Flaws in the Theory of Objective Feedback

No More Feedback — Chapter 7

This chapter is an excerpt from No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work, the first in a series of books on toxic practices in the workplace. Read the introduction and previous chapter here on Medium, and find links to purchase the full book here.

In addition to the general differences between mechanical functioning and the functioning of living brains, there is a second distinctive challenge with the feedback metaphor in the case of human behavior. Any given machine does not have the ability to image itself and project its distinctive way of working or its own shortfalls onto another machine. The natures of machines, the boundaries between them, and their relationships with one another are fixed, unchangeable except for entropy and the gradual wearing out of their parts.

Humans, on the other hand, can develop the capacity to see their own shortfalls and to become self-observing and self-directed. Unfortunately, as we have seen, this developmental path is not currently well founded in most of our human systems. We also haven’t found ways to really see the truth of others. Equal to our potential for self-awareness, humans have an as yet not fully developed capacity for empathy, objective assessment, and the kind of caring that leads to work on real capacity building…