Turnover. It happens. So What?
The Menace to Knowledge and Productivity
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach me on Substack and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
Don’t get me wrong! Turnover, especially high turnover, is bad and should be avoided. However, sometimes people leaving the team is out of our control. Almost every time it contributes some knowledge to leave the team, the capacity to produce new features with the same quality and speed would drop significantly until the replacement can be at the same pace as the leaver. There are plenty of reasons a Leader should avoid high turnover on the team. But sometimes is difficult to control it, and in those moments, I would just want to add a different perspective and opportunities that arise with turnover.
The popular moments for high turnover
Organizational changes may impact severely the chances of someone leaving the team. Especially if those changes involve a change in the leadership, as well as the work’s scope and load. Is understandable someone would like to move teams or exit the company, if the initial conditions are no longer valid, and especially if the change contributes to a loss of quality in the team member’s perspective.
Poor management of pay expectations is a popular one as well. If this is done at a department level, the risk of having high turnover rates in an entire department can be detrimental to achieving any meaningful objective.
Another high turnover moment is also the lack of it! For very stable teams, is normal to see team members working together for years in a row. A manager would think the turnover is under control even in the most complicated moments. This assumption might turn out to be very wrong because it doesn’t take into account the Ketchup Effect. Once the first team member decides to change, the others will also consider the possibility. Once a very stable team, it will see the most senior staff exiting on short notice. Sometimes the manager couldn’t do much! They had worked on the team for years and they simply needed the change.
High turnover will happen even to the best of managers. The effects can severely impact the chances of reaching ambitious objectives, but is also an opportunity for the future.
Change! A window of opportunity
Resistance to change is another topic altogether. However, implementing change on a team working the same way for years can be a Herculean task. Not if the team is impacted by high turnover. Newcomers are eager to show their worth and this is probably the moment where people are receptive to change.
This might be especially true if the most resistant to change are the seniors. There is such a thing as Expert Bias: Are entrenched beliefs that someone knows what works and doesn't work in their field, and has a tendency to stall innovation
When the expert is the one resistant to change, it will be more difficult to push something forward, simply because the amount of arguments and evidence needed to be provided to make a case, is simply too big. And sometimes the best way to know if an idea works or not is simply by trying to implement it on a small scope. If on every iteration the expert is the one giving a bad outlook, the best of the ideas won’t see the light of day.
Old Problems. New Solutions.
Newcomers may also bring new insight on the same topics because they had different experiences which may be worth to capitalise upon. Old problems might have fresh perspectives and different experiences and implement a solution.
It reminds me of a story on a retail bank where several senior developers tried to fix a problem related to file transfers from the branches. The root issues have been identified and linked to the poor network quality between the headquarters and the different branches across the country. The problem has been well-identified for years without any solution being successful. Ironically the senior people were leaving the team, and in this particular case, a senior engineer had been replaced by a junior. The kid was neglected by the seniors, but he searched all the different attempts and investigated this long-lasting file transfer problem. He managed to fix the problem by piecing together previous different solution attempts, in one final deployment until the problem was fixed altogether.
Is not the end of the world. Despite what their ego is saying
I have handled my fair share of Ketchup moments. Teams that were performing well, and were sticking together for years in a row, until the moment the first one exits the team. And then the Apocalypse is announced. One senior after the other is leaving, creating a despair and the project fatality, in their heads. Ego is a fantastic storytelling technique to add some spice to any expert story that leaves a team.
Of course is not comfortable to manage a series of exits in a matter of a few months (or weeks in some cases). But is not the end of the world either. Teams manage to adapt, new people rise to the occasion and new leaders appear to get their space at the sun. Because high turnover also triggers a series of changes, it might also benefit the team in the long run.
Some years ago I lost 3 senior developers (one of them was the Tech Lead) in a matter of weeks. When the pandemic was over the job market started to flourish again, and they were contacted by other employers, and they found new jobs elsewhere. The alarms were all over the place and how the team would adapt to this loss of human capital. We have replaced the roles and some existing developers got more responsibilities. The result: the team had one of their best years short after this massive seniority turnover.
Since new opportunities were given, some developers saw the opportunity to rise to the challenge and secure more responsibility. The new blood integrated well and they managed to make a series of high-quality deliveries. Overall, I might argue the team is working better than before.
Overall high turnover can potentially be harmful to the team and the KPIs. However, it can also be an opportunity to bring new people, new ideas, and perspectives. Organizations should be mutable and is normal to see people getting in and out. The leader doesn’t control the market but can control the level of how it impacts the team.
That’s it. If you find this post useful please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest in the comments or send me a message on Substack.
Cheers,
Artur