Let's talk about Non-Regrettable Churn

Since I dropped such a big post on you last week, let’s knock down a quicker target with this post.

This post is less about unloading some big, thought-provoking cargo into your brain. Instead, it’s more about creating the excuse to circulate this idea with a few people and have an honest conversation about people who don’t belong, past, present, and future.

You almost can’t talk about this topic enough. It’s easy to slide backwards into feeling like you need to save everyone you manage. It’s a common mental error to believe that everyone can be (or wants to be) a part of the team, and that we just need to say the right words in the right order to make that happen.

But that isn’t reality. In reality, your team might only be suitable for ½ of people. Maybe your team is special and it’s only right for 1/10 people. Or maybe your work requires an extremely unique mentality, and it’s only right for 1/100 or 1/1,000 or 1/10,000 people.

And that is okay, even if it seems elitist or cruel at first glance. Let me explain.

What qualities are we looking for?

Self-Aware

According to research by Tasha Eurich, only 10-15% of people are self aware. That means that about 9/10 people you meet do not understand the biases of their own thinking, nor do they understand the impact their actions have on other people.

(anyone come to mind?)

They cannot tell the difference between when their brain’s impulses are right, or when they are way off the mark. So they proceed as if their brain has a 1.000 batting average.

Right there, that’s 9/10 people you probably don’t want on your team.

We want self-aware people. And that is okay.

Cooperative

Most estimates of psychopathy, sociopathy, and narcissistic personality disorder suggest that about 5-10% of people are super bad news. As in they will hurt other people if it helps them to get ahead, or they’ll hurt them just for fun.

Did you know that the most common place to find these people is in law, medicine, the media, executive leadership, and politics, not prison?

How many psychopaths and narcissists do we want on the team? Zero.

We want cooperative people.

Good Temperament

If you want someone who is authentically cooperative, and kind, and self aware, and organized, and hard working, and creative, and a deep thinker, and assertive, and enthusiastic, and inspiring, and not too anxious or irritable, you are talking about an extraordinarily rare human being. Maybe 1%, maybe 0.01%, depending on the strength of these traits.

People can force themselves to be nicer, more organized, harder working, more creative, and more thoughtful. But do we want the people who have to force themselves the most, or do we want the people who actually want to act these ways?

We want people with an appropriate personality and temperament for the kind of work we do.

Churning, Fast and Slow

We will always eventually discover if someone isn’t the right person for the job. Eventually, it’ll be clear that someone is not self-aware. It’ll be clear that someone is only acting out of their own self interest and finds it weirdly easy to harm other people. And it’ll be clear if a person just can’t force themselves to be nicer, more patient, more resilient, more creative, more perceptive, or more focused.

Do you want to find this out in 2 years, or 2 months?

Non-regrettable churn (losing people we are okay losing) should not be something your organization is configured to do slowly. But that is exactly how a lot of organizations act because of a misplaced hope in people’s willingness to grow.

An organization I used to work with had two product leaders who were just horrible. They were horrible at product, and they were (are) not cooperative human beings. They undermine their peers, don’t listen to anything, don’t play well with others, and don’t grow. Everyone hated working with them.

I told the client that they both needed to go, and fast. They disagreed.

The problem with bad product leaders is that when product is bad, everyone suffers. Sales, marketing, engineering, design, customer success, and downstream, finance. If your product sucks because your product people are self-unaware, antisocial, or a poor psychological fit, everyone’s jobs get harder. Anyone like this anywhere is a problem, but a problem like this in product is a huge issue.

But they thought that these people needed more feedback and more time to grow. Two years later, one of them left on their own. I received over 50 text messages from people celebrating it. And what did they do? They promoted the other guy to see if he could “grow into the role.” This guy still plagues them today, getting constant feedback, growing not at all.

This organization believes, deep in their soul, that they can help anyone blossom into a great team member. But here we are, 4 years later, the products they influence still suck, the teams around this person are still miserable, and they simply can’t grasp that swapping this person for someone who is self-aware, who is not a narcissist, and who actually has the right kind of mind for product would have helped them arrive at a different endpoint than where they sit today.

Speed it up

I mentioned this a few times in the last post. A natural consequence of getting clearer about what we believe is you will meet people who just refuse to believe. They will refuse it in their words, their actions, and their lack of growth.

You will be surprised at how honest a lot of people will be about their lack of belief and buy in. Someone who worked for me a few years ago (very briefly) kept jumping into our internal meetings super-counterproductively.

I simply asked him, “Do you believe that what you are doing in these meetings is the best way of us working?”

The answer: “Yes.”

I asked again, “Are you sure you genuinely believe that’s the best approach?”

The answer: “100%. That is who I am. Take it or leave it.”

Easy choice. I left it. A few months later, I had someone in the same role who was a joy to work with.

Be really clear with what is logical and productive to believe. And when people are illogical and counterproductive, and they stick to their guns, set them free with zero regrets.

If someone does want to grow, they are clearly growing, and you can afford to invest in their growth (e.g., you aren’t an early stage startup or PE company), go for it.

If they don’t, it’s non-regrettable churn, and it was their choice.

Show some love

The flip-side of this is something we can often take for granted, and shouldn’t. Do you have anyone on your team who is self-aware, incredibly cooperative, and has an incredible mentality?

When’s the last time you were grateful for that? When’s the last time you showed it?

Go show some love.

I hope that you can share this with a few people and have a needed conversation. If this strikes a chord and you feel like you’re Churning Slow, it’s probably time to speed things up.