Milan's Employee Engagement Blog

About Milan Larson, Ph.D.

Milan Larson has been involved in training and development for over 15 years, helping organizations improve their performance through the use of effective employee strategies. Throughout his career he has always been passionate about the way organizations lead their employees and how to create the right culture for success.

While working in the manufacturing industry as a manager, Milan was responsible for cost-saving projects that resulted in multi-million dollar savings through improved efficiencies and other cost-saving methods. He has built a reputation as a collaboration specialist who generates employee buy-in which ultimately leads to long-term success. In his role as a research scientist and SME on best practices for human resource management, he has worked with a variety of well-known companies such as Hewlett-Packard, University Hospital at the University of Colorado’s Medical Center, Agilent Technologies, JBS-Swift and Company, Rain Bird Corporation, Hunter Industries, State Farm Insurance, Visiting Nurse Association of Delaware Valley, Polk Company, United Way, and Advanced Energy.

Instant Success vs. Delayed Success?

Thursday, October 15, 2009 by Milan Larson

In a recent conversation with a professional colleague we were discussing the reality that sometimes instant success can lead to non-sustainable organizational change. This colleague was speaking from his own experience based on his organization receiving the Baldrige Award on the first attempt. Since then he has had the opportunity to visit with other BA recipients who did not receive the award on their first attempt, but rather had to keep improving their processes over time to eventually receive the award. As my colleague compares his own organization's current culture and openness to new ideas, he finds the other employees in the organization are over confident in their success and therefore less open to continuous change. Yet, the other organizations that had to work harder to achieve their success seem to have a culture that embraces continuous process improvement. Their longer journey to success for the other organizations has created a collaborative leadership model that leads to long-term organizational transformation.

So what do you say...in order for real transformation to seep into an organization's culture, is it better for organizations to achieve instant success or delayed success?

Employee Engagement Strategies In Hard Economic Times

Monday, September 21, 2009 by Milan Larson

We know from Gallup's leading research on employee engagement that only 25% of the workforce is actively engaged with their employers. Much of this research, though, comes from economic times that were much more prosperous than our current economic woes. So what is happening with employee engagement when times are tough? According to Leigh Branham and Mark Hirschfeld, 134 out 210 employers surveyed saw lower employee engagement scores from 2007 to 2008. Upon closer analysis, however, there are 5 key factors that highlight why some employers continued to gain employee engagement while others (in these same 5 areas) saw their level of employee engagement decrease. These 5 key Leadership Differentiators are:

Setting clear and compelling direction. Employees value accurate information about where the company is heading, even if it's somewhat unclear during these times. By keeping the employees focused on the future direction, the employees will be working on the "same page," causing a more focused energy which is exactly what the company needs in tough times.
Open and Honest Communication. When the news isn't all that positive, leaders can fall into a trap of thinking that no news is good news and that they'll only communicate when something is looking positive. In reality, the exact opposite is true and when there isn't any news to report, effective leaders communicate there is no news. The alternative to limiting the amount of communication is that the employees will eventually make up their own version of the news. This can be very dangerous because the made-up version of the news could be much worse than the reality.
Continued focus on career growth. When we stop to think about employees' concerns during these economic, we usually assume the employees are only concerned about their current job and whether or not they'll be able to keep it in the near future. That's only half the picture, though. Employees also continue to think about their long-term futures as well. As they consider their long-term career plans, they look to their employers for help with continuous career development.
Recognizing and Rewarding High Performance. The employers whose employee engagement scores increased from 2007 to 2008 recognize they still have to reward people who are working extra hard during these tough times. No, it's not necessarily easy to come up with the same kind of rewards in these economic times but it is possible, it just needs more sustainable innovation to be more efficient with limited funds.
Employee Benefits that communicate commitment to employee. Employers who scored higher on employee engagement in 2008 did a much better job in the benefits area of the survey. It didn't necessarily mean the companies continued to pay more for the employee's benefits. In some cases, it just meant the companies did a better job communicating the benefits that were not going to change. The "no change" message, in and of itself, communicated a commitment on behalf of the employer that the employees security needs were going to satisfied.

Keeping a highly engaged workforce in place is always a challenging task for employers and it is especially tough today. The alternative though, is a workforce that begins to dis-engage which in turn starts to erode the positive experience for an organization's customer. When this cycle starts to develop, employee morale will naturally start to shake--leading to more disengagement. The real measure comes in our response to the challenge. How we respond will determine our ability to sustain high performance much like Sir Winston Churchill's reminder that "kites rise highest against the wind--not with it."

Sustaining High Performance - More Like the Game of Chess Than Like Checkers

Thursday, September 17, 2009 by Milan Larson

What's the difference between the game of checkers and the game of chess? The obvious answer to many of us is that chess is more complicated, right? Not so fast...look more closely and you realize there's more to it than that, which might explain how the game of chess is similar to sustaining high performance. In checkers all of the pieces move in the same way. In chess the pieces all move differently. Marcus Buckingham, in his book The One Thing you Need to Know, reminds us that great leaders understand their individual people and encourage them to leverage their strengths. By leveraging their strengths, organizational excellence occurs.

To some of us, we might want to suggest performance excellence is more like the game of checkers because we've heard the advice that we need everyone moving in the same direction in order to accomplish organizational success. In order to move people in the same direction, we try motivate the employees with the same techniques. But this will only accomplish average performance. Sure we can apply the same motivation or the same incentives but it will only work to a certain point. Great leaders, on the other hand, discover each employee's uniqueness and capitalize on it. So how do great leaders make this happen? Here are four skills from the research that reminds us what great leaders do on a regular basis.

Select good people
Define clear expectations
Praise often, predictably, and immediately
Show they care

Selecting good people has been a mantra lately but it bears repeating. Hiring a good employee takes more time than hiring the "convenient" employee. Many managers claim they don't have time to hire because they have the opening now and can't wait. The irony in the "I don't have the time" approach is that it catches up to you in the end because of all the challenges presented with a miss-hire. Rather than taking the time to hire the right employee, managers will be spending their time trying to "change" the employee into the type of employee the manager wanted in the first place. Guess what, though, it's almost impossible to change a bad hire into an excellent hire.  The bottom line is hire the person for who they are and forget about trying to change him/her.

Almost every manager might claim that he/she has clear expectations for his/her employees. Unfortunately, though, research shows that less than 50% of the employees today have clear expectations. Some might rationalize this by the fast pace of change but that doesn't count. If that was the reason, we wouldn't find any performance excellence because everyone is living in a fast-paced world. Yet, we can find performance excellence all over the place because we find leaders who communicate clear expectations by meeting with their people often. Great leaders don't set goals once or twice a year, they do it multiple times a year.

The third basic skill observed by great leaders is praising their employees. Great leaders understand consequences make the difference. The worst kind of consequence is one that is uncertain, in the future, and focused on the negative. On the other hand, the best kind of consequence is recognizing positive behaviors with immediate praise.   Sustainable excellence, therefore, is rarely a one-time achievement but rather a result of repeated, incremental improvements. Great leaders notice the improvement and celebrate them. This frequent celebration encourages repeated positive performance.

The fourth and final skill recognized by great leaders is caring for their employees. I suspect some people might roll their eyes because this is one of those "warm and fuzzies" that's hard to quantify in organizations.    For those of you in that view, here's something to help you understand the quantifiable nature of "caring." Research draws a STRONG link that employees who feel cared about at work are...

missing fewer days of work
less likely to have accidents at work
less likely to file worker's comp claims
less likely to steal
less likely to quit
more likely to advocate the company to friends and family.

Reference: The One Thing You Need to Know, Marcus Buckingham, Free Press, 2005.

Sustainable Organizational Change

Monday, August 24, 2009 by Milan Larson

Is it better for leaders to use a single influence strategy or a multiple influence strategy approach when trying to make sustainable organizational change? According to some very strong research out of MIT leaders who used only one strategy to influence change were much less successful than leaders who used multiple strategies. More specifically, leaders who used a minimum of 4 influence strategies were 10 times more successful at leading transformation. Although it might be perceived as a quicker strategy to use only one influence strategy, (fear, directives, or incentives), it's clear that when these strategies are used in isolation, high performance won't be sustained for the long haul. What kind of influence strategies do you use? How many at one time? If you're looking for ideas on how to expand the strategies you use for your next organizational change, click here.

Players vs Positions

Monday, August 24, 2009 by Milan Larson

With the fall football season just around the corner I recently read a great article from MIT Sloan Mgmt Review that I thought was very applicable to our systems thinking approach to leadership. In short, the findings from the research showed star wide receivers had a drop in performance when they were traded to another team. On the other hand, star punters saw no drop in performance when traded to another team. The conclusion from this research suggests that in the NFL, just like in many organizations, there are some positions that are more transferrable than other positions. A punter doesn't really rely on the "system" of the rest of the organization, they can perfect their skill by working in seclusion. Wide receivers, however, need to understand the offensive system in order to succeed.

As a leader in your organization, do you allow "punters" to exist even though the position or activity they perform is mostly independent of anyone else in the organization? If so what positions are okay to treat as independent and not, yet, jeopardize improving organizational performance? What does this do for employee engagement in the rest of the organization?