The projector hummed, casting a sickly greenish glow across the faces of the 575 people crammed into the auditorium. My nose twitched, a phantom tickle from the seven violent sneezes that had wracked me just minutes before, a somatic protest perhaps, to the predictable performance about to unfold. On the screen, a slide titled “Opportunities for Improvement” loomed, adorned with bar graphs that dipped and soared with the precision of a carefully choreographed ballet, not a genuine reflection of the messy, human truth of our workplace. This was the annual employee engagement survey debrief, and already, I felt the familiar weariness settle in, a heavy cloak woven from years of dutiful participation and subsequent disillusionment. The manager, a man whose smile seemed permanently affixed, began speaking, his voice anodyne, smooth, reassuring. He talked about “actionable insights” and “cross-functional committees,” words that floated like balloons, pretty and ephemeral, destined to pop silently, leaving no trace. A small knot of tension tightened in my stomach, a sensation I’ve come to associate with these gatherings, a silent dread born from knowing the script before it’s even uttered.
It wasn’t a malicious act, this ritual. Not entirely. I used to think it was simple incompetence, a failure to connect feedback with strategy. I believed, perhaps too optimistically, that if only the “right” data points were presented, if only the “perfect” committee were formed, then change would cascade down, tangible and real. I had a
