- 7. Warning: don’t even think about finding out what's happening unless you’re willing to do something about it.
Remember the Hippocratic oath? “First, do no harm.” In the context of the ideas we've been talking about here, that means something pretty simple: don’t say you care what people think if you really don’t care enough to do something about what you hear.
You'd think that simple lesson would be one that businesses would have learned by now, but you'd be wrong. It's amazing how many companies spend lots of time and money surveying, focus grouping and otherwise probing their customers and employees to find out what they think about things. "What are the three most important features you'd like to see in our next release?" "What's having the biggest impact on morale today?" "If you could make one suggestion to the CEO, what would it be?"
And then...silence. Nothing.
Oh, the company might make a presentation to employees about the "results of the last employee survey," but it will almost always be a sanitized version of the truth. How will employees know that? It won't sound like anything they, or anybody they know, would say. How else? Nothing will come of it.
So what?
This kind of situation grows cynicism like mushrooms in the deep forest. And, cynicism is as powerful an energy drain as it is possible to inject into an organization. When's the last time you saw cynical people energized? Kind of an oxymoron, isn't it? "Energized cynic"; energized about anything other than cynicism, that is.
So, don't do it. Don't ask if you don't want to know; don't ask if you don't intend to do something about what you learn.
Make things better, or leave them alone.
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