Never be Afraid to Quit

We've all heard the adage: "Winners never quit.  Quitters never win."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The better adage is: "You gotta know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. And know when to run."

Yes, persistence and perseverance can get you far.  You can become very successful by sticking to something for a long time while trying to improve.  It's a skill that can help you in life.

However, knowing when and how to quit something is actually equally important.  At some point, we have to recognize when we're no longer able to improve on a situation despite the amount of resources you've sunk into it.

We all need to recognize the point when, despite any additional effort, failure is inevitable. When that happens, learn from your failure, quit, then divert your remaining resources and energy on other endeavours (or a modified version of the failed one). This is how quitting will lead to future success.

If Your Boss is an A**hole, Then We're All to Blame (Indirectly)

The same can also be said about your a**hole co-workers

It's almost stereotypical.  Some of you have even seen it in person: the executive or even a middle manager of an organization losing their temper.  There have been CEOs yelling, bullying, berating and being overall jerks to their employees.

A former, now deceased, CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world (company name rhymes with "grapple") was notoriously aggressive at publicly berating employees who didn't "live up to his standards of quality".

You've also got managers who expect you to be constantly connected on weekends and holidays. They end up shaming you if front of your peers if you decide that you'd rather spend time with your family instead of answering the email they sent at 11:45pm.

Another famous CEO who runs the largest online store in the world (no, it's not Amazon) is making it a requirement for his employees to work from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Anything less will get you shamed and fired, despite how well you perform while working less hours.

Yes, it's abusive behaviour.  Yes it creates a hostile work environment and a bullying company culture. It causes stress and burn out.

Guess what: we are all to blame for these terrible work environments. Here's why.

Admiration for "Getting Sh*t Done"

One of the problems is that humans as a society seem to have evolved to want to follow the alpha monkey as our leader. 

We end up admiring the conqueror (unless you're the one being conquered), the assertive/aggressive boss who won't let "useless processes" become roadblocks to their goals.  We like the person who isn't necessarily worried about hurting feelings or being a bully to "get the job done".  We see their seemingly demanding traits and interpret that as a leader having a high standard that we should all strive for.  

At the same time, we are captivated by a confident, charismatic public speaker who will be falsely self-deprecating to make themselves seem relatable and authentic. They make mild jokes in an attempt to get their employees to see how likeable they are when they're not being bullies.

To us, these characteristics are signs of the strong leader.   Incidentally, these are also some of the main characteristics found in clinical narcissists and sociopaths.  In any case, these are the kinds of traits that we like to see in our leaders.  

Because we, as a collective society and culture like those traits, people like that end up getting hired in those positions of power in the companies we work for.

The"Hustle Culture" Fetish

 
If you spend enough time following "entrepreneur", "motivational" and "influencer" accounts on social media, you'll see that a lot of them are posting about hustling and "rising and grinding".  It's not unusual to see these highly successful people showing videos and pictures of themselves getting up at 4:30am so that they can start lifting heavy kettlebells and running hill sprints.

Sure, there's nothing wrong with having goals and working hard to reach them.  I'm all for people wanting to work as hard as they want, as many hours as they need to feel great about themselves and to make their business successful.

The problem is that the constant stream of these social media posts has led to the creation of "hustle porn".  Hard work has become so fetishistic on social media that we as a society have come to admire the business leaders who get up early, work so hard late into the night on a daily basis to the point of burn out while wearing stress as a badge of honor.

The narcissist/sociopath business leader then sees this as an example to emulate, you know, because the Instagram post is getting so many likes.  And of course, if they're doing that, then they expect all of their employees to be "hustlers" as well.  It becomes inexcusable for employees to be unreachable on evenings and weekends because they want to spend time with their kids. In their minds, there's no excuse for being sick in bed not working because you can have a laptop or a smartphone with you on your bedside table.
Doing less is just being a lazy employee.

Overly Coddling Customers

In the end, all of these bullying behaviors stem from every businesses' fear of losing clients to the competition. As consumers, we've been spoiled to want every thing yesterday. If the toilet paper ordered online doesn't come within 24 hours, negative reviews get written and complaints are sent to customer service.

We as a society are all customers with these "immediate gratification" expectations at the lowest possible price from the businesses we patronize. Is it really a wonder that businesses then need to transfer that kind of pressure on business managers who in turn put pressure on their employees to deliver?  

In short, our attitudes as demanding, spoiled consumers who won't do anything inconvenient are partially to blame for our abusive bosses.  Instead of immediately writing a bad review or complaining to a manager because you received your double-shot grande caramel macchiato with soy milk 37 seconds longer than you expected, we need to take a step back and have a bit of perspective on how easy it is for us now to get whatever product product we want in the first place.

How to Keep Your Staff from Quitting

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One of the most difficult things about being a business owner or manager is hiring and retaining the right people. Your staff can make the difference between profitability and bankruptcy. So how can you hire and retain for success?

Here are a few tips that might help you.

Make the hiring requirements challenging

All right, if the applicant is young, tell him he’s too young. Old, too old. Fat, too fat. If the applicant then waits for three days without food, shelter, or encouragement he may then enter and begin his training.

That might have sounded a bit over-the-top, but there is something to it. This is a simple concept you’ll find in any social psychology textbook. The more difficult it is for people to join a group, the more positively they will view that group if they are accepted into it. Think of hazing rituals done in military organizations world wide, or even in college fraternities.

To relieve their cognitive dissonance, they will rationalize that the group must be worth joining after they got burned several times while they were jumping through all flaming hoops to get accepted. Because they’ve made that rationalization in their minds, these new hires are going to be more likely to overlook any negative aspects of your organization. Or at least it will take them longer to realize that the group they joined isn’t that special and they would be better off leaving for greener pastures.

The other principle is a very common cognitive bias called the “sunk cost” fallacy. Basically, the more you invest in something, the less likely you are to divest. Being forced to go through a rigorous interview process, your new hire will feel that they’ve spent so much mental energy just to get in, that they would feel that it would be a waste if they ended up quitting.

Structure the business to keep employees motivated

Employee: The thing is, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.
Consultant 1: Don’t… don’t care?
Employee: It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and the company ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime; so where’s the motivation? And here’s something else: I have eight different bosses right now.
Consultant 2: I beg your pardon?
Employee: Eight bosses.
Consultant 2: Eight?
Employee: Eight. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

This is a no-brainer. If your employees only want to avoid getting fired or avoid getting hassled, you’ll eventually lose them to a company that incentivizes them properly for their work. If you’re hiring sales people, the base + commission model works pretty well.

Of course, employees who aren’t in sales roles need to be incentivized as well. Even if they aren’t directly getting financial compensation, at the very least, communicate to your employees that their contributions will help the growth of the company and the eventual increases in their pay. If your employees feel like they’re just another small cog in the larger machine (especially if it is true), you’re going to lose them. You have to at least make them feel like what they’re doing matters.

The other point about structure has to do with many large organizations having seemingly too many managers overseeing the work of one person. To justify their existence (especially when it comes to highly-paid executives), a lot of micromanagement happens, which causes them to hassle the sole employee doing the actual work.

Reinforce the fear and uncertainty of leaving your company

So if you fail to structure for motivation this is a last-ditch, Machiavellian alternative. If you’re willing to go to great lengths to keep your employees from going to the competition, it might be necessary.

Admit to your employees that they’re not in a perfect company. Of course, you can still point out that they’ve got a sure thing as to where their company is going as opposed to leaving for another company. If they leave, there are no guarantees that the new job will be better. Will they really get paid better? How secure will their potentially new job be “in this economy”? What if their new boss is an ever worse a-hole than the one they have now?

This process should be done in a very implicit way. Little hints should be dropped to cast doubt at what going elsewhere would be like.

At the same time semi-random acts of kindness and generosity on behalf of the company should be done for employees. 

The result is essentially the same as what happens in an abusive relationship where the abused party just can’t bring themselves to leave. The rare acts of kindness combined with the fear of the unknown is just enough for them to rationalize staying.

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Inevitably, you will eventually lose employees no matter how well you treat them or how much you try to manipulate them. The modern worker has a tendency to job hop after a couple of years in any particular role. Since modern business has historically shown that their employees are expendable, employees don’t have the incentive to act loyally towards their employers. 

However, at the end of the day, without your staff your business can’t function. Hiring new people, training them, only to have them leave when they finally have a productive grasp of your business is not only frustrating. It’s very costly. Unfortunately you will need to resort to some tricks to keep them.