The goal of feedback is to help others improve. But when it comes to tactics, how we do that gets trickier: Should we focus on an individual's past mistakes or future possibilities?

To be sure, few people can move forward without looking back. We need to confront our past before we can compose our future. But when feedback stays mired in past performance, it doesn't reveal the full picture of progress. Good feedback tends to show others where they're headed, not just where they've been.

To me, good feedback is a map, not a memory book.

If we really want to empower others with feedback, then we need to help them navigate their next steps. Feedback should provide that map with information that's clear, constructive and concise. Those are the qualities we rely on to get around, and they're a standard feature in virtually every map we use nowadays — hospitals, malls, amusement parks, even exhibits. When we need to get from here to there, maps show us the way.

For that, we have to thank an Englishman named Harry Beck.

Redrawing the map

Beck was an engineering draftsman who worked for the London Underground Signals Office. In 1931, Beck was tasked with creating a more useful map of the London Underground — the complex network of transit lines, stops and services that connected one of the world’s busiest cities. Several maps had been in circulation for nearly a decade, but each one was just as complex as the transit system it depicted. It was Beck's job to fix that.

Beck had a hunch that rail riders would benefit from a more visual design. Rather than laying out different transit lines geographically, with routes superimposed over a city grid, Beck created a scaled-down map that showed the relative positions of stations, lines and fare zones. Colored markings and easy-to-spot symbols gave London’s Tube riders an immediate view of where they were and needed to go. Turns out, Beck’s intuitions were exactly right: His map of the London Underground became an immediate sensation, with public demand for the new design surpassing 700,000 copies.

What made Beck's map so popular and powerful? The secret was its simplicity.

Beck understood that commuters were more interested in getting from Point A to Point B than knowing the actual distance between them. He was right. Pick up a map today, and Beck's handprints are all over it: Easy to navigate. Visual. Simple. It doesn’t show you the distance between two places — it shows you which place you’re headed next.

Feedback is a map

Like Beck's map, good feedback shows others where they’re headed next. It doesn’t face backward. It looks forward — feedforward. Feedforward is a partnership model that distributes power and increases two-way conversation between managers and their employees — leading to a more authentic and revealing feedback experience that fosters trust, flows with the rhythm of work, and sets the conditions for positive, lasting change.

It’s a small shift, but it makes a big difference. During a recent keynote, I spoke about the difference between feedback and feedforward:

The job of feedback isn’t to tell others what to see — it’s to show them where to look. When feedback looks more like a map, we'll help others get to where they need to go with more confidence, clarity and care.

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