Poaching: A Word for the Weak.
Years ago a promising young woman, let’s call her Janet, got a job at a large company in Cupertino. She was excited about the prospect of working at this world renowned billion dollar corporation, as she has always had a special affinity for the CEO: the barefooted, macrobiotic hippie who happens to be one of the most influential people on the planet. She too is a hippie, eating a strange diet, but not barefooted due to her parents frowning on such things as filthy feet.
She worked very hard in this position, and helped create new technologies and processes for mining their mounds of information. Every review she received was stellar, her performance rating only went up each year, and she helped save the company a lot of money. Her manager and director consistently rate her in the top 5 of the group.
But after doing this for over 5 years, she starts to consider the next thing. Janet tried for years to move within her group, but her Director prefers her for this one thing. Apparently she’s too good at her job to move to another role in the same group.
Managing Employee Growth
As someone who has managed employees for over 20 years, I’ve grown a lot since my early management days. I used to think that everyone works hard on their area of expertise and a good product will come out. But now I believe we can’t be in this just for ourselves. We need to work as a team, and we need work in the best interests of the product, the group and the company.
As a manager, I also keep up to date on the performance and projects of my best employees, and work to help them achieve their goals. Because when the best employees hit or exceed their targets, the product benefits, the company benefits, and so does the management team. I’m rarely surprised when good employees wish to advance, and I usually have plans in place for when that time comes. Or even better, I start working on advancement projects for key employees from the moment I realize their abilities.
In some groups, like the one I ran at Apple, I realize that some employees have growth that just cannot exist within my group. I ran an Operations team, and I had a key employee interested in marketing. Obviously that role doesn’t make sense within my operations org, so I got her invited to a recurring company wide marketing meeting to represent my organization. Not only did I get incredible information from her attendance, she figured out the group in the company in which she wanted to work, and she also received an offer from that group. For me, this was a win-win: she will continue to positively represent my organization (I refer to this as spreading the sphere of influence) and be a top performer in another organization.
If Janet were on my team, I would have already been working with her on advancement opportunities within my team or get her some introductions on teams with positions in her area of expertise.
What happened to Janet?
Janet was called into a meeting with the VP, her old director, and her new director. The old director accused the new director of poaching. Janet reminded everyone that she reached out to the new director, not the other way around. It didn’t matter, the word had already been said out loud.
There are words that spark a response, either positively or negatively. Some call them loaded, others say charged, but they do elicit a response. When a girl you’re dating tells you they love you, that usually sparks a very positive response in your brain (and your heart). When someone calls you a name, that usually sparks a negative response in your brain. When someone uses one of the very negatively charged words, your response escalates significantly. In the business world, there are certain business words that are very negatively charged.
One of these negatively charged words is poaching.
Poaching
In many corporations, poaching is a charged word used by a manager to shut down the hiring of their people by another team. It is a word used by weak managers who have no vision, or ability, to evolve the group. Evolution is required in any good business.
Poaching is just one of the many words or phrases used by weak managers to justify why they are unable to do their job. After all, if a manager, or director, cannot keep their employees satisfied and growing in their job, are they doing their job? This is why I refer to them as weak managers. Managers who just cannot keep it together.
According to the dictionary, poaching is to take or acquire in an unfair way or to illegally hunt or catch something on land that is not one’s own. Putting this into the business perspective, I do not agree that Janet was poached, and nobody in the room thought this either. But the VP had something to consider, perception.
Managing Perception
On one hand, perception matters. People often say perception equals reality, which isn’t really true, but it rings true. If someone believes your group is one that poaches, then other groups won’t want to work with you. Even if it isn’t true. And that’s what I hate about perception, it doesn’t always equal truth. So while I hate dealing with false perceptions, I understand and manage them.
In this case, the VP had to contend with perception, and rather than mixing things up and creating lasting frustration, he wanted it all to go away. So he squashed Janet’s move.
What should have happened?
Good managers (at any level in the hierarchy), are always working an employee type of chessboard as a way to keep the group performing well. A good manager should always be a few steps ahead of their employees with regards to their next steps, and should grease the wheels, so to speak.
When working with your employees who wish to leave, see it as an opportunity to spread your sphere of influence throughout the company. You want other teams to see and understand your team better? Let them hire one of your best employees. And believe me, your employees will remember you as the manager that helped them find their next big opportunity.
Don’t be that manager who wants to always keep the status quo. It is unrealistic and does not benefit your company.
Janet stayed in the group for a few more years before finding another job within the company. She left the company a few years after that, her experience soured by that poaching claim uttered so many years ago.