The Keys To Managing Millennials, Part 2: The Progress Bar Effect

Front Line Leadership 

Guest Post By Adam Tenenbaum

In my last post I introduced Part 1 of my two-part series on the the topic of Managing Millennials (the generation born roughly between 1980 and the mid 90‘s) – Treat Them Like a Celebrity. Today in Part 2, I’m presenting the other key tactic – Create The Progress Bar Effect

As I noted on my last post, each generation is a result of the dominant events, personalities and technologies that were popularized during their maturation. For Millennials (aka “Generation Y”), the era of high technology has had a drastic effect on the way they perceive and interact with their world.

There’s no question that technology has changed the expectations of this group. Need to contact someone immediately? Call, tweet, email, text, or Facebook them right from your phone. Need information? Look it up online, or on your phone or notebook – no need to go to a library. Want to rent a movie? Simply press a button on your Xbox, Apple tv, or internet connected television and you’re already viewing it.

Need to lose weight? Liposuction! Fast food is yet another example of our shared culture of immediate gratification (while studies have shown that customers perceive anything over three minutes in a line as an unacceptable wait time, they also perceive a literal three minutes as seven to ten minutes while waiting).

The Millennials have come of age in this environment, so in many respects they have been conditioned to be impatient. Consequently this impatience doesn’t usually produce great results in the workplace, especially when it comes to strategic planning or long, drawn out tasks. Millennials can lack the perspective and discipline to commit to a lengthy task – they may begin it and then inexplicably start a new task, and then another and another, never completing a project but constantly starting new ones.

The progress bar has become a part of our lives, and the Millennial generation grew up staring at it. Google, in partnership with Stanford University, recently released a study that came to the conclusion that displaying a progress bar noticeably improved completion of online forms and surveys. Why? Because it created an artificial reward and made the user able to anticipate the completion of the task.

You must create a “progress bar” for your Millennials. Here’s what I mean by that:

• Break down larger tasks into small, quickly achievable objectives.
• Measure the progress of each step.

This gives at a minimum the illusion of movement and progress, even if much time and hard work is still needed. Without having a clear idea of how long something will take, or knowing that a task is likely to take an extended period of time can result in disengagement and poor results from your younger workers.

As I complete my monthly, quarterly and yearly strategic planning for my retail operations, I break down each larger strategy to tactics and then actions. I don’t share the entire strategic plan with my team- it would be overwhelming and lead to disengagement.

Instead, I share the immediately relevant action steps that must be accomplished. Following the completion of each step, I celebrate the success of the individual who accomplished it, and then introduce a new goal. The same amount of work is getting done (in fact there’s more because of higher levels of engagement), only the perception has changed.

To recap my two keys to Managing Millennials:

1) Treat Them Like a Celebrity
2) Create the Progress Bar Effect

Next time…
Collaboration in Decision Making

(Adam Tenenbaum is currently right in the middle of his leadership journey, overseeing a large staff at a very successful retail operation.  He also has previous leadership experience at other prominent companies.   His primary focuses have been talent selection, employee engagement, and leadership development.)