The Art Of Leaving
Leaving something you care about is hard. Be it a team, a loved one, or an animal. So why do we do it?
When I thought about this post, I remembered a quote I read a long time ago — in all the places, in a Netflix Culture Deck. The Keeper Test for Managers, they call it:
Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix?
This is incredibly strong. Apply this to your team, right now! Make sure that the people you name in your head are aware of this. If that means giving them a raise (assuming you can afford it), give them the raise. If that means giving them some small perk, give them that perk. Never save money on your team. It will never pay off. But the very least, make them feel appreciated.
People are generally motivated by one of the three pillars of satisfaction: (1) Money, (2) People and (3) Challenge. In my opinion, this can be translated to most “relationships” — just not using the exact same words (e.g. money can be characterized as Safety/Comfort). In any case, for us to be happy, we must have a certain amount of each of these items. A while ago, a couple of my ex-colleagues and I postulated that the sum of these three pillars must be constant. We can still feel satisfied in a job where we work with an amazing team, and are solving (what we deem are) hard challenges. That’s why people work for startups. The pay is everything but great, and the risk is incredibly high. And yet, new startups grow everyday.
Reasons for Leaving
Which leads us to leaving. The primary reason for leaving a company is getting a job offer that increases either the sum of all three pillars, or pillars that we value more. It’s logical that we each have different value perceptions. For example, I value family more than I value power or money. Right now, I consider myself fortunate. I am a software engineer/architect, and as such am currently in high demand. This means that I have the incredible fortune of being able to get offers fairly often. When I evaluate them, I always see what the team looks like, what the challenges are that I would be solving, will I make enough to survive, and will there be any money left over. Those are my priorities. I am perfectly comfortable accepting an offer that pays less but affords me the luxury of a tougher challenge.
So when people decide to leave, that means you (as a manager) are doing something wrong. Depending on personal priorities of each person, of course, it means that you neglected one or more of their pillars of satisfaction enough that they started looking around.
Keeping Talent
So, as a manager, what can you do to keep talent on board? First, make sure you understand why they left.
This Forbes article sums up the reasons pretty well, in my opinion. The first three are all related to one’s creativity, passion and/or intellect. Make sure they are challenged. Sit down with your team often, discuss what they are doing, and what they would like to do.
If I tell you I don’t like doing tasks A and B, and would rather be doing C, make your best effort to let me do more of C. It’ll pay off!
This seems obvious enough, and yet, I know so many managers who simply forget this. They assign tasks to people because that’s what they do, rarely thinking about what that person would really like to be doing. Keep in mind, sometimes it happens that there just is no way out. In those cases, parting ways is the best approach, for both.
Some will be driven by pure money, so if they are doing a good job, reward them, or sit down and discuss a reward process if higher pay is not an option right now.
If, the pillars crash, the employee accepts another offer or just decided to leave, it is very rarely a quick decision, and it’s almost never an easy one.
The Ballmer Resignation
When Steve Ballmer resigned, the internet blew up. Some said it was already too late, some argued it was about time. Few believe he’s right for the company though — including myself. However, the decisions he has had to make, the models he has had to understand are so complex, whoever comes next will have his/her work cut out.
But when you look at his resignation from the context of this post — who are we to judge him? Can you imagine how difficult it must have been for him to leave “his” company behind? He was with the company for more than 30 years. I would love to see the (true) reasoning behind this.
Leaving from the employee’s perspective
It’s fu****g hard. By the time we’re 30, we will have leave or be left several times. Maybe the person we thought we’ll be spending the rest of our lives together left us, maybe we left the person that thought will be spending the rest of their lives with us, maybe we left our family when we went for school. It’s never easy. And we all remember what it feels like.
When an employee tells you they’re leaving, think of how hard it was for you to make such a decision before you get emotionally upset at him/her.
If I care about the team, and I still decided to quit, that tells you I have given it an incredible amount of thought and consideration. Ask me for my reasons and then improve.
Unless you were an idiot, in which case all of your team will leave anyway, chances are, we got along. Chances are, I loved the team I was working with. And if I still decided to part ways, that means something must have really bothered me. Ask me what it was. I’ll tell you. And then, go back and improve this so others don’t leave. This is (easily) applicable to other areas, too. Including family and relationships. Think about it. Then improve.
