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Rand posted last night about his thoughts on firing employees and how SEOmoz handles it. Having managed teams and left companies of my own choice, I found it to be an interesting read. On one hand though, talking about the financial, emotional, and team impacts of firing leaves the picture incomplete if you don’t look at how someone choosing to leave a company also affects everyone.

Companies and individuals are rarely transparent about the reasons people quit though, which I honestly find disturbing, but I think that too many employees are concerned about slander, libel, defamation, etc and are simply unsure about the legality around sharing information about why they left a company, so they keep their mouths shut.

I’ve never been averse to leaving a company – or any relationship for that matter – when I believed that it was the best thing. That being said, leaving a company at the first sign of disagreement or problems is counter-productive as well. It leaves you without the ability to deal with complex personal and professional conflicts, a track record that might make you look like a mercenary, and a lack of experience in being part of a company for a long period and everything that goes along with growing and changing with it.

Running away versus walking away

A former manager of mine once made a clear distinction between leaving a company because you need to get away and leaving a company because there’s something they can’t give you. He called it “running away versus walking away.” The difference between the two is this:

1. Your friend tells you he’s going to start looking for a new job because he’s unhappy at his current one.
2. Your friend tells you he was approached by a new company with a really interesting position, or really great pay, or something else enticing.

In the first case, there is a 90% chance that your friend will find he’s still not happy at his new company. Why? Because he didn’t go to the new company because of something about them – because he loved their mission or because it was always his dream to work there. Instead, he went there to get away from a problem. In the second case, there’s a 90% chance that your friend will find happiness because he’s not running away from something and is able to better decide what’s right for him, if the new company will give him what he needs to leave somewhere that he is already happy.

When an employee tells me they have a problem, this is a sign that I have a chance to fix things. If he doesn’t like working with me, I can attempt to change our relationship, have him report to someone else, or make some other change. If he doesn’t like working with certain coworkers, I can try to limit their contact or can facilitate repairing a damaged relationship. If he wants to leave after giving me a chance though, running from the company almost certainly ensures that she’s not going to find happiness, so I always recommend that you be as open and honest as possible with your management along the way, and if in the end there is still a problem, they should help ease you out of the company and into a better situation. Sadly, I believe that most people do not feel they can trust their management enough to be open with them and this is one reason that so many go running from rather than walking from or running toward.

I have in the past sent job openings at other companies to my own staff members when I knew they could make more money somewhere else, they would be happier there, or they would get something they needed that I/we could not provide. I have also introduced them to hiring managers and recruiters looking for their skills. Being able to be open, honest, and helpful with my teams has ensured that as few gaps as possible were left when they departed and that they found what they were looking for. Unfortunately, I have also had employees leave without me having the opportunity to fix problems and/or support them in their search, and sadly in every case, I’ve found out later that that next job they took wasn’t right either.

Guidelines for employees before quitting

• Talk to your boss or her boss if you’re not comfortable with your boss. This can make you feel very vulnerable. I know. I’ve been through. “What happens if he tells my boss? Are they going to talk? Can I trust him? If I tell him I hate working for my boss, they’ll probably just get rid of me, right?” Honestly in most companies, firing a good employee that just has a few problems is greatly frowned upon. Not only is it bad for the manager’s and company’s reputations, it’s also terrible for morale. Managers know this, and if you tell them that you have a legitimate problem, they will do their best to address it.
• Make sure you’re safe if the worst happens. It’s rare, but it does happen that you’re open and you get fired, so before you speak to someone that you’re not sure you can trust, make sure you have your finances in order and know what you would do for work if you were to suddenly lose your job. This could be reaching out to contacts and saying that you’re looking to consult, getting your resume out to prospective employers, or simply checking that your bank account has 6 months of expenses to get you through a period of unemployment.
• Put in the time to fix the problems. It’s not enough to talk to someone. You have to work on yourself to make things better. I remember listening to an audiobook a while back in which the author stated that only 6% of relationships that become condescending ever get turned back around, and while you can think that’s a sign that it’s not worth working through problems, I interpret it as the exact opposite. I think that only 6% of condescending relationships get better because one or both parties don’t work on themselves to find the solution.
• Look elsewhere in your company for opportunities. If you’re part of a big enough company, it’s very likely that you can more from one department to another to get the pay you want, no longer report to a bad manager, or otherwise get what you need.
• Don’t be a dick when you quit. Having been on both sides of the quitting desk, I can tell you how much it sucks for the manager, the employee, and the other team members when someone quits without giving the company a chance to address the problems. Don’t tell your manager on the day you give notice, “I’m leaving because I hate that you do X, Y, and Z.” She can’t fix anything at that point. Be as open as possible, but don’t damage relationships anymore than they might already be. If you have to bite your tongue, just tell her that it’s time for you to move on or that you have an opportunity you can’t pass up.
• Keep your formal resignation simple. HR people and experienced managers know that, much like when you deal with the cops, anything you say, write, or otherwise communicate when quitting can be used against you in the future, so don’t put that you’re leaving the company because of disagreements with management if you never talked to them about the problems because they might decide to share that little tidbit of information with a potential future employer that calls to check your work history. Of course, most companies are concerned about potential defamation issues and so shy away from this, but some aren’t, and you don’t want to be their victim.

Just as Rand says that SEOmoz’s firing process is amazingly hard, giving your company and boss a chance to rectify things, while as well working on your own responsibility and reactions in these situations, is also extremely hard, but being both an employee and a manager, I’ve found that you get so much more out of working with people to find solutions than you do out of avoiding or otherwise not addressing problems.

I wasn’t familiar The Lean Startup movement until this year, which is one reason that I didn’t push back when I once joined a company (this was before the book but after the movement had a name), and my boss told me that they didn’t want to buy me a laptop because they were “trying to do the whole Lean Startup thing.” Come to find out later that my boss wasn’t really familiar with the Lean Startup concepts either and just assumed that it meant that you should be a cheap ass.

This is the first problem with being a Lean Startup. People think that just because they understand the words in the name of the approach or idea that they understand the concept. I’ve encountered the same issue with things like The Tipping Point or Blink.

Just because you understand the words in a name does not mean that you understand the concept itself.

This is how to build a broken Lean Startup machine.

1. Don’t even bother to read the book, and assume you know the principles held within. It is 2012 after all. The book came out in 2011, so you don’t even, like I did, have to google it and read a bunch of disparate articles to figure out what it’s all about. You can get all of the information in one handy package.
2. Insist on rapid prototyping without customer feedback.
3. Ensure top-down management and decision-making.
4. Force everything to move fast… even things that take longer to develop like content or a brand.
5. Forget about testing.

It blows my mind – it really does – that people waste money and time jumping from movement to movement without ever fully embracing and learning the concepts behind them, but then, this shouldn’t be all that shocking. A retiring consultant friend of mine once told me:

If you’re at an organization that has gone through restructuring or changes in mission or vision every few years, just look at the bookshelves of the executives. You’ll notice that rudderless companies make a major change to their business every time an influential book comes out and a new movement starts.

And, I couldn’t agree more. The frustrating thing is when changing priorities are coupled with incompetence and misunderstanding. That reduces morale and turns your employees into disheartened, dispassionate workers.

This is how to build a working Lean Startup process.

Be smart. Be nimble. Give the people on the ground, doing the work, the power. Invite your customers in. A/B test smartly with a plan, and make it possible to turn on A/B tests only for a segment of your customers. Most importantly, let go of the reigns.

Whether it’s being a Lean Startup, adopting something older like Just In Time or whatever else comes next, the thing that will torpedo your business more often than not in a time period when every employee has access to social media and is approached by customers wanting help is not letting them act on your behalf and live out their passion through your brand, but rather dictating to them how things should always be done.

One of the most consistent misconceptions non-marketers have about marketing, whether in-house or through an agency, is that us marketers can “do marketing” for free. I’ve had non-marketing managers tell me, “We need to cut the marketing budget and still hit our numbers.” I’ve also had clients ask, “What can we do for free?”

“We’ve never spent a dollar on marketing.”

It seems like every time you see a successful startup founder talking about Pandora, or Pinterest, or Hit-Startup-X, they say, “We’ve never spent a dollar on marketing, and we’ve grown our business successfully.”

Yet, they have a CMO, VP of Marketing, marketing associates, an email tool, and more, don’t they? Don’t they?

But unfortunately, too many people listen to the startup folks say these things and think that marketing should be free. After all, viral is free, isn’t it? Email is free, isn’t it? Landing pages, SEO, community management, and more are free, aren’t they?

No. No, marketing is not free.

Of all the things that I’ve ever done in marketing, nothing that was successful was ever free… not even close. I ran one email program for a client that generated enough revenue in two emails to cover their entire annual marketing budget, but that involved writers, designers, coders, and more. Another client spent tens of thousands of dollars every month just on analytics around their market and competitors in an effort to provide the best customer service in the industry, and guess what, they’re considered to one of the best as a result.

The best marketing involves an investment just like the best product development, manufacturing, sales, and more all involve an investment. Just hiring people and telling them to make due without any budget isn’t going to get you very far. You’d be better served by not hiring a marketer at all and spending the money on simply creating a product that begs to be talked about, that begs to be loved, and has to be shared with friends and family.

For that matter, why not just make a great product in the first place?

The best marketing is a great product, and when you have a great product, it makes not spending money on advertising, tools, writers, and more so much easier. Your marketing person can at least get by with doing their own outreach, creating their own landing pages, guest blogging, and more all with their own time and no additional expense. Even though all of that is extremely time consuming, your great product at least allows their “free” efforts to have some legs.

But, if you can’t ensure that your product is great in the first place, telling your in-house people or your agency that they need to cut their budget and still hit performance goals is just plain crazy.

I’ve left jobs I loved and jobs I hated. Leaving both types sucks, but leaving a job I love makes me feel sick. I remember coming to the decision that it was time to leave a great job for a new opportunity and really feeling pained. It got even worse when I told my boss.

The questions and self doubt:

• Am I making the right decision?
• Did I just burn my bridges?
• What happens if I’m wrong?

It’s terrible. It really is.

Being on the other side is really weird too though. I’ve had people that work for me quit and nearly quit for heaps of reasons:

1. A better opportunity came up.
2. They weren’t happy about something with their current job.
3. Something in their life changed and they couldn’t keep their job anymore.

Sometimes, you can keep people from leaving.

But, why do it? In the case that your employee found a better opportunity, it’s good for both parties to wish them well and end your working relationship on a good note. Sure, it’s flattering to them if you try to keep them, but if they decide to stay and then realize that they made a mistake, you’ve got a problem.

If your employee isn’t happy about something with their job and they gotten to the point they’re willing to quit, this shows at least one of two things and possibly both.

1. Whatever it is is so bad that you won’t be able to satisfactorily change it.
2. Your employee waited so long to bring it to your attention (or at least bring the dire nature of it) that this might show you that you don’t have a relationship where they’re willing or able to speak openly with you.

In either case, it doesn’t matter whether it’s compensation, management style, cultural fit, growth opportunities, or anything else. Your employee has chosen to leave in order to get away from something rather than to get closer to something, and trying to keep them is no guarantee that things will change no matter how hard you try.

In the third case, there are few instances when you can keep an employee that chooses to leave their job due to a life change, and the only legitimate one that I’ve ever encountered is an employee relocating for their spouse. That one was easy, “We’d love to keep you if you’re okay with working remotely.” “Yeah, that’d be great.” “Awesome. Consider it done.”

In all other cases I’ve encountered though, how can you keep a mother that wants to be homes with her children, a son that wants to take care of a sick family member, and so on from doing so without feeling bad and potentially engendering some ill will? You can’t.

My preference is to avoid the conversation altogether.

If you think your employee is considering leaving, talk to them about it. This is the time to find out if you need to let someone go or make changes to keep them. It’s too late when they’re the one to approach you.

If you’re the one leaving, talk to your boss early. Telling them about problems that you have with them, the company, or your position on the same day you say that you’re quitting is really crappy. You don’t give them any opportunity to change. If you’ve made the decision to go, make it clear to them that, while you would love to stay, your decision is for the best, and you’d like to be clear. You’re leaving.

Not being open and honest early can burn bridges and cause a lot of bad decisions down the road. Once your or your employee have made a decision to leave though, the decision has been made. There’s almost no talking to be done. Just make the parting as easy as possible.