Most retail CEOs don't reserve much time for popping into stores and talking to customers, and store and district managers tend to dislike it--feels like micromanaging.

But at the same time, store managers and district managers are often not eager to feed a list of their stores' shortcomings up the chain of command. IMO it's a rare retail manager who is willing to stand up and say, "my store is bad and here is what I need to make it good." Most focus on putting the best possible face on things, internally. It's so hard to make good numbers in retail and there is so much pressure to do so... relationships between the management layers can often feel more adversarial than collaborative.