360° Feedback and Sparkly: Turning Feedback into Clear Management Decisions

360° feedback and Sparkly examine an organisation from different perspectives.

360° feedback shows how people experience the behaviour of a team or leader. Sparkly shows whether people, roles, tasks, responsibilities and ways of working actually fit together.

Now that 360° feedback is integrated into Sparkly, they form one complete decision-making process:

360° feedback shows what people experience. Sparkly shows what leaders need to change to improve results.

Leaders no longer receive just a feedback report. They receive a clear management decision, a behavioural change that can be implemented the next working day, and a measure for evaluating its impact.

What does 360° feedback measure?

360° feedback collects evaluations from several perspectives:

• the team or leader;
• the direct manager;
• colleagues;
• direct reports;
• internal partners;
• customers and other stakeholders.

Its greatest value lies in revealing differences between these perspectives.

A team may believe that it collaborates effectively while customers experience slow responses and unclear accountability. Senior management may believe that objectives are clear, while employees do not know who makes decisions or whom to approach when a problem arises.

360° feedback answers the question:

How do others experience our behaviour and work?

It reveals where a team’s self-perception differs from the experience of the people around it.

What information does 360° feedback give leaders?

360° feedback gives leaders answers to five questions:

1. What does the team believe it does well?
2. How do managers, employees, colleagues and customers experience the same team?
3. Where are the greatest differences between those evaluations?
4. Which difference has the greatest negative impact on results or trust?
5. Which visible behaviour needs to change?

The most valuable finding is not always the lowest score. The gap between a team’s self-evaluation and other people’s experience is often more important.

For example, a team may score its decision-making process at 4.5, while direct reports score it at 2.6. Decision-making feels clear inside the team, but the rest of the organisation does not know what was decided, who is responsible or when anything will change.

360° feedback makes this blind spot visible.

What does Sparkly do differently?

Sparkly takes the analysis beyond feedback.

Sparkly examines:

• which tasks people actually perform;
• what their roles require from them;
• who holds responsibility;
• who has decision-making authority;
• where responsibilities overlap or are missing;
• which tasks sit within the wrong role;
• where excessive workload develops;
• which working relationships need clearer rules;
• whether a person’s natural way of working fits their daily tasks;
• whether the problem lies with an individual or the system around them.

Sparkly does not stop at a general recommendation to “communicate better”. It shows what needs to change in roles, tasks, responsibilities or decision-making so that better collaboration becomes a natural part of everyday work.

The difference between 360° feedback and Sparkly

Comparison	360° feedback	Sparkly
Primary question	How do others experience us?	Do people and the way work is organised fit together?
Data source	People’s evaluations and comments	People, roles, tasks, responsibilities and working arrangements
Focus of analysis	Perceived behaviour and impact	Alignment and the logic of the operating model
Primary value	Reveals blind spots and differences in perception	Reveals the cause of a problem and the required solution
Management decision	Which behaviour needs to change?	What needs to change in the way work is organised?
Change tomorrow	A person behaves differently	A leader organises work differently
Stakeholder perspective	Very strong	Connects the result with roles, tasks and responsibilities
Individual precision	Mainly evaluates the overall impact of a team or leader	Reaches the level of individuals, working relationships, roles and tasks
Best use	Understanding people’s actual experience	Finding the cause of the problem and the most effective solution

What changes on the next working day?

360° feedback changes visible behaviour.

It may show that:

• stakeholders are not involved sufficiently;
• decisions are unclear to others;
• disagreements are avoided;
• leaders provide too little feedback;
• commitments are not fulfilled;
• the team lacks visibility within the organisation.

This produces specific behavioural agreements:

• stakeholder input is gathered before an important decision;
• every meeting ends with a documented decision, owner and deadline;
• leaders ask for objections before confirming a decision;
• problems are reported before deadlines are missed;
• every key stakeholder has one designated relationship owner.

Sparkly changes how work is organised.

It may show that:

• several roles share the same responsibility;
• no final decision-maker has been assigned;
• a person carries responsibility without decision-making authority;
• an important task sits within the wrong role;
• workload is not sustainable;
• two key roles expect conflicting behaviour from each other;
• a leader closely controls someone who needs greater autonomy to deliver results.

This leads to specific management changes:

• one person becomes accountable for each outcome;
• decision-making authority moves to the correct role;
• tasks are redistributed;
• working relationships receive a clear collaboration rhythm;
• meetings move from discussion to decision-making;
• work that does not support the team’s primary objectives is stopped.

360° feedback shows what change people need. Sparkly shows what leaders must reorganise to make that change happen.

Integration creates a complete management view

Combining 360° feedback with Sparkly creates a complete decision-making process:

1. What are people experiencing?
2. Where do the team’s and other people’s evaluations differ?
3. Which working arrangement is causing the problem?
4. Which management decision needs to be made?
5. Which behaviour changes tomorrow?
6. How will the organisation measure the result after 30 or 90 days?

For example, 360° feedback may show that direct reports experience management decisions as slow and unclear.

Sparkly then reveals that three leaders share overlapping decision-making responsibilities, but no one has final authority.

The solution is not general decision-making training. The solution is to assign one owner, clear boundaries and a deadline for each type of decision.

360° feedback reveals the symptom. Sparkly identifies the operational cause and turns it into a management decision.

The most effective change is not always linked to the lowest score

Leaders do not need 20 recommendations. They need no more than three clear priorities.

Sparkly prioritises the change that:

• directly affects customers or business results;
• creates a significant gap between the team’s and others’ evaluations;
• affects several stakeholder groups;
• is within management’s control;
• resolves several problems at once;
• produces a visible result quickly.

For example, 360° feedback may reveal low psychological safety. Sparkly’s analysis then shows that the leader repeatedly reverses agreed decisions.

The first solution is not a trust-building workshop. The first solution is to stop changing agreed decisions without clear justification and to define the conditions under which a decision may be reopened.

What does Sparkly now offer 360° consultants?

Sparkly provides consultants and coaches with a complete working environment for managing the client’s entire change process.

Consultants can:

• manage several clients and teams;
• launch 360° assessments;
• define respondent groups;
• import respondents;
• send invitations and reminders;
• monitor response rates;
• compare evaluations from different respondent groups;
• identify the most significant blind spots;
• create management decision reports;
• build action plans;
• assign owners, deadlines and measures;
• run 30- or 90-day follow-up assessments;
• show the client what actually changed.

The consultant’s work no longer ends with presenting a report. Sparkly turns 360° assessment into a complete service:

measurement → interpretation → management decision → action → follow-up measurement.

This allows consultants to offer a longer and measurable team or leadership development programme instead of a one-off survey.

What does Sparkly now offer HR leaders?

HR leaders use the same system internally.

Sparkly supports:

• leadership development;
• management team evaluation;
• team development;
• post-reorganisation analysis;
• evaluation of a new leader’s impact;
• improvement of internal collaboration;
• identification of the causes of conflict;
• measurement of leadership programme outcomes;
• comparison of team development over time;
• identification of gaps between employee and management experiences.

HR no longer receives only a conclusion that “collaboration needs to improve”. It sees:

• who experiences the problem;
• how large the difference in evaluations is;
• which business result the problem affects;
• whether behaviour or working arrangements need to change;
• who is responsible for the change;
• when the result will be reviewed.

360° users see only what they need

Users who choose the 360° service do not need to see the full Sparkly system.

Their working environment contains only:

• clients and teams;
• 360° assessments;
• respondent groups;
• survey progress;
• reports;
• action plans;
• follow-up assessments;
• selected additional features.

The rest of Sparkly remains hidden. Personal assessments, recruitment, candidates, role fit, task fit and other advanced features become available only when purchased separately.

Consultants and HR leaders therefore receive a simple and focused 360° environment without the full range of Sparkly capabilities making it unnecessarily complex.

What additional value does Sparkly provide alongside 360° feedback?

Clarity of roles, responsibilities and decisions

Sparkly reveals:

• where responsibilities overlap;
• where no accountable owner exists;
• who carries responsibility without decision-making authority;
• which decisions move unnecessarily to senior management;
• where the organisation does not know who makes the decision.

Workflow and bottleneck analysis

Sparkly reveals:

• where work or information gets stuck;
• which tasks sit within the wrong role;
• where excessive workload develops;
• which handovers fail;
• which process creates the problem identified by 360° feedback.

In-depth analysis of people, roles and tasks

Sparkly reveals:

• why a particular working relationship is failing;
• whether a person’s way of working fits their role;
• whether the problem lies in skills, alignment or work design;
• which work needs to be redistributed;
• how leaders should manage different people in ways that suit them.

Clients use only the additional features required to solve the specific problem.

Confidentiality enables honest feedback

360° assessment works only when people trust the process.

Sparkly:

• presents aggregated results to leaders;
• protects respondents’ identities;
• does not display results from groups that are too small;
• restricts access according to user roles;
• distinguishes between anonymous and confidential responses;
• does not secretly combine 360° responses with other personal data.

Leaders do not need to know who said what. They need to know which pattern is recurring, what impact it creates and what they must change.

What does the full process look like?

1. The consultant or HR leader creates the team.
2. The purpose of the assessment is defined.
3. Respondent groups are selected.
4. Respondents receive personal survey links.
5. Sparkly collects and aggregates the responses.
6. The report shows strengths, risks and differences in perception.
7. Sparkly identifies up to three changes with the greatest potential impact.
8. The leader confirms the required management decisions.
9. A next-day behavioural change is defined for each decision.
10. Each change receives an owner, deadline and measure.
11. The result is measured again after 30 or 90 days.

The outcome is not simply the knowledge that something is wrong.

The outcome is:

• a clear management decision;
• no more than three behavioural changes;
• an accountable owner;
• a deadline;
• a measure;
• a follow-up review.

Conclusion

360° feedback and Sparkly address different parts of the same problem.

360° feedback shows how people experience the behaviour of a team or leader. Sparkly shows which working arrangements create that behaviour and what leaders must change.

Integrated into one system, Sparkly gives leaders a complete answer:

• what people are actually experiencing;
• where the most important blind spot lies;
• which problem has the greatest impact on results;
• whether behaviour, roles, responsibilities or processes need to change;
• what must be done differently on the next working day;
• how to verify that the change worked.

For consultants and HR leaders, this means they no longer provide just a 360° report. They manage measurable change from beginning to end.

Feedback becomes a decision. The decision becomes new behaviour. New behaviour becomes a measurable result.