So, I wanted to share a bit about my experience trying out something connected to a guy named Rashad Jackson. It wasn’t anything super official, more like a name that popped up related to a specific way of handling team check-ins I read about somewhere, maybe an old forum post or a half-remembered article. Didn’t think much of it back then.
Fast forward a few months, and things on a project I was managing got… well, stuck. Communication felt stiff, like people were just going through the motions in our daily stand-ups. You know the vibe, everyone says “no blockers” but the progress bar ain’t moving. It was frustrating. I remembered that Rashad Jackson idea – something about super short, brutally honest feedback loops, done in a really informal way. Sounded a bit weird, honestly.
Trying It Out
I figured, what the heck, let’s give it a whirl. Couldn’t get much worse, right? So, I pulled the team aside one morning. Didn’t make a big deal out of it, just said, “Let’s try something different for feedback this week.”
Here’s basically what I tried to copy from what I remembered about Jackson’s supposed method:
- Ditch the schedule: Instead of planned weekly reviews, I encouraged quick, spontaneous check-ins right after someone finished a task or hit a snag.
- Keep it tiny: Like, one-minute conversations. Just “Hey, saw you finished X, looked good, but maybe tweak Y?” or “Stuck on Z? Let’s chat for 60 seconds.”
- Face-to-face (or video): No emails or long Slack messages for this specific feedback. Had to be direct, see the person’s reaction.
- Focus on action, not feeling: Less “I feel like…” and more “Doing X caused Y, maybe try Z next time.”
How It Went Down
Okay, the first few days? Awkward. Super awkward. People weren’t used to it. Some folks looked like deer in headlights when I just walked over for a quick chat. They expected a big, formal meeting, I guess. A couple of the quieter team members really clammed up initially.
But then, something kinda shifted. After the initial weirdness, people started actually doing it themselves, peer-to-peer. The junior guys, especially, seemed to loosen up. Instead of waiting days to ask a question or point out a small issue, they’d just grab someone for a minute. It wasn’t perfect, mind you. Some feedback was maybe too blunt sometimes, and we had to smooth things over once or twice.
What I noticed most was speed. Small problems got fixed way faster. No more waiting for the weekly sync to bring up something tiny. It felt more like we were constantly adjusting course, like a flock of birds rather than a big container ship trying to turn.
My Takeaway on the ‘Rashad Jackson’ Thing
So, this whole Rashad Jackson approach, or at least my interpretation of it? It wasn’t some magic bullet. It definitely ruffled some feathers, and it probably wouldn’t work in every single team or company culture. It needs a certain level of trust, and you gotta watch out it doesn’t turn into constant interruptions or overly harsh criticism.
But for that specific situation, where communication was frozen? It helped shake things loose. It forced us to be more immediate and less formal. Would I use it again? Maybe parts of it. The core idea of quick, direct, action-focused feedback is solid, even if the super informal style needs tweaking depending on the team. It was a practical experiment, and like most experiments, you learn something, keep what works, and toss the rest. That’s just how it goes when you’re actually trying stuff out in the real world.
