"My experience has been that unless I'm speaking to a founder or very senior manager all suggestions and ideas for improvements disappear down a black hole."
Exactly my experience. There is no feedback loop. My assumptions are as follows:
1) There is no reinforcement for an employee to pass along a suggestion to upper management.
2) The idea you have has already been vetted or is not practical for cost or other reasons for the organization. So if they have tried passing along info they've found the same information passed along that they can't act upon so the feedback loop no longer exists.
3) The person who you give the suggestion to is lame and it never gets passed along because they suck (which is why they are in that front facing position and not higher up).
4) The higher ups have never worked at the lower level jobs. They haven't interacted with customers to even know what goes on or what behavior should be encouraged. Or if they have it was so long ago they simply don't think about it now to the extent that they should.
Most of the time my experience is #3 I'd have to say. I get my hair cut at the same place and passed along the fact that the confirmation emails are in to small a font. I've know the person that cuts my hair for many years. She respects me. But for some reason it's not in her personality to get into minutia like that. Otoh when I mentioned to her that the front desk acted a certain way that could directly change her income she was right on it.
Exactly my experience. There is no feedback loop. My assumptions are as follows:
1) There is no reinforcement for an employee to pass along a suggestion to upper management.
2) The idea you have has already been vetted or is not practical for cost or other reasons for the organization. So if they have tried passing along info they've found the same information passed along that they can't act upon so the feedback loop no longer exists.
3) The person who you give the suggestion to is lame and it never gets passed along because they suck (which is why they are in that front facing position and not higher up).
4) The higher ups have never worked at the lower level jobs. They haven't interacted with customers to even know what goes on or what behavior should be encouraged. Or if they have it was so long ago they simply don't think about it now to the extent that they should.
Most of the time my experience is #3 I'd have to say. I get my hair cut at the same place and passed along the fact that the confirmation emails are in to small a font. I've know the person that cuts my hair for many years. She respects me. But for some reason it's not in her personality to get into minutia like that. Otoh when I mentioned to her that the front desk acted a certain way that could directly change her income she was right on it.