Information about how a decision is landing passes through people on its way up, and each of them makes a quick calculation: is this safe to say, is it worth the trouble, and will it change anything. Most observations fail at least one of those tests. What survives the trip is the version that sounds reasonable, arrives with evidence, and does not require anyone to contradict you directly. That is a small and unrepresentative sample of what is actually happening.
The effect is strongest for exactly the things this program is about: that a form assumes a household shape most families do not have, that a meeting time works for headquarters and not for anyone with a school run, that files needing an interpreter take longer and the count does not know it. These are noticed first by the people closest to the work and furthest from the decision, and they are the observations that cost the most to raise.
So a leader who wants accurate information cannot rely on being approachable. Approachability is a quality of the person; what is needed is a property of the process. A route has a moment in the calendar, a form that does not require someone to compose an argument, a named person who is not the supervisor, and a visible result. The result matters most. People give feedback a second time based on what happened to it the first time, and on nothing else.
Working with difference rather than around it is the practical form of Adaptation: you are not asking staff to agree with you, and you are not settling for a polite consensus. You are trying to see what somebody else can see from where they sit, and then to change the design accordingly.
