My company used to do quarterly surveys about how the employees “felt” about their jobs and work environment. At first the responses where anonymous, and flaws in the management could be seen. So, one day management announced the surveys would no longer be anonymous, but would instead have our names on them. They said it was the only way to find and fix the problems. I told the boss (in a meeting of about 100 people) that if the goal was to eliminate the flaws, it was a perfect plan because a person would have to be drop-dead stupid to indicate anything less than a 100% perfect score for any and all questions asked.
Who in the heck wants to put their livelihood on the line just to help a middle-manager meet a goal?
After that, sure enough all the surveys started coming back with perfect scores, and the whole survey thing was dropped within a year.
Good post. The fact that management first went with the anonymous approach and then flipped to wanting names shows they didn’t know what they were doing in the first place. In the world of business, anything you say can and WILL be held against you.