The Suggestion Box That Nobody Empties

The scheme was launched with genuine enthusiasm and a poster. Ideas were submitted. Nothing visible happened, and the submissions stopped within about two months.

Collecting is cheap and acting is not

Setting up a channel for suggestions takes an afternoon. Evaluating what arrives, deciding, funding the change and implementing it takes time from people who already have targets.

The launch is therefore easy to approve and the follow-through competes with everything else, which is a familiar shape for any initiative with a low entry cost.

The gap between the two is where these schemes fail, and it is visible from the outset to anybody who asks who will action the ideas.

Nobody's objectives include the box

Suggestions arrive concerning areas owned by many different teams, none of whom asked for them and none of whom are measured on responding.

The scheme usually sits with whoever launched it, who has no authority over the areas the ideas concern and no budget to make changes happen.

An initiative with a sponsor but no owner will run until the sponsor's attention moves, which is the ordinary life cycle of this particular idea.

Triage is the expensive part

Most submissions are duplicates, already in progress, outside the organisation's control, or require context the submitter did not have.

Sorting those from the small number of genuinely actionable ideas requires someone with broad knowledge, which means someone senior and busy.

Reading a hundred suggestions properly is a real day of work, and that day has to be found repeatedly rather than once.

Silence teaches people to stop

A suggestion that receives no response is read as evidence the channel is decorative, and that conclusion spreads faster than any launch communication did.

Worse, it teaches the most engaged people first, since they are the ones who contributed, and they are the people the scheme most needed.

Recovering from that is far harder than starting, because the second launch is judged against the fate of the first one.

Schemes that work attach a decision

The versions that survive commit to a response within a stated period, publish what happened to every submission including the rejections, and hold a small budget.

Rejection with a reason maintains participation surprisingly well, because the contributor learns something and can see the channel is being read.

What kills participation is not being turned down. It is submitting into a container that gives no indication of ever having been opened.