How will the troops perform after you have left?

It's a common bit of wisdom in the military that the best time to judge a commander is not when he's in front of his troops, but by watching how his troops perform after he has left.

Let's put that to the test. Let's assume you are a good manager (and the fact that you are reading says that you probably are). Your team is known for getting the job done well and everyone thinks you area solid leader for it. Now let's suppose that you are taken out of the picture - maybe you get promoted, maybe you hit the lottery, whatever... you are gone. What is your successor going to find?

Was your team's success due to you taking control, or because you let your team manage themselves effectively? Did they succeed because you coached and trained them well, or because you plugged the gaps they left behind. Did you have a competent, intelligent and resourceful team capable of handling exceptions, or did you shield them from change and just keep them focused on their silos? All the truth behind the performance will come shining through when a new boss takes the helm - this is why the military changes unit commanders so frequently (and maybe your company should too?)

The truth is that the best managers build great teams of fully capable and confident people who really don't need their manager on-hand to deliver success - they could basically do it without the boss in tow. Now that's not saying that the boss has no play. The fact is that the best bosses use the "free time" they get from not having to ride shotgun all day to continually refine process, preempt emergencies and constantly invest in the development of their people.

If that seems painfully simple - it is! Now, you ask if it is so simple, why don't more bosses "get it"? Answer that and the Harvard Business School will let you teach a course on it!

YOUR MISSION:

Review this post with your team and make this pact with them: "If you will help me be a better manager, I will make you the most effective and successful team in our business." This partnership is your first step towards becoming an outstanding leader of an exceptional team.

CARRY ON!

Time to go; When turnover isn't really a bad thing

All of you card carrying HR trolls in the audience, plug your ears for this one.

Turnover is NOT a bad thing!

There, I said it, and my HR training tells me I should go wash my mouth out with soap for spewing such treason. After all, page 96 of the HR Secret Code Book clearly states that turnover is an indicator of problems and brings huge costs to the company - right??? BUNK!

Sure, turnover is a critical stat for any organization to watch, and I fully acknowledge that the cost of turnover can be something like 150% to 250% of a person's salary, and some will argue that these costs make higher levels of turnover unsustainable. But while these are basically true, they sort of lead you to believe that lower turnover is better always better - and that's not always the case either. There are some general rules that apply; Too much turnover, for too long can be a bad thing because it causes instability, poor moral and prevents the development of individual expertise and organizational culture. Too little turnover can denote stagnation, complacency and a weak performance culture.

Let's look at an example of where a short burst of high turnover can be just what the medicine man ordered.

You run a sales organization with 50 salespeople, each of whom is paid a base salary of $100,000 has a $1 million annual target. If they are on average only hitting 50% of goal, you are only realizing $25 million in revenues against a $50 million goal. How long can you sustain that??

The truth is that while turning over half of your sales force at 250% of their annual salary will cost you over $6 million in turnover costs, you are just cutting your losses.... the costs in lost sales from that group is over $12 million! I'm no math major, but that sounds like a pretty good start. And if you follow our prior lessons about hiring talented people, you might actually have a shot at them actually making their sales goal and turning a profit along the way. And if most of those who leave do so after having been counseled about their poor results, coached on how to improve them and still not getting it done, you get the bonus prize of having established a performance baseline so EVERYONE knows it's time to put up, or move out. Combined with the potential for better hires due to turnover, you've now got the makings of a very solid and performance focused workforce.

Yes, it all sounds pretty cut-throat, and we all know I am a proponent of the "try to develop rather than replace" approach, but let's face it; not everyone is in the right place to grow and perform at a given moment, so the "manage them up or manage them out" approach fits best sometimes.

YOUR MISSION:
Get your HR folks to help you dissect your turnover. Compare your turnover against performance results. How is your turnover spread across groups (job, tenure, age, gender, ethnicity, supervisors, locations, etc). You are looking for evidence that you are holding on to your top performers and exiting your worst. If that's not the case, get HR to help you dig deeper and find ways to make it so.