I hate suggestion boxes.
Not just the old school physical ones.
They don’t work, and they actually do a lot of damage.
They’re meant to encourage ideas by enabling ideas to be collected, maybe anonymously.
In practice they end in frustration & enforce hierarchy, actually killing ideas.
In most organizations it takes courage to make a suggestion.
Even an anonymous one.
Once made, an expectation is set.
An informal promise has been made, to respond to or acknowledge the suggestion.
Even the best organizations or leaders struggle to do that effectively.
Especially if there are a lot of suggestions.
How likely is it that a team member will make more suggestions if the previous ones weren’t acknowledged or were misunderstood?
So the more enthusiastic the response is to a suggestion box, the more likely it will fail.
Even the name “Suggestion Box” reinforces random power.
The leader will read your idea and decide.
Without you getting the chance to explain.
Good leaders don’t need a box to hold people’s written thoughts. They find ways to hear their voices.
Poor leaders don’t adopt written suggestions any more than they listen to what people say.
So either way they don’t work.
Save your money, don’t buy one.
If you have one, shut it down, throw it out or re-purpose it.
Maybe start making suggestions to yourself…
“I might be wrong, but at least I’ve thought about it…”