Why is it so hard to keep our brightest and most ambitious employees?
I will preface this by saying that we have fantastic retention at EMG. This conversation and question, is not about EMG specifically, but about companies at large and human nature.
One of my fundamental responsibilities as President is to create the longest possible overlap between the company’s strategy and an employees ambition.
Said another way, I am responsible for overlapping EMG’s growth with our employees growth, for as long as possible.
I tell my teammates, “You should be here as long as you are happy, challenged, and on the trajectory that you want to be to achieve your dreams. The moment that stops, engage me, and challenge me to continue to deliver on that reality.”
Not everyone takes me up on that, but many do.
I realize that at times, the right answer is to encourage and assist people in moving on from EMG. It’s not often, but it happens. If their passion is truly beyond the reach of our strategy. Fortunately, as we grow there is such great room to provide exciting opportunities for people to assume and grow into. But, it’s not all of them.
Why can it be so challenging then, to keep our brightest and most ambitious employees satisfied?
The answer to me is threefold:
1. FOCUSSING ON PROBLEMS versus OPPORTUNITIES: Our brightest and most ambitious employees do a GREAT job, and we tend to focus our energy on problems. They are seldom a problem. In fact, they make whatever they are working on – a NON problem. So, we don’t realize their need and desire to grow and diversify their skill set. We aren’t often aware there is an unmet need.
2. WE DON’T WANT TO CREATE MORE PROBLEMS: We’ve all heard the quote, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That is a dangerous quote. It leads to complacency, and a culture where you are WAITING for things to break, for people to get frustrated, before addressing their needs. Our best and brightest handle their stuff well, and we are selfish. While we “want” to give them more opportunities, we don’t want to create additional problems, risk and headaches for ourselves. So we often move VERY slow in transitioning good people out of successful roles. We should be leveraging their ambition to give them the opportunity train their successors!
3. WE ARE ITERATIVE when we should be DISCONTINOUS: We don’t want to create more problems, so we iterate. They are doing A, so lets give them A+1, that is growth. The problem is, they are doing A, but they are dreaming of D and E… so A+1 isn’t really exciting. The danger is that, the competition, doesn’t have A… they don’t have them at all. We do! And, the competition is often willing to try them at C or D. They seem very capable and ambitious! It’s ironic and terribly disappointing, when someone that doesn’t even KNOW your rockstar is willing to put them on a much bigger stage than you are… when they have been delivering to you with excellence for months or years. We are so often willing to take much bigger risks with people we don’t know (but are interviewing) than with people we know and trust. That’s NUTS!
Human nature amuses me. We have been fortunate to keep so many of our rock stars at EMG, and give them great opportunities for growth. But, it always amazes me the dynamics of people we interview, and how willing we are to give them bigger roles just because they applied for it, versus current employees who are already part of the team, but didn’t apply.
Every so often I look around, and calibrate… are people where they are supposed to be based on their skill set, not just based on what position on our game board they started on?
I love seeing people grow and stretch – specially people who have been loyal, hard working, open minded and problem solvers. It is a wonderful reward of leadership and management… seeing the organization grow around you.
SO, as with many things, the theory is simple, the application is harder.
What should we do, acknowledging the truth of human nature to optimize the longevity and experience of our strongest employees?
1. KNOW WHO YOUR ROCK STARS ARE and WORK AN AMBITIOUS PLAN DELIBERATELY. Make it an even higher priority than resolving your poor performers! To the extent that you can, focus on the OPPORTUNITY first and the PROBLEMS second.
2. LEVERAGE YOUR STRONGEST EMPLOYEES to LEAD and EXECUTE their own succession plan. And, be crazy supportive of it! Who better to train their successors, and it makes your whole organization grow!
3. TAKE RISK WITH YOUR TOP PERFORMERS, and stretch them with exciting opportunities. Show them you trust them and set clear expectations. What is the worst thing that can happen? Whatever it is, it is very likely better than having your competition give them the chance before you get to…
Be mindful of human nature and the status quo. As leaders, we should be challenging ourselves and our teams to think BIGGER and SMARTER…
And, I for one am crazy grateful for our rock stars and for all of our employees… and part of my role is to be their biggest champion.
My role is to look for discontinuous growth for our company, which is driven by discontinuous growth from our employees that have an appetite for it!
If leadership was easy, everyone would be doing it.
We do a pretty good job of this at EMG… and I write about it, because I want to do it even better!
If it ain’t broke… think about how to make it better BEFORE it breaks… and IMPROVE IT before you have to FIX it ;-)
Yours in discontinuous harmony,
Nestor