4 Tips to Retain Great Talent

My earlier post “Hire for Passion, Mentor for Skills” focused on my view in identifying the traits of a great hire. But it doesn’t mean much if we cannot retain talent. But how do we retain people we love? Well, that’s easy. We make it an awesome place to work. That’s it! :). But what does “great place to work” with “great culture” mean practically? Here is my take on it.

Motivation

Nope. I am not going to say that leaders need to keep great people motivated. If we have to keep them motivated, they wouldn’t be great. Great people tend to generate their own fuel. They tend to motivate themselves. All we need to do as leaders are to point to the goal-post (purpose or cause) and get the heck out of their way. I vividly remember a time in my career where I needed to know every decision knowing every detail. I wasn’t necessarily micro-managing (what I believed anyway) but I had to know everything. After all, I thought, I am the leader and I am ultimately responsible for the project. But what I learned quickly is that if I mentally own it at that level, the team members don’t feel the ownership. It may even come across as we, as leaders, don't trust them. Why? Because it's true. And trust especially matters with great people. If they don’t feel ownership and empowerment, they don’t get the satisfaction (fuel) they need to be self-motivated. This is a classic rookie mistake. I realized that leadership is also about *taking* risks, not just about *mitigating* it. So, if you believe you’ve hired great people, I have only this advice: Convey cause/goal/purpose and get the heck out of their way. Take a risk. Trust them. If they make a mistake, take the fall. If you've hired a great person, it's incredible what they'll do for you. Also, you've gained a talent for longterm that spans across your jobs.

The team in front, lead from the back

As a leader, we must be very confident and decisive. We must constantly self-reflect to make sure our statements, heated (passionate) discussions, disagreements are not the result of our ego. Unfortunately, this can happen at a subconscious level. We have a strong biological desire to be right or win. Be confident but be objective. And if we're wrong, admit it blatantly and publicly. This conveys confidence but not arrogance. We'll gain incredible respect and we need it to succeed as a leader. This creates a culture that is conducive to openness. Also, we need to genuinely care about their career growth. As Sir Richard Branson says “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to.” This is one of my favorite quotes. Be genuine, be selfless, and align company goals with people’s growth.

Give them an opportunity, not a job

If we want to keep great people, we must give them an opportunity, not a job. Opportunity to learn, make mistakes, grow, lead, and manage themselves. Be a leader, not a manager. Financial incentives might be one of the factors to get people to join but it certainly isn’t enough to keep them there and motivated. Money is a short-acting motivating tool at best. But let me be clear, we must pay them enough to get money discussion off the table. We all need money but we want meaning. By meaning, I mean a cause or purpose. This is especially true with great talent. As leaders, we must be infectious with our passion, dedication, and working for that "cause". Be genuine, be selfless, and give them opportunities.

Don’t fix the problem, eliminate it

Here is what I mean. Why does working at startups seem more fun and incredibly more rewarding than working at large companies? It may not be true for everyone but at the risk of an overgeneralization, great talent tends to gravitate towards smaller companies (even if they choose to join big companies for other reasons). In any case, what do startups have that (most) big companies don’t? One word comes to my mind: chaos. And no, I don’t mean “state of confusion” side of the term “chaos”. I mean the following: a bit of disorder, unstructured, agility, loosely coupled, etc. Larger companies tend to be more stagnant. They are more stagnant because everything is highly “normalized” (sorry, I am a DB guy) or highly structured with plenty of processes. Hence, everything moves slowly.

But why do large companies need to be more structured, have more processes and policies? In general, as a company grows, they run into the typical growth-related challenges/problems, and whola, the process is born. It's a reaction we're all familiar with. An employee does something foolish, a new policy gets established. For years, I assumed that there isn’t a way to avoid this as the company grows. Then, I came across one slide (yes, just ONE slide) in Netflix’s Culture slide-deck that new employees are encouraged to read. That one slide depicted a graph that conveys “As companies grow, the talent density shrinks”. Although I have not seen it firsthand, I knew instantly they were onto something. I have been a strong believer of “stay small, only elites” for many years but I couldn’t put it so eloquently. I hadn’t connected the dots. It finally hit me. I realized that the “growth problem” was not a scalability problem. It’s a people problem. Period. For whatever reason, our bar for the best talent drops as the company grows. Why does this happen? In my experience, it’s because we have pressure to grow and grow fast. But that urgency for growth causes our bar to lower. Before you know it, the organization runs into all sorts of issues, and processes/policies are introduced to band-aid it.

On a side note, I want to be clear. I am not against processes. I am against the process created for the wrong reasons. An airline pilot needs to go through the takeoff checklist no matter how good he/she is. That is a good process that feels right. It feels important regardless of how good the talent is. I am talking about processes/policies such as “Thou shall not come to the office in underwear”. :). Don’t create processes to deal with the lowest common denominator. Because everyone suffers because of that one person. Best talent leave when it isn’t fun anymore and the wrong type of people stay, which is about the worst thing that can happen to a company. So, don’t fix the problem, eliminate it. In other words, don’t create a process, terminate the employee. Let’s face it. If you have to vocalize (obvious) proper attire, that will be the least of our problem keeping that person.