Nothing trumps retention

A while back, I wrote about the two responsibilities of a manager: getting results and retaining people. The more I manage, the more I believe that retaining people is the only responsibility that matters.

But the caveat is that you have to keep great people (see Netflix’s keeper test), which means getting rid of everyone else. When you keep a team of great people – and only great people- happy, then results happen by default.

Maybe a manager focusing on getting results is a smell. Maybe that manager is compensating for not being able to keep great people and fire everyone else.

“But even a team of great people may not always be high achieving!” Great people won’t be happy if they aren’t killing it. So in that case, doubling down on retention means destroying anything in the way of them killing it. Keep them happy and the score takes care of itself.