The Value of Feedback

This is basic stuff, but it is so easily overlooked in the everyday life of an organization. What do your customers really think? How are the actions of your leadership team perceived by others? Are we really going to deliver our next product feature on time? Are we on some collision course, and don't know it?
I was just reading about Robert Kaplan's new article in HBR this month: What to Ask the Person in the Mirror. He discusses the increasing importance and difficulty of getting an assessment of how you are doing as a leader (as you rise in a hierarchy), and advocates disciplined self-reflection in seven areas. And the importance of getting accurate feeback from your employees.
I remember a time when I was running a fast-growing company, and how important it was to have real advice from someone within my organization, who was unafraid of telling me how different the perceptions were down in the ranks than my outward-facing, change-driven priorities. She insisted that I spend the time (while I argued I didn't have it) to meet with everyone, explain the context (again!, from my perspective) and listen (to concerns that seemed to me dwarfed by customer requirements and structural shifts.) I needed to have that perspective -- from outside my immediate view. The organization needed to have me balance that feedback with the outer drivers, in order to build an effective change possibility.
We had a structured process for meeting with our key customers as a group on a regular basis, to review developments in our field, talk about areas of concern from their various vertical perspectives (policies, regulations, quality and costs), and also to build a sense of partnership. These were not always easy meetings -- divulging a problem or a special concession to a group of powerful corporate gatekeepers. But they served an important purpose of providing context for changes we needed, as well as helping our customers maintain perspective about their programs as we provided them.
There are many vehicles for getting valuable feedback. 360s, customer assessments, internal scorecards, employee culture surveys, prediction markets, confidence checks on strategy planks. Collaborative software makes these easy to set up -- the key is having the discipline and the will to ask for the information.
Think about your own situation -- how do you get feedback? What information should your organization know, but you don't? Who is going to tell you what you might not want to hear, and how is that going to happen?