We have this concept of employee retention all wrong in that it doesn’t really matter. Let’s take that right out and start with a much cleaner understanding.  

We need the best performers retained. And so, we need to make sure we have quality retention, those who are performing, and those who live by the culture. We don’t want everybody hanging around that’s being disruptive, stirring the pot, and causing a problem as they are creating so much chaos for those who are doing the hard work. 

So let’s get our head around that concept first.  

Now that said, there is another group where we need to grow people from if they are willing to take the journey to become someone who is not disruptive, and to learn how to be someone who is contributing to profit and contributing in the organization, because this group really matters. They’re the ones that pay the bills. They’re the ones that take care of the customers, they’re the ones that you can’t live without, and those are the ones that we must retain. So let’s think about it first of all, in terms of is this the retention that we want? Is this quality retention? Then from there, what matters?  

Well, we did our national research study of performance culture, and we asked executives, what’s the most important thing that keeps you in an organization? What they said is pretty surprising. They said it’s that they’re given an educational path to continue to improve their abilities and their employability. Well, isn’t that interesting.  

During difficult times, organizations oftentimes think about, well, we’ll cut this and we’ll cut that,  nd the first thing they cut is  anything that develops their people. And yet, your executives, who are some of the most important people for you to retain, need to be developed. And we have to find a way to not only develop them but develop them again with masters who understand how to increase their results, so that they walk away not just having finished a course, but transformed somebody’s world in terms of the results that they’re getting.  

So that’s what’s important to executives, in terms of what’s most important to them. For everybody in terms of retention, we have to be thinking that they’re all wanting education. 

Regarding most other employees, 48% said they will leave a company if they have to work around somebody who is a pain to work around. Underperforming bad attitudes, they are intolerant of that. And so isn’t that interesting that 48%, half of them, will leave you because you’re not dealing with somebody that you need to be dealing with who’s causing problems in that organization.  

So listen, I would rather give a kidney to somebody than fire them.  I understand, it hurts my soul when I have to say goodbye to somebody and say you’re no longer welcome on this team. It is heartbreaking, it is crushing to every bone in my body, I get how painful that is. And I have learned to reframe that such that I now think that I need to protect my high performers from the chaos. Because if I don’t deal with that situation, then these good performers have time robbed away from their time with family and friends. And that’s my ethical responsibility to deal with those kinds of things.  

So since 48% say that they will leave you, and that is a big contributor to your turnover, by not dealing with the stinkers who are pot stirring in your organization, that might be a great place to start.  

Let’s just say the way that it is. We’re living in a wigged-out world.

Anxiety, we’ve never seen more of it. Depression, we’ve never seen more of it.  

According to Gallup’s most recent poll, people have never been unhappier than they are right now. So even if everything’s beautiful and ducky at your organization, people are coming in with their own problems. And so you’ve got to decide if you’re going to be an employer that helps to heal, or if you’re going to compound the problem.  

Now, here’s the rub. As an employer, you have a lot that needs to get done. You have to deliver for your customers, and there are outcomes that need to happen, and happen quickly. That can be stressful on your team members and you. Let’s just call it what it is. And yet, if somebody says “This is just too stressful for me, I need to go someplace else,” God bless them because out of the frying pan and into the fire.  

Yes, we live in a world where I don’t know any place where people aren’t saying “Here, they’re asking us to do more with less. Faster with fewer and do it better than ever.” That’s the world we live in right now. We’re all called to do five to 10 times more than we thought we were capable of just 5–10 years ago.  

There is a need to constantly elevate skills. There’s the need to teach people to think about the fastest way from A to B because I see so many people who think they’re performing.  
It showed up on our national research study where 75% of people believe that they perform in the top 10%. Hello, okay, that that is mathematically impossible. And yet people believe it to be true. And they’re not bad people.  

They just think they’re working harder. But it’s not about working harder. It’s about working smarter. And the companies that help their people learn to work smarter will win the race to be able to stay intact. But it’s not just about the company, it’s not just about the profit. Every good business owner, every great entrepreneur, every great executive gets that there is something that fills our soul, about watching our people grow and thrive and get better at what they’re doing and go home at the end of each week feeling like a like a superstar.  

I was just in a huddle the other day and I was watching one of my team members who a year ago, was kind of struggling, wasn’t really getting it, and wasn’t producing a lot of work. And I heard all the things she was doing and said, “Who are you? Look at you now.” And I mentioned something to her, and I think her lips touched her ears with the smile that someone had noticed who she is now, because now she’s a powerhouse.  

Now she’s someone who knows that if you give her the impossible task, give her until two o’clock, is what she’s thinking. Whereas before the impossible task would have just been met with defeat and giving up.

And here’s the thing, its why people run marathons. They don’t run marathons, because they’re aren’t cars to transport them. They run marathons because who they are at the end of a marathon is someone who says “I can do hard better”.

We’re in this game to teach team members how to do hard better and to accomplish the impossible and feel what it feels like to know that you might have an S on your chest when he open up that shirt.

We all want to be someone who is a contributor.  With 8 billion people on the planet, we don’t want to be someone who just consumes food and oxygen, we want to be someone who contributes in a big way with our lives. That’s what our soul is calling for. Let’s give it to them.  

In the past couple of videos, we talked about huddles and quarterly reviews as being substantive parts of your culture processes to keep your culture constantly on an upward climb, regardless of circumstances.  

I want to talk about something different now.  

And this is the advanced stuff.  

This is for those that truly want to get to the top 5%. This is for those who have done the other work to have that foundation intact. Do not do this yourself until you’re ready. This is called quarterly reviews. And there’s a lot of ways you can muck this up. But when done correctly, it is a game changer. It can turn so many of your team members from being average performers, to being Top Five Percenters. Because they will understand how they tie to profit, and culture, and they’re being recognized for it.  Everything is clear, because they understand they’re leading indicators, lagging indicators, the behaviors, and the values that you stand for in the organization. And they are self-assessing every quarter and getting feedback from their supervisor about how they’re doing.  

It’s a clear shot. And what happens with team members is most of them will substantially improve their performance, and better align with the culture of the organization. And if they’re just plain not a fit, they will substantially move ahead to their last day and go find the right team that allows for the gossip, whining, complaining, and underperformance because those places exist.  But they can’t belong in your place, because we know from the statistics that your employees are looking at you kind of sideways going, why are you dealing with those people, they’re causing trouble, they’re not performing, why are they still here?  

It sucks the soul from your good people to watch that you’re allowing some of these behaviors to happen. And the quarterly review process is magical when done correctly. And I am putting an emphasis on those words, because it’s dynamite and can be used for very good purposes. And it can blow everything up if you’re not blending it with the learning and stage appropriate accountability.

One of the concepts people read about in my book, Thank God It’s Monday, is quarterly celebrations. Occasionally, people will say, “Oh, we’re on your program,” to which I respond, “Really? I didn’t know that.” What they mean is that they read the book and tried to implement it themselves. However, their huddles don’t really function as true huddles, and their quarterly celebrations are nice and fun, but they miss the point.  

The point is, each of these things is about aligning to the values, the behaviors and the outcomes of the organization, the right leading indicators, lagging indicators, and getting people to enjoy the ride. Because here’s the thing that motivates us most, having a feeling of accomplishment. There’s been tons of research about what makes people happy at work. It’s not the ping pong game over in Northside that’s going on at two o’clock. It’s not the fact that somebody brings doughnuts first thing in the morning. It’s the feeling of progress. But how does progress feel like? What is progress? And how do we break it down into small notable parts? 

People can say “Yay, way to go, that’s fantastic,” because at the end of the day, we all want to go home feeling celebrated and accomplished. There are intrinsic rewards and extrinsic rewards. We must be thinking about both. The extrinsic are the, high fives and the here’s a balloon for you, here’s a pin, here’s a celebratory amount of money—those are extrinsic things.  

Oftentimes, extrinsic things take away the spirit and the soul of people; they feel violated.  
I always think about that when an organization says, “If you refer somebody, we will give you $5 or $100” and I’m thinking, I want my friend to have this, but I don’t want them to think I got this because I got some money—that feels creepy. That’s the same thing your people have going on. They want to do the right thing because their soul wants to do the right thing. But have we identified the right thing, and have we identified what it is that we’ll announce to them and to their teams, once that accomplishment has happened?  

So, they receive that intrinsic reward, because that’s what keeps them intact. That’s what keeps them engaged. That’s what ensures that they stay with the organization. And that’s what fills their souls when they go home. They say to their spouse, “Honey, today, I was awesome.” And that’s what people want out of work.

Let’s start by talking about huddles. A daily huddle is done daily. Many people have read my New York Times bestselling book, Thank God It’s Monday!, they’ve heard about huddles, and they think they’re doing huddles correctly. But there is an art and a science to putting together a huddle that engages people’s hearts, keeps them moving toward the right KPIs, ties every employee into the strategic plan, and builds the organization’s culture so there’s a brotherhood and sisterhood.  

So it’s not just that you huddle, it’s that you know what to do with the huddle. It should feel like a breath of fresh air, where people understand that they’re getting better at their jobs, and they understand where everything is going. And when you have a stand-up huddle that goes 10 minutes, and communicate the outcomes to the culture, strategic plan, and projects that are in play right now, it’s very energizing for team members. And it’s going to take some work to get those right.