This is the kind of book that I would normally pick up at a bookstore shelf, flip through, and then return back to the shelf. It covers a topic that feels pretty shallow for a whole book.
The whole book, essentially, is about the benefits of putting up suggestion system within your organisation, and some tips and traps when you do so. The topic of an organisation putting up and maintaining such a suggestion system, to let it benefit from employees' ideas, and to boost their morale, sounds like something that can be covered by a web article or at most, a chapter in a book on continuous improvement. A whole book on the topic feels like overkill, and I imagined it would contain a lot of fluff to pad it out.
But I noticed something in the blurb that attracted my attention. The book’s author was Norman Bodek, the ‘founder of Productivity Press.’ As it happens, there are currently two publishers I automatically associate with material worth reading.
One of them is 'Productivity Press', a publisher of books related to quality control and continuous improvement. They are especially known for introducing Japanese classics on these topics into the Western mainstream. Although a fan of this publisher for many years, I did not know of Norman Bodek. (The other publisher is The Free Press).
‘All You Gotta Do Is Ask’ is a simple book. All it does is provide the motivation to implement a suggestion system, and provide proven tips and principles to make sure it is a success.
The book compares the average American company and a Japanese company which encourages its employees to send in suggestions. The Japanese company receives anywhere from 50 to a couple of hundred ideas per year per employee. Of course, the latter receives the benefits, often in the range of millions of dollars in savings per year. Almost literally, a goldmine for that Japanese company.
The book covers a whole range of topics about suggestion systems, including the psychological obstacles such as supervisors feeling threatened by inferiors suddenly realising they too possess a brain, or managers co-opting ideas and presenting them as their own, or employees being unsure what to suggest and therefore end up anxious.
In the appendix, you’ll find examples of actual improvement suggestions. I was surprised by how mundane some can be. Here’s an example:
Before Improvement: It was hard to get a good grip on the shrink-wrap when trying to pull it off the spindle.
After Improvement: Used a rag to hold on to the shrink-wrap to (tear) it off the spindle.
Simple as it is, it’s nevertheless an improvement.
A key message the book continually injects is respect for the employees. Managers must work hard to protect employees and their sense of self-respect. Ideas must be treated with respect. This is particularly important because not all ideas will be good, and not all will be implemented. It is important to balance reality. These are important, yet sensitive points, and the book provides recommendations on how to handle them.
There were some other useful insights. Bodek and Yorke (the co-author) point out that the best suggestions for improvement are those that involve the suggester's work and how they can improve their own work. It is quite easy to submit suggestions telling how others can improve how they work. Such suggestions are useful, but because they impose on others, they are often resented, resisted, and not easy to implement.
The one thing I felt missing, which I think very important, is that the focus of the book was on employees coming up with ideas and solutions on how they can improve their own work. For professionals with a relatively large berth in terms of how they do their job, it feels weird to think about how to improve one's work and then put it up for suggestion. Most just execute their ideas for improvement without seeking (or being required to seek) approval.
Overall, this is a short, easy-to-read book with good ideas about putting up and maintaining a suggestion system. It cannot be the last word on the subject, but some of the ideas it presents are essential to a successful system.
Recommended.
