Churn, Attrition and Decay - Mental Model
Accept reality and move forward.
It's 2020 and I have a meeting with my team member, a leader in our unit. We have an agenda but he starts with an announcement. He is leaving, and it was settled. And this time, I'm sure it's a done deal. I used all my cards and resources a few months before when I convinced him to stay.
I remember this clearly because, for the first time, I was sure I had convinced him to stay longer, but I was wrong. It made me rethink my approach and realise I don't have full control over these situations.
Parts of systems are always wearing out. Components and stocks need to be replaced regularly. This process is called "churn" or attrition. It happens everywhere, and it's inevitable, from the cells in our bodies to employees leaving companies.
In theory, we could stop it easily. All we would need to do is pause time and freeze everything... — I’m sure attrition wouldn’t happen. But it can’t be stopped. Everything is slowly wearing down.
In this article, I’ll explain the different aspects of churn, attrition, and decay.
But before we begin:
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People Leaving
The common saying, "People leave managers, not companies", is wrong.
People have different motivations: some focus on salaries, others value recognition or the company's mission. Some may be driven by things we haven't even considered, such as access to specific technology or the ability to work in a particular time zone.
These motivations can be vastly different from ours, making them difficult to understand. To retain people, we need to understand their motivations and make sure that when they work, their motivations have space to be realised.
When working with my teams I tried to understand their motivations:
directly: just by asking them
indirectly: by analysing their actions and behaviour
And we have no full control over it. For example, if someone has been driven by a company mission but it shifted due to the business environment, we can't help it. They will leave as soon as their values and the company's values are misaligned.
"We can never eliminate churn in groups of people. When the purpose of an organisation becomes preventing members from leaving, it turns into a cult. A cult is a group doing everything possible to control its members”
— The Great Mental Models, Vol. 3, p. 113.
A company is not a family, nor is it a cult. People will come and go, but remember that new people bring fresh perspectives.
Clients Leaving
“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” — Richard Branson
If we take care of our employees, chances are they will take good care of our clients.
Even if our business is the best in the world, churn can slowly kill it. As you don’t have control over your clients, they may have their business cuts, their reasons to change providers, we can't help it.
Client churn is unavoidable, but it can be a chance to try new ideas or innovations. A new client means starting a fresh relationship with no past issues to deal with.
Summary
I may sound negative, but this article is not intended to counterbalance the previous article about being positive. It's realistic: our positivity won't influence the attrition of people and the churn of our clients.
We must accept that change is inevitable. Over time, things fade or disappear, often beyond our control. While we can sometimes influence these situations, full control is rare.
The best advice is to accept and embrace change, as it's inevitable.
Thanks for reading,
— Michał
P.S. Examples of people leaving the company were inspired by the talk by
at the Infoshare conference. He discussed how to motivate (and retain) different types of individuals in teams.Post Notes
Discover Weekly — Shoutouts
Articles that might help you explore new perspectives, which I’ve read recently:
"Safe vs ALL-IN Engineering Management" by
"The whole University IT system stopped working 😱" by
and