Tangible Results At The Center of Feedback
Navigating Uncertain Vendor Feedback
Hey, fellow Leader đ,
I am Artur, and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach out to me and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
While managing professional services (such as consultants, freelancers, or software providers), you will eventually be asked to provide feedback on the services rendered. Sometimes, that feedback is straightforward: âIt has been greatâ or âIt is not meeting expectations.â
However, the most challenging part is the âin-betweenâ feedback. It becomes tricky when you donât have a clear-cut answer, or worse, when you find yourself terminating a contract months after providing positive reviews. This lack of clarity can be damaging down the road. Even as a paying client, it is important to remember that no vendor wants to navigate a partnership with little visibility or stability beyond the invoices they generate.
Itâs OK Not Having Clear Feedback Sometimes
Letâs get this straight right off the bat: Depending on the project, some objectives take months to take shape. If you are asked for feedback too early in the process, it is perfectly fine not to have a definitive âstatus quoâ. For example, it is common to have major milestones set six months out, yet be asked for feedback halfway through. If you are results-oriented, you might look at intermediate milestones, but the problem is that they rarely provide a bulletproof picture. They offer a potential assurance of a future result; the milestone might be hit, but failure isnât off the table yet.
Some time ago, on a very complex project, my team was asked for feedback on a vendorâs service. The request came three months in, but the product wasnât in production yet. We needed another month or two to provide anything solid. In this case, we informed the vendor that our initial feedback was âgood with remarksâ, but that we would reassess in a couple of months. Having remarks isnât a sign of bad feedback (even five-star services have room for improvement). The key here is to prioritize achieving the goal first and foremost. Once the objective is met, you finally have the solid data needed to provide a truly meaningful evaluation.
What Reality Shows Us
Unfortunately, what I often see in these cases is project teams sharing a âsnapshotâ of feedback based on a single moment in time. Then, when the milestone finally arrives, it highlights massive points for improvement that can potentially lead to contract termination. I am not a fan of surprises. I always advocate for visibility and clarity, even in situations that could go either way. It is damaging to the client-vendor relationship when a vendor is blindsided by a termination (whether itâs the entire project or a single consultant in the outsourcing world). Especially if they received positive feedback just a few weeks prior. As clients, we should strive for genuine partnerships and be mindful of our vendorsâ financial impact and risk calculations.
The clearest examples of this occur in the outsourcing world. Imagine your team is onboarding one person who is expected to deliver the first patch of meaningful software in five monthsâ time (meaning: code used by real humans in Production). If we provide positive feedback from months one through five, only to realize in months six and seven that the software barely fulfills the objective due to serious performance and quality issues, using that as the trigger to let the consultant go, is simply poor people and vendor management.
The Focus Are The Results. Always.
When we donât yet have tangible results, our approach must remain cautious. Even when the energy is high, communication is flowing, and things appear to be rolling along nicely. Results are what matter most. Sometimes, it is only when the final deliverables are due that a vendorâs hidden issues finally come to light.
Remaining cautious and keeping your eyes on the goal sends a clear message: your project is not managed on BS, but on hard, real, and tangible results. If those results arrive on time and at the right level of quality, everyone wins. Otherwise, you need to have a direct conversation about those gaps with the vendor.
Thatâs it. If you find this post useful, please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest it in the comments or send me a message.
Cheers,
Artur