MRW I make a suggestion at work and it's met with silence

I managed for a long time and was even a Director but stepped down from management a few years ago to reduce stress and have since moved on to a new company.

The other day I sent an email to the Director and Managers over the org I'm in. It was short, letting them know that morale was pretty low amongst the team and I had an idea on how they could possibly improve it. Didn't hear a thing for several hours (with this group, that's really bad). When I did, it wasn't good.

It was put out there as only an idea, that I thought could help. None of this "you need to", "you should be", etc. Didn't even pull the "in my experience. . ."

If you're in a job where you managed people in any capacity, let people be open and honest with you about how things are going. I used to tell my people, you can tell me anything. Even if you just need to vent on me, because you don't like the way I did things, that's fine. The only thing I ask is that you take a minute to make a suggestion on how to do it better. If you can't come up with anything, that's fine, at least try.

What I forgot was that the Director and at least 1 of the Managers are very inexperienced and do NOT take kindly to suggestions or pointing out problems in the org.

If you're not in management, my suggestion is to always take an idea like this to your direct manager first to see what they think. That's what I should have done.

If you don't know, company surveys aren't as anonymous as you might think. It's easy to pick out writing style and tone to know exactly who wrote something.

TL:DR Be careful when making suggestions at work, it may not go over well.

Downvote if want, just needed to vent.