Are we retaining our best talent?

 I don’t know who “we” are. In general though, there are some obvious repeating trends/patterns IME. Organizations vary widely in the ways they search for, screen, select, on-board (socialize) and design work for employees. IME many organizations routinize those processes in generic ways that inexorably if not intentionally pound new employees into “our way of doing things.” That socialization process discourages many new, highly talented, energetic, creative people. Some conformity is necessary to “organize” energy. Finding that middle ground that focuses human capital pools without de-energizing them is an important and often overlooked effort.

Understanding that not everyone by a long shot is linearly (upwardly) motivated is an important first step in strategic human resource acquisition and retention. (See Career Concepts below—adapted from Driver and Brousseau at USC.) Ignoring the goodness of fit between candidates and organization culture, between strategic needs for innovation and creativity and conformity, and between respect for tradition and emerging competition contributes to the flight of highly talented people. The “off-boarding” process should include IMO careful analysis that should inform the recruiting processes. Frequently they don’t.

I’ve been privileged with many excellent, well-known clients. In those leadership development seminars I always respected adult learning theory (adults learn best by dealing with issues of immediate relevance to them) by beginning with “what are the biggest problems you are facing?” That one hour exercise in a week-long seminar always produced a list of what the mid-to-upper level manager/executives saw as critical to them. Over time, I could predict even across different clients what the list would be. We wrote those on flip charts so we could refer to them and connect them with our session by session discussions. Despite my efforts to upload to management the content of those lists, most clients seemed utterly uninterested. They didn’t want a feedback loop, just a repeatedly “successful” seminar.

One example and I’ll stop. After introducing the Career Concepts research in a session, a man came up to me and said, “Why don’t executives listen?” What do you mean? “I’m an engineer, a good one. In my previous (very well known) employer because I did good work, they kept putting me in leadership development seminars. I said, Look I don’t want to be promoted. I love my work, I want to do it well, and go home and be with my family. They didn’t listen, so finally it got so annoying that I quit and came here. I’ve only been here for six months and already they’ve put me in your leadership development program! Why?” The answer is because those executives who are Linearly oriented have a VABE that everyone is or should be like them. As one COO said to me, “If the janitor in this company doesn’t desire to be the CEO, we should fire his ass out of here because that’s the American way, you pick yourself up by your bootstraps and climb as high as you can.”

Is your best talent leaving your organization? Perhaps it’s because they don’t get the respect and latitude that they deserve. It could be because of money (they often say), AND IME people would rather love their work and whom they work with than make a few more bucks—which IME as alumni have called me and said, leaves them unhappy.  

For more, see my website at Level Three Leadership.