Don't assume

People are unhappy in your organization, and you don't know it.

In the book All Customers Are Irrational (73), the author talks about customers leaving and management rarely has a clue: "Several studies over the last few years have shown that, of the customers who recently left a company, only 4 percent ever bothered mentioning to the company that they had some sort of issue."

You've been there. You've switched services - phone, gas station, electric, whatever - and you didn't bother telling the old company why. You just moved on.

The problem is, in the organization you are a part of now, people are unhappy and you don't know it. Unless a crisis occurs, you assume everybody feels the same way you do. But they don't. And they will express that unhappiness to everyone except you.

Don't assume you know what is going on. Don't be the person who locks themselves in their office or stays stuck in their cubicle or refuses to take the temperature of the family dynamics.