Why Do Good Employees Leave
People make companies - companies do not make people. This well known fact is discussed more common than any other topic in corporate history. Yet, companies and ideas fail and yet companies tend to become mediocre and yet teams can't execute. We experience and hear about people leaving everyday – at the companies we work in, in the news, at your friends firm, etc. Which is fine because change is good. But sometimes, change is not so good. It’s when some of your best employees leave you. And when the movers and shakers and true leaders leave, it creates a void that often reeks of insecurity and/or mediocrity.Having worked in 10 companies in and outside of the US since 1995, I remember people leaving more than people joining these companies. Particularly, I remember that it was always the super star, the person who was supposed to take us to the “next generation” that left. It was never the Stephen Root (‘Milton’ from the movie Office Space) .
It used to make me frustrated, curious and sometimes angry. All those promises, all those ideas and talks about “changing the game” boiled down to a 2 week notice and a cheap cake from Sam’s Club to celebrate the resignation.
What’s worse, the management does not even realize that this employee was your best bet and a rare catch to come by again.
Why Do They Leave?
1. Management: People beget people to change. The ideas and the infrastructure around them is typically unchanged. Super-stars are ambitious, entrepreneurial and born leaders – all in their own way of course. But when these folks report to people that don’t share similar work-ethic philosophies and spirit or if their boss(s) are the kind of people that never realize the true potential his/her subordinates – your super-star leaves. They won’t waste a minute sticking around because they are hungry and feel the need to expend their energy and leverage their true potential. I have seen cases where the boss is too busy to meet with people who report to him or is clueless about the actual job at hand and in some cases, a complete idiot. You can’t have Guy Kawasaki’s of the world report to Stephen Root.
2. Product: I was shocked when Adam Bosworth left Google. I mean the guy created GoogleHealth and today this product promises to be Google’s flag-ship offering in the healthcare space. I can only speculate but my guess is that Adam wanted much more than a mere portal. Leaders tend to be visionaries – right or wrong. They see what others don’t. But often, their vision is not shared by everyone. This could be a good thing or a bad thing for the company – depending on what is it that your star performer wants to undertake. The investors want something else so let’s change the direction. The competitors now has this feature so let’s change direction. The new CEO likes something else so let’s ditch our efforts from past 6 months. The CIO decided to cut the budget without consulting anyone so your work efforts are history. Super-stars see through oddities and BS very easily. It’s tough to get these guys think like the heard! They will leave and maybe become your competitor one day.
3. Colleagues: What happens when you put mediocre people with stellar performers? What happens when you are the only person who understands the problem at hand? What happens when the folks you most closely work with tend to be the uninterested 9-5 ‘get the bare minimum done to meet the requirements and go home’ types? What happens when you work with folks who are clueless about the industry and continue to argue as if they are subject matter experts? What happens when you put people who are not willing to change the norm and go beyond traditional boundaries? The super-stars leave. Face it – smart people thrive in an environment with smarter people and innovative thinking. You can’t keep them around with mediocrity surrounding them.
4. Market: Make hay when the sun shines! You could work in a great environment with really smart employees with cutting edge technology and an equally appealing compensation package. You’re not going to be able to keep super-stars in-house because no matter what you do – they still want to change the world and do it all at once. They are opportunists. Most leave, some stick around. The ones that stick around the ones who have been respected and treated well when the market was bad. And I agree, sometimes these folks stick around under the radar if the market is bad and downplay their true capabilities just to stay in the game. For those companies that usually cannot attract such candidates, it’s great. But they run a near 99% risk of loosing them when things start to look better.
5. Lack of Innovation: When companies like Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Cisco, etc were first formed – it would have been quite a rush to work for them. Fast forward couple of decades and you have some of the biggest companies in the world and growing. Yes a lot of these companies are innovative, but how you ask and how fast? Do I want to work on something for 10 years to bring my idea to market? Do I want my ideas to become a patent and just sit in the licensing queue before someone picks it up? Or is the product deck a result of strategic M&A activity? When large companies reach at the top of the bell curve, it’s tough to change things quickly and effectively. There are fiscal obligations (SEC), there are regulatory issues (SoX), there are operational issues (SAP), there are investor relations to maintain (NASDAQ), there are 80,000 mouths affected by your decision, etc. And companies become comfortable. They are no longer desperate to meet that next deadline or to get that next deal to meet payroll neither are they in any hurry to market any big movies that will cut into their legacy induced bread-n-butter. But then why would any entrepreneurial minded person stick around? There’s no incentive for that person to be at a company this large and comfortable. Leaders like to take risks and be in a constant state of change.
6. Growth: You can’t expect super-stars to do the same thing for a long time. They are way to smart and ambitious to do a single task year after year. And if they are still doing the same job after 5 years in the same big company, they’re probably working on their own idea of a start up or already have a side business running successfully. If you cannot offer a reasonable opportunity to grow for such employees, they will get bored and leave. Or if the market served by your company holds little relevance to the future of the products you work on, the super-star definitely does not want to become obsolete.
6. TPS Reports: You can’t micro-manage super-stars. Just does not work. It's a catch 22 situation - if you cannot recognize one and continue to treat your top employee like everyone else, he/she will leave. Stuff like "daily reports" or dropping by the office every 2 days to see "what are you going to be working on today" only produce bureaucracy and irritation. But people like to feel important. People love control and control is the biggest demotivator for your super-star. Continue trying to get justification from such employees and you will be left with people who just want to "hang around".
Know your employees from what they do in and outside of work and the kind of things they talk about. Don’t review them based on how many projects they worked on and how many specs they wrote or whether or not they meet their deadline. Be a good judge of character and an even better judge of what the person is truly capable of doing. The likelihood of your resumé landing in the super-stars hand is much higher than it going to anyone else. Especially in today’s socially connected environment. So be in his/her good books.
I miss my colleagues at CMGI. The caliber of folks I met in that company were by far some of the brightest most dedicated entrepreneurial minded folks that wanted to change the world.
People make ideas - ideas do not make people.
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posted by Janak Joshi @ 9/30/2009 02:51:00 PM
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