In 1985, when I transferred to an operations role, I inherited a production-only suggestion program. I recall that we received 16 ideas that year, of which one was awarded $1,600 calculated as a percentage of one year’s savings. The remaining ideas did not make the cut.

So I asked employees for feedback. To my surprise many were not even aware that a suggestion program existed, even though a suggestion box was prominently placed near the time clock. One employee told me the box was only for complaints. Another employee said she knew about the program but referred to it as an idea rejection system. “It takes forever to hear back about ideas,” she said. “And we don’t even get a decent explanation.”

Some further investigation with the help of our human resources department revealed that, though unintended, our locked-box, cost-savings, big-ideas-only suggestion system was indeed an idea rejection system. We were, on the one hand, promoting “many small changes for the better” through our continuous improvement efforts, while our legacy suggestion box may as well have been a shredder.

 …