How to Get Your Company Better at Getting Better (with Les Landes)

Les Landes is a consultant and author based in Ballwin, Missouri. He helps small and mid-sized businesses build the habits that keep improvement going long enough to show up on the bottom line. He wrote Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement: The Power and Purpose of Imagination and Free Will in the Workplace.

You’ve probably tried a suggestion box. Maybe an employee-of-the-month plaque, an incentive program, or an open-door policy. For a few weeks, it worked. Then it faded.

Les says that’s what happens when you lean on principles and programs instead of processes you repeat. Good intentions don’t stick. Routines do.

He lays out his 5R framework: Relevance, Relationships, Roadmap, Routines, and Resources. Then he gets practical with team improvement huddles. These are short weekly meetings where everyone takes a turn sharing ideas. Each idea gets someone who owns it and a date for the next step, and the team tracks it until it’s done.

Les calls it small ball. One small gain won’t change much. Stack enough of them and the results get big. One change to a shipping box saved a company more than $100,000 a year.

He and Tom also talk about accountability as a ladder, and about treating your people as the place solutions come from.

If you run a business where good ideas come up in meetings and then disappear, this episode gives you a simple system to make them stick.

DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

~00:54 Meet Les Landis

~03:52 Why Improvement Stalls

~05:55 Program Trap Pitfalls

~08:31 Open Door Myth

~10:26 5R Framework Explained

~13:25 Team Huddles Process

~15:22 Small Ball Wins

~19:22 Diving Board Case Study

~24:10 Accountability Without Blame

~26:23 Where to Start Today

~28:14 Scorecard and Pilot Offer

~31:13 Connect With Les

~32:22 Three Engagement Needs

~36:54 Habits vs Improvement

~37:51 Wrap Up and Resources

FULL EPISODE VIDEO

https://vimeo.com/1243105209

CONNECT WITH LES

Website: http://www.landeassociates.com

Engagement Scorecard: https://resources.landesassociates.com/ci-scorecard

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslandes/