We’re rounding the final turn on the series of 8 Leadership Lessons, and today is number 6. It’s a bit of a play on a classic saying from long ago, only with a business twist. The original version went something like this: “2 things are certain in life – Death and Taxes.” Such a prophetic saying as both things are most certainly true. The third part that I’ve added is what makes it applicable to business.
Leadership lesson number 6: “Three things are certain – Death, Taxes, and People Quit”
In business, especially in the service sector, people are the lifeblood of an organization. Without them, there is no “product” to sell. When people quit, it sometimes freaks out young leaders as they frantically scramble to try and get the workload distributed to others without affecting customers. In parallel, young leaders often take employee resignations personally. It’s almost like they view it as a failure in their leadership ability. Sometimes, people just quit and there’s nothing you can do about it as a leader.
Sometimes when people quit, it’s a good thing. It’s a good thing for the employee (they get to go pursue their passions, make more money, or get more responsibility somewhere else). It CAN be a good thing for the company (it provides upward mobility for people to step up and prove their skills, creating career paths for other top performers).
It doesn’t have to be something to fear. Just accept it as a natural inevitability, and it becomes infinitely easier to deal with.
Nearly 25 years ago, I was part of a data center managed IT services company named Inflow. One of the great things about that company was its openly stated goal of producing 50 C-Level Executives during their careers. Certainly, not all 50 of those would get that opportunity at Inflow. They’d have to go somewhere else to pursue that opportunity. Art Zeile and Joel Daly hired the best knowing some would quit, and they were OK with that. It’s not that they didn’t care about their people or Inflow was a bad company. Quite to the contrary. It was a GREAT place and they cared very much. Obviously, they didn’t want people to leave, but they understood the fact that 3 things are certain: Death, Taxes, and People Quit.
32 people “quit” and became CEOs, CFOs, COO’s, or other C-level executives since we were all part of the little Denver-based startup called Inflow back in the late 1990’s. There may be more, but I think I counted most of them. We aren’t quite all the way to the stated goal of 50 C-Level execs, but pretty darn impressive regardless.
Yours truly was number 33 when I took over as the CEO at NexusTek in 2019.
If you do your job well as a leader, you’ll prepare people for something bigger. Sometimes they’ll quit before you can create a role for them. They quit not because you’re a bad boss (unless you are), but because you’re a good one (let’s hope so). Prepare your people for the opportunity that hasn’t come along yet.