Patagonia Inc Executive Summary

When Dean Carter left his post as chief human resources officer at Sears Holdings Corp. in the Chicago suburbs to become vice president of human resources at Ventura, Calif.-based Patagonia Inc. in April 2015, he was seeking sunnier skies—in more ways than one.
The retail dinosaur was deeply troubled.
“The whole company was deteriorating,” says Carter, noting that “the burning platform was, ‘How fast can we slow the deterioration?’ ” Meanwhile, the edgy outdoor clothing and gear manufacturer was on fire. When Carter arrived, the company was in the midst of three straight years of double-digit brick-and-mortar store growth, with sales reaching a new peak of $750 million that year.
With such a stark difference in both corporate performance and

Determined not to repeat that mistake, he undertook a phased approach at Patagonia, spending six to nine months on getting people “into the groove” of having quarterly, employee-led conversations with their managers. Employees are encouraged to set quarterly stretch goals and discuss their progress toward them with their manager, who asks questions, using templates provided by HR.
“By doing this in blocks, we’ve helped the organization grow and get muscle memory, and then we move on to the next skill-building exercise for the company,” says Carter. “Just like any skill-building technique, you focus on a single skill, get better and then move on to the next one.”
Once employees and managers mastered the quarterly check-in, Carter’s team set out to help them understand how to give and receive feedback. It only takes three pieces of feedback for most employees to grasp the concept, he says, and 10 pieces for people to start recognizing its value.
“The very first piece of feedback you get is all smileys: ‘You’re awesome,’ ” says Carter. “The second piece is, ‘You’re pretty good’ and the third is, ‘Here’s a way you could get better.’

Indeed, Carter says, the ability to “plug into the HR ecosystem” and make the connection between feedback and development opportunities has been one of the biggest steps forward in the continuous-performance software space.

Advances in technology are also driving accountability, as organizations strive to ensure that feedback is continuously being shared, says Christa Manning, vice president, solution provider research at Bersin, Deloitte Consulting LLP in Boston.
“[Giving feedback] may be common sense, but given the nature of businesses today—they are so big, so virtual, so distributed—maybe you’ve lost some of that critical mass of having people in an office,” says Manning. “Now, these systems can make sure that things happen and bring data back to executives and senior managers to hold those managers accountable.”
Typically, feedback apps will have a reminder component, which will automatically send a message to managers, prodding them to take action, according to Andee Harris, CEO of HighGround, a Chicago-based HR cloud-platform provider specializing in continuous-feedback products, including those used by