Why did they go? What I learned about turnover

Advisor: Yeah Wil, you’d be crazy to think that you’ll have the same “problems” that you have today, in 2 years.  And why ask people for advice that you don’t value anymore.  In 5 years you’ll have new issues to tackle and the people you were asking at year 2 might not have the experience you need in year 5.  Your company is growing to fast and doing too many things to have a stagnant set of advisors, and you aren’t “firing” anyone you are just calling on them less.
 

I had another moment with a friend who advises me from time to time and one day she and I were talking about hiring a COO, she even brought her COO to the call to help me figure out how to hire for this critical role.  In my typical way, I told her that on of the things I was most proud of is our lack of turnover, she cut me off quickly … here is how the convo went
 

The echo in my mind was the first convo I quoted above.  I did have to say, what is different from today than 2 years ago when turnover was non existent? A lot has changed. Here are just a few examples:

 

2 years ago SEER hired a LOT of recent college grads, groomed them and wanted them to make it up to managing accounts.  Yet when I look at my leaders who have been with me from the beginning none of them came right out of school and worked here.  I think its easy coming right out of school to think SEER is typical as a work environment or to also not really know what the heck you want in your career.

When Mark Lavoritano left last week #sadface#, he pulled me into a conference room and said, I fully NEVER expect to work for someone like you.  He said I’m not expecting my next boss to do the things you do, take the time to know me and what makes me tick, buy me tickets to a concert of a band I love, and that is ok, but I don’t expect that.  He also said, the younger folks here sometimes don’t have the appreciation that he did (having worked 2 jobs before landing at SEER).  But part of people growing up, is wanting a change of scenery, people’s lives change, so while Mark left and SEER is worse off for it, he left partially because he loves to surf and he wanted to go to San Diego and surf on the regular, but also because I think he wanted an opportunity to do more broad based marketing, I could have changed his role here, to get him some of the latter, but I can’t move a freaking ocean.  If I can find a way I will!  

Fair is fair, when I was right out of college I didn’t know what the heck I wanted, I had 2 jobs in recruiting before (short lived), but very few people come right out of school knowing exactly what they want and land the perfect job first time out of the box. That kind of turnover is OK, its part of people maturing and learning what makes them happy, I’m just thrilled that we got to be part of the journey.

As I think of some of the people who have recently left – I can’t help but think of the A to B and B to C example again and realize that there is NOTHING wrong with that.  When SEER first started we were extremely process driven because no one knew how to do SEO on the way in, but thank god in 10 years it’s now a much more popular business and instead of having to hire everyone from the ground up and train them, we’re able to get people who have a little or a lot more background in it.  And I think we needed that.  3 years ago SEER’s client roster was very different, and as such client expectations were very different.  Now our clients are bigger, and its not just knowing how to get words on a page anymore to get content pushed through, its respecting the design, knowing how to persuade the marketing teams, its business who care a LOT more about readability vs, I’ll do whatever to get rankings, its understanding how bosses make decisions and re-packaging content in a way that works for them, its knowing when to audible and do what drives value vs following process the process, you know? I think if SEER had stayed the same company we were 3 years ago attracting the same client roster, we would have been able to cover the clients, now we are looking for a different type of person, which leads me to the next part. I think this kind of turnover is OK as well, the company is maturing and the teams need to adjust with that.

As your client roster expands and starts to morph, and your prices start to increase, you will become a bigger and bigger part of your clients marketing budgets, as a result there’s more scrutiny, more of a careful eye, more focus on ROI than ever.  This means that there’s going to be more pressure from clients but also more from ME!  I care about 1 thing, and it is delivering on what we would promise, in a profitable manner.  That is it.  I want SEER to be a company that lives up to its promises, every single day, promises to each other and promises to our clients.

If someone was working at SEER 3 years ago maybe 10% of our client roster were in aggressive spaces, now it like 50% – and for those that are not in aggressive spaces they are large companies, so just being good at SEO is not sufficient anymore.  Knowing how to be persuasive, make a business case, focus on outcomes and not just tactics are areas of comfort for some and stressful for others.  If someone was hired to work on clients who were in less aggressive spaces with less pressure 3 years ago and today that has completely changed (which is a GOOD thing) – this place may not be for everyone.

Not everyone wants to KILL IT, not everyone wants to be working a  company that is PUSHING for greatness every day, as that adds pressure. It is my job to not hire people like that. But that kind of turnover to me is also completely OK.

This is the biggie.  I work so much on feelings when it comes to people, my DISC profile nailed me for that (its like Myers Briggs).  I started becoming more bottom line focused, and that probably threw a lot of people for a loop.  When you have someone whom you love working with yet you get several calls about from clients, that is a problem.  How was I so blind? Easily, I didn’t use data to drive decisions.

I think I focused so long on building an amazing culture, which is still my focus, that I didn’t focus on some very basic business metrics, like retention, ability to grow accounts, etc.  So when I started focusing just a bit on that stuff, it threw a lot of people.  No longer was it about kicking it at the Phillies game or hanging at the red hot chili peppers concert (yup 6 of us are going this weekend, and coldplay 6 weeks from now) to make me feel good about SEER it was having people who knew how to grow an account, who knew how to work in pressure situations and not get nervous, who had amazing retention.  

When you sit down with someone and for the first time in 2 years say hey, you gotta do something about retention, or hey why don’t any of your accounts grow past point X, they (rightfully so) start thinking, wait a second, why are you asking me this every week??  Thats not what I am used to.  Like it or not Crystal, I, Adam, Bonnie and Rachael are growing up from 4 kids giving this a shot 4-5 years ago to running a real business, with budget numbers that need to be hit, growth goals, projections, you know things that almost every other company has.

Its completely OK to have turnover of people who say, ahhh I can see where the company is going, and I don’t think I want that.  But I had to tell people where the company was going, after laying out our 18 month plan, people could see that performance metrics were going to be much more important, and with that a few folks said when presented with a baseline to improve from or to bounce, they bounced.

I was putting people in positions that they had no business being in.  It does NOT mean we didn’t get results, I have seen people who still are trapped in tactics, tactics, tactics, create great success for clients.  So we were always able to create success, but often times that meant more work for me and Adam who helps me run the team as we were playing backstop and reviewing a lot more docs as they went out to make sure it had the SEER take on it – that is more pressure, that that is why we are hiring an SEO manager right now!!!  

I had put some people in leadership positions whom I was going to fire years ago just to alleviate pressure from others who were getting loaded up.  This is NOT OK, I’ve only done this twice in my history and sure enough, both times it was MY FAULT 100%. 

Remember when SEO was more of a programming skill than a marketing skill?  Guess what, a lot of people who did not adapt from a dev mentality to what SEO is today (marketing mentality) will be out of jobs or may choose to leave. I know I am looking more and more for PR style people on SEER’s team.

I love panda and penguin (we’ll for the most part) its forcing us to become marketers again!!  SEO to me has never been about building links in networks, or articles or directories, its been about creating success in the face of people who win that do that low quality crap.  

That does mean that the people who were able to create success with lower level strategies are also feeling pressure to re-balance their link portfolio – it means doing the hard work to build quality links and generating MORE ideas that are link worthy, that quiet girl in the office who could build low quality sites all day and link your clients may leave the day she’s being asked to create a story and pick up the phone and call bloggers.

Not everyone wants to be an idea person or strong on execution of ideas, and that will definitely make some people opt out, this kind of turnover (industry driven) is OK!

Companies grow – Yup its a fact of life.  Deep down winners don’t want to work somewhere that is stagnant, when is the last time you admired someone who didn’t want to win? Even culture driven companies  who are not driven purely by profit, still value growth.  Their people want to be working somewhere they can be proud to be a part of, that is not to say that NOT growing is for losers, but once you hit 8-10 people guess what…Your superstars may leave if they don’t see opportunity ahead of them to gain skills in new areas, and to get more responsibility. Growth allows people to get new opportunities to learn new things and grow as professionals.

I used to fire about 30% of the people I hired in their first year, last year that # was 0, and the year before that, I think it was the same. When did I become such a whimp?  Well I didn’t entirely wimp out, I chalked it up to me getting better at hiring, and I think that is true, but I still had a few people who were around whom I should have fired.  If you aren’t going to be good at hiring, be good at firing that’s my mantra.

When you go into hiring 6 people thinking 3 won’t be there in 12 months, you become chief recruiting officer, always talent seeking, that is where I want to be and have been spending time like crazy lately to do.

But I still have one thing, am I trying to connect with people on a personal level still even though we’ve grown like 3x in people over the last 2.5 years??  I think Yes.  We still have our Phils tickets, and a few weeks ago I got to spend some non work time with Rachael, Aaron, Michelle and her beautiful daughter Grace.  I am getting PSYCHED to go bananas and take a bunch of peeps to the red hot chili peppers concert this weekend, I know we got one big fan in the crew, and I even bought a ticket for him to take a friend.  I am taking photography classes, and added in 2 people with me who just bought DSLRs, we got homework to do guys.  I put about 15 hours last month into volunteering with the covenant house, one day resulted in me starting my day at 7am in NYC presenting with clients until 4pm, and then working at the covenant house to raise funds at our casino night until 1 am.  Yup I am still committed to what got us here, knowing our team (which is getting harder, but I keep working on) and volunteering. WE had a RIP roaring good time at Mark’s going away party, and I am planning a pool party complete with Cabanas, fruity drinks etc.  All of which give me some time away to chat with the team, understand what makes them tick and why they want to come work with us.  I have a plan to have a phantom stock program which will share even more of our success with the team than ever, in spite of this nightmare.  

So those of you growing teams, whether you are an owner or a manager, here’s my thinking…first thing you do check YOURSELF, do you know why people are coming to work with you?.  Are you doing the things that make you happy, are you doing the same things you did when you started, be REALLY hard on yourself, are you creating fiefdoms, did your company become full of drama suddenly, are you promoting people whom you shouldn’t, there will be a few yeses in there, but at the CORE, are you still doing the thing to make your company remarkable, a talent magnet, a place people want to stay? 

If so, maybe its OK. If not, get back to your ROOTS!  Maybe its ok to look at your A team and say, thank you so much for your work here, thanks for helping us get to this point, we wish you the best of luck, but with where I see the company going your departure is just as good for you (alleviate pressure, unhappiness, etc) as it is for the company – all the while the B team fits the new direction of the company better and they are rarin’ to go. Those people will move on, and be someone else’s A team that fits the direction their companies are going, hopefully good for everyone all the way around.

Maybe I’m completely kidding myself, maybe I have become someone completely different than I was 3 years ago but after 3 weeks of soul searching I’m poised, ready to rock, and think the train is still on the right track in spite of departures. Read this for another great take on loving the employees that leave?

Note: I was gonna write this and send to the team and said F it its going to make a great blog post.