If an employee decided to leave the company, it shattered my world. That's what I thought 20 years ago when I was the CEO.
So I made tremendous efforts to prevent their departure. Long conversations, improving conditions—anything to maintain the status quo.
Sometimes I succeeded, and the employee agreed to stay. But more often than not, within 3-9 months, we would bid each other farewell.
Convincing them caused me immense stress and drained all my energy. When an employee entered my office, closed the door tightly, and said, "Listen, we need to talk," it felt like a punch to the gut. Now I realize that these "conversations" were torture for them as well.
The problem was that it hurt me deeply to let them go. After all, I had invested so much in each of them. Recruiting, selecting, integrating, training—it was probably easier to get into Harvard or BUD/S.
I thought I had created a paradise for their professional growth. Of course, it was just an intention, not a fact. Even Adam and Eve considered paradise imperfect. In other words, it's impossible to satisfy everyone, always and in everything.
I came to understand that we are simply fellow travelers on the road of life. Sometimes we share the same project, and other times ten years go by. Otherwise, the sooner we say goodbye, the fewer tears there will be.
I also realized that long before an employee's departure, I felt a sense of disorder but didn't trust my intuition enough to investigate the cause.
My main problem was the dependency-driven unwillingness to let go. Our projects were always on a much grander scale than our resources. That's where the vulnerability of the company arose, and I felt it as my own.
I understood that it wasn't the employees who were betraying me, but rather, I was betraying myself.
To make my business strong, I first had to change myself.
Yours sincerely,
-Alexander
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