My creative staff are leaving for a tin pot start up. Help!

Dear Aunty B,

I have just had my second resignation this year from key staff who have been poached by pissy little start ups with barely any prospects. These staff were on great salaries, commission structures and had a clear career path as future leaders of the firm. When I asked the latest one why he is leaving he says he has to fill out too many forms and he did not wake up in the morning and feel that work is fun.

I am now concerned that they will take other key staff with them. Is this a Gen Y thing?

When I was their age I would never have left an established medium-sized company for a tin pot start up with an uncertain future. Why he thinks that is fun is beyond me.

Help!

Dear Help,

Look, take your hurt feelings and park them somewhere for the moment. Let’s look at this realistically.

There could be several factors at play. For one, the “recession” is over and we will see more movement. But that’s okay because it gives you the opportunity to bring people in with new or different skills, although you should be securing your other key staff now for the next few years.

Secondly, some people just love start ups. They are best at juggling many different things at once and don’t like to specialise and professionalise.

So it could be that these people were going to leave anyway, once the recession receded.

But it also gives you the opportunity to have a good look at your company. Often when businesses reach that mid-size level you have brought in professional managers and they can kill off the entrepreneurial creative energy, especially in a creative company.

Jim Collins describes it this way: “Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage the wrong people on the bus, which in turn drives the right people on the bus which then increases the percentage of wrong people on the bus which increases the need for more bureaucracy to compensate for incompetence which then further drives the right people away.”

His solution? Avoid bureaucracy and hierarchy. And create a culture of discipline. When you marry discipline with entrepreneurship you get superior performance and sustained results.

Good luck,
Your Aunty B