The People You Can’t Afford to Lose Are the First to Go
How reactive systems push out the ones trying to make them better
This essay is for paying subscribers to The CP Journal.
Here is the claim: When leaders choose to position their organizations right of bang, they lose the people most capable of making the organization better.
Said another way: The most capable people are the least likely to stay in a reactive system.
When a high-performing person “leaves” a reactive organization, it usually looks like one of three things:
They leave the organization and get a new job somewhere else. This is often abrupt and catches leadership off guard.
They stay, but become frustrated and negative. They are tolerated for their past performance, but are increasingly difficult to work with.
They stay, but disengage. They become indifferent operators and supervisors who have accepted that nothing is going to change.
None of these outcomes improve the organization’s ability to perform or meet the needs and expectations of their customers or community.
Organizations spend an enormous amount of time and effort recruiting, hiring, and onboarding the right people. But it is the system they place them into that determines whether those people help move the organization forward—or slowly disengage from it.