Here is an excerpt from an article written by Steven DeMaio for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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When asked what factors matter most in retaining talented employees, most of us can name the big ones: pay, advancement, recognition, exciting challenges, the long-term prospects of the organization, the quality of its leadership, and so on. But like other employees, top performers spend most of their time living with the day-to-day decisions of their direct managers. What distinguishes a top performer is that she often has the talent to do her manager’s job and a keen ability to assess her manager’s choices. That makes her more likely than other employees to seek a change in her work situation if she perceives those small matters as hindrances to her performance, even if the big factors pass muster.

Here are the little things that top performers tend to notice quickly, find irksome, and cite as job drawbacks when they confide in colleagues and when they decide to leave an organization. (The list is not based on systematic research but rather on what I’ve observed anecdotally, and often, working alongside top performers in a variety of business contexts.)

[Here is the first of four “little things.” To read the complete article, please click here.]

1. Dropped balls. No one likes when a manager allows important matters to slip through his hands and bounce away, only to be recovered when an employee is bold enough to restore them to his attention. But top performers are especially likely to feel responsible to do that recovery and to be disappointed in the manager whose oversight forced them to it (assuming they’re not motivated by one-upsmanship). That’s not to say that top performers don’t recognize the deliberate selection of balls to juggle as a managerial strength, but when efficiency is compromised because of inattention rather than priority-setting, dropped balls just look like an uninspired mess.

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Steven DeMaio is a teacher and writer. This blog chronicles his experiences after he chose to change careers just as a terrible recession took hold. Steve now writes his own blog called “Working for Yourself.” To check out his other HBR blog articles, please click here.