Five Reasons People Don't Give Feedback

In my last post, I talked about how all systems have flaws, and how these flaws require interpretive labor to be patched or worked around so that the system can keep running. These systems become dysfunctional when it is hard or impossible to learn from that interpretive labor what those flaws are. Without good feedback mechanisms, none of the flaws will be fixed, and the system will not adapt to changes.

In an ideal system, the people doing most of the interpretive labor---the front-line workers, the power users, etc---also participate in designing and adapting the system. Feedback flows naturally in a setup like this, because people inhabit both roles, interpretive laborer and designer, and their experience directly informs their decisions.

In less ideal but still relatively functional systems, information about the need for interpretive labor is successfully passed, through feedback, to designers and decision-makers who can improve the system. When that feedback starts getting blocked is where you really run into trouble.

So I thought I’d make a post about some of the reasons people might not give feedback---or why their feedback might not make its way to people who can act on it.

Reason 1: Fear of Retaliation

Let’s start with a case study I’ve mentioned several times before. When General Motors lost market share to Toyota, they started trying to learn from it. But while they copied Toyota’s Andon cord, a feedback mechanism, they failed to copy the cultural practices that encouraged workers to use it. Instead they dismissed workers who pulled the Andon cord and halted the production line as lazy slackers. Fearing these negative judgments from their managers, workers didn’t use the cord.

Matthew Desmond, in his book Evicted, explains that tenants generally have protection from retaliation when they report unsanitary or unsafe housing conditions. But tenants who are behind on rent lack those protections, meaning many of the most unpleasant and dangerous situations go unreported. Since tenants who struggle to make rent are more likely than other tenants to live in low quality housing, this represents a substantial problem going unfixed in part because of poor incentives for feedback.

Ongoing abuse in the National Women’s Soccer League (also covered here before) persisted for so long in part because players feared retaliation. The coaches who were abusing them often held players’ careers in their hands.

I’ve had my own experiences with this. A few months after graduating college, I was asked to give a statement about a professor whose contract was up for renewal. I wanted to recommend against. The professor had advised me on an experiment where a trivial mistake ruined the samples I’d collected. That wasn’t the issue. My diary records the real problem:

I sent her a very conciliatory e-mail over break, where I suggested we sit down and talk before continuing, that we discuss my expectations of her and her expectations of me. I got her reply this morning: “How dare you blame me! I expect an apology before we continue together.”

[Other professor who I asked for advice] says sometimes you have to bite your tongue. It’s preparation for grad school and work where often your fate is in the hands of someone who just plain doesn’t deserve it. He says to do what I can to smooth things over, figure out “how much you have to prostrate yourself”, and if things get worse, then we can think about more drastic measures.

I bit my tongue and smoothed things over with the professor, but I wanted to give the college feedback on what had happened. Only they refused to let me speak anonymously, and I needed the professor’s glowing recommendation for my grad school applications. I had another friend in the exact same situation. Neither of us gave feedback on the professor, and her contract was renewed.