Your Employees Are Leaving—Here’s Why

Losing great people isn’t just about pay. Ultimately, it’s about leadership, culture, and connection. We sit down with Jim Weber to see what REALLY drives employees to stay or go so, listen in and hear how leaders can build a workplace people don’t want to leave.

Sean Riley: So, with all the fancy introductions out of the way, welcome to the podcast, Jim Weber. So, you just hopped offstage at the PMMI Executive Leadership Conference—a great presentation on leadership—and you really honed in on the idea of creating a sticky workplace. Could you define that for our listeners who either weren't able to attend or might want to be following up on it?

Jim Weber: Yeah. So, I think as a leader over the years, one of your worst days is when a key employee comes in and says they're leaving. You work so hard to recruit the right people, train, coach, and grow them career-wise and everything else, that the investment in them is so significant. It's going to be so costly, expensive, and time-consuming to replace the talent that's walking out the door. So, what we came to know is that we couldn't compete with the big company compensation often—we didn't have the stock options or all those things. And so, we just decided we need a why at Brooks that had more elements to it than just a big paycheck. And so, we went to work on really engaging and developing them as a person, and as a manager, and as a leader. Hopefully, if the company were growing, we could create opportunities for them.

And then really creating a culture that was anchored in respect and a team orientation, where we were going to have success together, and they were part of that. They were part of something that's going somewhere—we're building something here—and you have an opportunity to join a team and be part of that. So, out of crisis came this necessity that we were going to build reasons to stay at Brooks at the margin as opportunities came, as they always do. Hopefully, we keep a team in place that could execute the plan, and we could help reach our goals and opportunities.

Sean Riley: Okay, fantastic. You don't have to dive too deep into it, but you broke it down into five parts. Could you give us a high-level breakdown of how you guys try to keep it as a sticky workplace?

Jim Weber: Absolutely. The first thing is to be part of something—the why of the company.

Sean Riley: Right.

Jim Weber: I wanted that. I wanted something that I could be proud of: I work here, and here's what we're trying to do. So, for Brooks, that was our purpose of inspiring everyone to run and be active—we're going to build a brand in that space. And it was an aspirational mission when the company was small, but that was number one.

Second was creating a culture that you could be part of and that leaders owned. And it starts with values, but it's really not about the values—it's about behaviors. And so, really trying to manage behaviors that match these values that we put on the wall.

The third one was having a playbook, because business is complicated, and especially for new people coming in, how would they understand it? So, we created a playbook and really tried to coach and bring people into: this is what we're trying to accomplish, these are our goals, and obviously, all the leaders had to drive that.

And then the next piece was to train our leaders. I think it was so clear to us—and the stats are pretty clear on all these exit interviews across businesses—that the manager is the key person. Eighty percent of the people who quit quit because their manager wasn't a positive force for them. So, we really started to invest in manager capacity and capability, and having them not only own the culture but also help develop people. Those were all key.

Sean Riley: And that's something that immediately jumped out at me when you talked about how to step back a bit. We're in manufacturing, we're in packaging, we're in processing—we're in a workforce crisis. We don't have enough workers to fill the jobs. So, retaining workers is key to us. Training leaders to drive retention really resonated with me. Are there any additional things, like how do you reiterate to a manager that their job is so important in retaining workers?

Jim Weber: We put it in their performance review and goals for the coming year. And for them, if they were aspirational about advancing in their career and leading at a higher level, these skills of recruiting and retaining people are just essential, and helping those people be successful. So, we made it a critical deliverable in their job, and all the job descriptions always had it there. But with our survey data, we had weaknesses and strengths in their department on the cultural feedback. So, we'd put those in the development plan, and therefore, they were going to work on these three areas to try to become better at creating success with their people and teams. So, we practiced it. I think it wasn't just an idea that we threw out and said, "Do your best," we actually used this data to get better as leaders and managers.

Sean Riley: And it's interesting you said practice—that was another thing that jumped out—that you said that you almost have to practice being a leader just like you practice your golf swing, your guitar, or anything else. And what does that look like? How am I going to practice being a leader?

Jim Weber: Here's the best example for me. As part of our 15 management skills, one of the things you've got to manage and avoid is what we call triangulation. Three employees, right? It's when one employee is talking about another employee—a shortcoming, a problem, an issue, a disconnect—and they're not talking to the actual employee about it, they're talking to a friend. So, they're triangulating, and it's toxic over time. And so, starting at the manager level, we just said you can't do that. If there's an issue with an employee, you don't talk to other people about that issue—you talk to them about it.

And so, avoiding triangulation, and just bringing that in front of people at one of our monthly meetings—again, you heard about it, we practiced it, we learned about it—now bringing that forward and just keeping people aware of it.

So, the energy you use to communicate to an employee that's got these side conversations going on—they're actually doing no good and are actually creating toxicity. By eliminating them, you've created positive energy in the culture, because that's negative energy. So, that's just one small example of a behavior that goes on all the time. But at a leadership level, we're recognizing it, we're seeing it, and we're grabbing it and saying, "Okay, you got an issue there. Instead of just talking about it to five other people, let's go to work on it, and let's talk to that person. Let's solve this." And so, you just get into these problem-solving ones—that's a small example.

Sean Riley: Okay. And a thing that you said that—not confused me—but I'm still trying to wrap my head around also, is that you said you are a better leader than you are a manager.

Jim Weber: Yeah.

Sean Riley: And you're the CEO, and have been CEO of many companies. So, I'm trying to understand, I guess, the paradox there. Aren't all managers supposed to be leaders and vice versa? What do you mean when you say that?

Jim Weber: I love this question because the answer is yes, they're supposed to be, but they are not always. So, I loved strategy and brands, and I actually love business models, and finding strategies that would allow you to be successful with a customer and you could make money at it. So, all those puzzles—I love that. And so, when I first became a CEO, I was 30 years old. It was a small division of Coleman. I had never managed an employee. And I thought everybody felt like me—I just did.

We had success in the business, and we created forward motion, and we executed well, but I wasn't tuned into where this leader was, where this manager was, what issues they had, what problems they were trying to solve, and how they looked at it completely differently. They were there for the psychic and social return they got from working on a team with like-minded people and people that they learned from. They had no connection to the strategy.

So, where I ended up going is I communicated at first, financial metrics, which drive so many business meetings, obviously with owners, banks, and boards, and all of that, and I held customer metrics equal. Every time I presented on Brooks' business, I presented financial metrics and customer metrics. We ended up pulling the people side of it up, too. So, this is the health of our business: if the people-culture side and the customer side are healthy, our business is healthy.

So, part of it was communicating, and I would say in the first 10 years as a leader, as a CEO, I knew I had to solve for customers and owners, but I spent less time on people. And so, I balanced that out as I got older and smarter.

Sean Riley: Okay. What about people... you're talking about a culture, and you're talking about the necessity of culture, and everybody has to take on some level of leadership role. What about the people that just—they're not interested in that, they don't see themselves as leaders maybe?

Jim Weber: Yeah.

Sean Riley: How do we get them to take accountability?

Jim Weber: I think it's key. And so, one of the things first and foremost is if you've got a person that is an exceptional individual contributor, an exceptional technical expert, and they're driving so much great work, and they've got a team of people to do that, I think it's a puzzle to get them to start to work and focus on the success of their team. It's not about the company and the culture and the values and all of that stuff—it's about those five people, and them having the glue to, at the margin, make the decision to stay on your team. You own that. Okay? We're going to help you, but I think people who have never acknowledged that's something that matters to them don't end up being successful at building broader teams.

And every culture's different—this is our culture. And I think you can sometimes have superstar cultures, where you're plugging and playing people, but I think in our business, the lack of continuity and the cost of replacing people was so high that we decided the investment in retention was worth it. But I think there's still a conversation there, and I've had these with brilliant contributors—often technical people, engineers, designers, technologists, et cetera. There are often superstars in sales, right? You have a superstar salesman who becomes a sales manager.

I think when the company gets to a certain space, you don't get a pass on being horrible with people.

Sean Riley: No.

Jim Weber: You just can't scale, and you can't win over the long haul. But we go to work—we don't flush people just because they're not seeing it—we try to put it in the context of where it really matters to them, because they're not going to be successful if they lose people. So, that was the conversation.

Sean Riley: Okay, I like that. This has been great, and I wanted to sum up and finish with one final question. You had the opportunity to work under Warren Buffett for 10 years, which is—everybody listening to the pod has heard of Warren Buffett. From a leadership perspective, what did you learn the most from him regarding how to be a good leader?

Jim Weber: I learned a lot, but I'm just going to tell one story because it was so telling. Currencies, supply chains—everything is going every which way. Back in early 2012, '13, '14, the dollar was strengthening again. So, currencies were volatile, and margins were going down. I thought, okay, I'm now working for Warren Buffett.

Sean Riley: Yeah.

Jim Weber: He's going to know how to solve this. He's going to know what to do about all these currency things. And he's very deferential. So, he let me go through the whole thing, and I was looking for his advice, and here was the tell. He said, "Jim, you know what? I don't have a clue what's going to happen in currencies. I have no idea, and so I spend zero time on it. And you're going to make less money next year because of it. You may make less money permanently on margins because of the way the currencies are going. If I were you, I would focus on your customers. If you continue to keep solving for your customer, you're going to be fine."

And it was so empowering, because the financial engineering side—we want to make our numbers, right? We put numbers together, we want to hit our numbers and execute the plan, but that's the long term; that ability to play the longer game and solve for the customer is so powerful. And that's the biggest gift that Berkshire gave us in those years, because we were able to solve.

Sean Riley: Love it. Again, you just spent an hour on stage talking, so we really appreciate you carving out a couple of minutes to come on the podcast with us and talk a little bit more. So, thanks again, Jim.

Jim Weber: Thanks, Sean.

Sean Riley: Thanks for listening to this episode of Unpacked PMMI. If you liked what you heard, be sure to follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That way, you won't miss any of the industry insights coming your way. While you're there, we'd really appreciate a rating or review. Want more? Visit pmmi.org/podcasts for all of our past episodes and additional resources. Thanks again for tuning in—I'll see you next time.