjusted to on a minute-by-minute basis.

The lack of socialisation - of feedback loops - is one of the hidden drawbacks of working for yourself.  You finish the document and email it off or you shake hands then leave the meeting room or you hand over the final blueprint.  The job is done and you're out of the loop.

Apart from the truly radical (and awful) feedback of having someone dispute a fee after project completion - something that has happened to me only once in almost twenty years of consultancy - I find it really hard to get an honest assessment of how a job went.  Maybe it's just me but post-project follow-up mostly feels like a transparent exercise in fishing for compliments.

The only feedback that I really value is further work from the same client.  Apart from having an actual monetary value it's the only thing that's 100% honest.  In any business you really are only as good as your last job.  A cliche, I know, but never truer than when you're working alone.

So what happens when I don't get follow-up work?  I worry. I worry and fret and analyse my performance.  Then I redouble my efforts and stoke that small-bore paranoia that's better known as perfectionism.

Sidebar: when my suppliers (who are mostly self-employed themselves) do a great job then I make a point of sending a token of appreciation like flowers or a book.  We're all in this together.