It’s difficult managing lots of people, situations, customers.

You can’t be everywhere at once, but somehow you need to be.

“My door / inbox is always open” is a common and friendly offer you’ll hear made from manager to staff or founders to customers.

But the built in bias in this is that not everyone feels comfortable coming forward. And not every issue is bad enough to warrant immediately stopping the important thing that employee or customer is doing to report it.

But the black marks (in the eyes of the person experiencing the problem) are still racking up anyway.

A little more disheartened.

Unseen, unheard by you.

It may seem a little unfair when your “door was always open” but the reality is you’re either seeking out the important people to listen to and taking real responsibility or not.

Yes that might seem unscalable. (Does anyone really feel cared about when the main way of doing this seems to be sending a mass email satisfaction survey every few months?).

But even if you only speak to a few, you’ll probably learn a whole lot more.

We’ve all felt that “not them too” moment when we suddenly shift from rooting for a company, to “how could they end up like this”.

Try turning round that feeling once it’s set in and you’ll soon discover something really unscalable and possibly fatal too.

Yes, make the offer (and it is a good one), but understand it’s not enough to make it and then blame others if they don’t bring something forward.

Whether your door is always open or not.