Here is an excerpt from another outstanding article featured by Forbes magazine’s website and written by Erika Andersen. To read the complete article, check out other resources, sign up for free email alerts, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
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Eric Jackson, a fellow Forbes blogger I follow and find both funny and astute, wrote a really spot-on post last month about why top talent leaves large corporations. He offered ten reasons, all of which I agreed with – and all of which I’ve seen played out again and again, over the course of 25 years of coaching and consulting. The post was wildly popular – over 1.5 million views at this writing.
So why do we find this topic so interesting? I suspect it’s because we’re genuinely curious: What would make a very senior executive – someone who most certainly has been courted by his or her organization and then paid huge sums of money to join – decide to pack it in? Is it greed (an even richer offer down the street)? Hubris? Short attention span? Or do 1%ers actually leave jobs for the same reasons as the average Joe or Josie?
According to Jackson (and, again, I agree with him) top talent does indeed leave for the same reasons everyone else does. If I were to distill his ‘top ten reasons’ down to one, it’s this:
Top talent leave an organization when they’re badly managed and the organization is confusing and uninspiring.
About half of Eric’s ten reasons are about poor people management – either systemically, as in poor performance feedback, or individually, as in, my boss sucks. And the other half are about organizational lameness: shifting priorities, no vision, close-mindedness.
It really is that simple. Not easy, mind you, but remarkably simple. If you want to keep your best people….
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Erika then offers two practical suggestions that can be implemented immediately. To read the complete article, please click here.
As she explains, “I’m the founding partner of Proteus International, the author of Growing Great Employees and Being Strategic, and an insatiably curious human being. I love figuring out how people, situations and objects work – and how they could work better: faster, smarter, deeper, with greater satisfaction, more affection, and a higher fun quotient. You can follow me on Twitter @erikaandersen.”