Flow-First Feedback Framework | CHughes Consultancy

The Core Shift: Feedback as System Maintenance

Traditional feedback focuses on personalities. Flow-First feedback focuses on the System. Our goal is to identify behaviors that create "Coordination Tax" or "Capacity Traps" and course-correct them surgically.

The S-B-S Framework (Situation - Behavior - System Impact)

1. Situation

Anchor the feedback in a specific time and place to avoid generalisations.

"During the sprint planning session this morning..."

2. Behavior

Describe the observable action without adding judgement or "why" you think they did it.

"...you raised three new feature requests that weren't on the pre-read agenda."

3. System Impact (The "Flow" Flip)

Instead of "how I felt," explain how the behavior impacted the team's capacity or the system's flow.

"This added 45 minutes of coordination tax to the meeting, meaning the engineers lost their scheduled Deep Work block for the afternoon, which directly threatens our Friday release target."

Personal vs. Systemic Feedback

Personalised Feedback (HR Standard)	Systemic Feedback (Flow-First)
"You're always late to meetings and it's disrespectful."	"When you joined 10 mins late, we had to restart the context-setting, which cost the team 15 minutes of collective capacity."
"I feel like you aren't a team player in Slack."	"When you don't use threads for technical discussions, it creates a notification storm that interrupts flow for 12 other people."

The Resolution: Closing the Loop

Always end with a request to optimise the system, not just "change a person."

The Question: "How can we adjust our norms to prevent this bottleneck next time?"
The Agreement: "Let's agree that 'unplanned items' go to the parking lot first to protect the meeting's time-box."