How to Help Your Draft Survive Feedback

Sending work off for approval can feel like watching a nature programme where the young, fluffy, lesser-spotted pink thingummyjig takes its first steps away from the parental gaze. Curiosity gets the better of it. It edges into the tall grass by the watering hole, and then...

Yep. Feedback.

From above. From the side. From places you didn't even know were going to have input.

All you can do is stare at your screen: what was once a fully formed idea is now a few fluffy feathers floating in the water.

And when you send the work back for round two, you know it can't be remotely lesser-spotted, fluffy or pink. The execution isn't all that's been rejected. The idea has, too.

One dead duck.

Like all fanged predators, approvals can get a bad name. They're often seen as the point where good work slows down, gets diluted, or is picked over by suggestions that solve one problem while creating three more.

Feedback isn’t your enemy

Approval problems don't always start at the approval stage.

Very often, they start much earlier: with a brief that's trying to do too much, a message that hasn't quite been agreed, or writing that's carrying several different jobs at once.

When everyone is fixing a different problem

By the time the first round of feedback's leathery eyelids pop open, everyone can feel something is off. But no-one's looking at the same problem.

One person's thinking about accuracy.

One's thinking about tone.

One's thinking about brand.

One's thinking about risk.

One's thinking about what the audience might misunderstand.

And someone else is wondering why the piece no longer says the thing it set out to say.

Let the amends commence.

And people aren't being difficult. It's because the thinking beneath the words hasn't been made clear enough.

Feedback needs a point of reference

A clear message doesn't remove the need for feedback. It makes feedback easier.

When the purpose of a piece is clear, people can judge the work against that purpose. Does it say what it needs to say? Is this the right level of detail? Is anything creating confusion?

Without that shared starting point, feedback can become personal, reactive or contradictory. One person wants more warmth. Another wants more precision. Someone else wants to include a detail that matters internally but doesn't help the audience.

Before long, the work isn't being improved: it's being pulled in different directions.

The best approval process starts before the draft. Agree the audience, the purpose, the main point, what must be included, what can be left out, and where the tone needs care.

Don’t send the draft out alone

Then, when the draft goes out, don't send it shivering and alone into the wilderness. Send the thinking with it. A short rationale – why it's structured this way, what it's trying to achieve, and where feedback would be most useful – gives people something useful to respond to.

Make the route clear

Once the thinking is clear, and the rationale accompanies the draft, the writing stands on firmer ground. Reviewers aren't being asked to solve the brief inside the work. They're being asked whether it does the job it was meant to do.

And when those things are clear, the final piece is more likely to feel calm, confident and purposeful. Ready for its first swim in the big wide world.