Episode 141: Managing Turnover from the No Spin Zone

Hey, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, flying solo today as Mark's out in Boston touring the country, visiting some clients, having some good meetings. And one of the questions we got come in from our listeners this week was about turnover. How do you communicate it? How do you handle it? What do you do when you have a lot of turnover all at once? What's the philosophy here? Right. And so we have a playbook around this. We've, we've talked through it a little bit. We've had seasons where there's been a lot of turnover all at once. We've had seasons where it kind of trickles. And so, you know, we've got a little process that we go through. One of the first things that you always want to remember, and I'll kind of talk about the 3 things that we do pretty quickly, but the first thing that we always try to do is keep the spin at home, right? That belongs in a laundry machine. Be open, be honest, communicate. The second thing I always like to do is remind them of the vision, right? Always remind them why we're here. What's the purpose? What are we trying to achieve? Why was this necessary? And then the third thing I make sure to do is before I tell anybody else, I always talk to the immediate team, right? I always start with the immediate team. So let's, let's break those three down. So when I talk about no spin, right, leave the laundry at home. This is a no spin zone. I got this from Reed Hastings. He wrote a book called No Rules Rules. He also ran a company called Netflix. You might have heard of it. And one of the big things that they did or implemented in their culture was about this, you know, we have clear, caring candor, right? But that also extends to terminations. So when we have somebody that leaves either voluntarily or if there's somebody who's asked to leave, we leave the spin at home and we just tell it like it is, right? I think you've seen a lot of companies will try to they'll put a positive spin on it, right? And they'll sit there and, oh, this person's so wonderful, we wish them all the best in their future endeavors, they're amazing. And you have to ask yourself, as well, if they were so amazing, how did they lose their job, right? And that's what I want you to keep in mind while you're thinking about this, is that you're— everybody else who's still left behind, right, who's still with you, they're asking themselves that question is, what did they do to get fired? Is it going to happen to me? Am I going to befall that same fate? Or how do I make sure that it doesn't happen to me? What's the story? The other thing is if you don't get ahead of it, the gossip mill will start churning. The rumors will start flying and most of them are going to be untrue, or they're going to have a kernel of truth that's just not quite where it needs to be. So when we talk about no spin, we come out and we will say, now we do it with dignity. We're not gonna be harsh or cruel. And the intent is that whatever we write, we have to assume that the person we're writing it about is going to hear it and read it. So we tell the truth, right? We basically just say, you know, hey, we've decided to move on from so-and-so. In the past 2 months, you know, after repeated conversations, it just didn't seem like they were really getting the picture. Their performance was unsatisfactory. You know, one of the things that we talk about in our core values and we will go through— we don't beat them up too harshly, but we'll go through a couple of the reasons why we decided to make this move and why it was necessary. Uh, what's refreshing about that is that most of your team already knows, right? They already know that this person is either lackluster or not performing or not doing well. Maybe they're not a culture fit. And so you're coming out and saying that just reaffirms, uh, of why you're doing what you're doing. Uh, the other piece of this too is that, um, if you get out ahead of it, you build credibility with the team. You know, you can get out and say like, this person left because they weren't a core value fit. That gives you instant credibility with the team that they know that you live the values, that you're willing to hire for the core values, that you lead to the core values, and that you're ultimately willing to fire for the core values, right? That you're willing to fire for work that doesn't impress, that you're willing to have those hard conversations. If you don't do that, you miss an amazing opportunity, right? If you gloss it, if you give them the sugar-coated donut and say, oh no, they're a wonderful person and they've just decided it's time to move on, you miss an opportunity to really build that credibility as a leader with your team. You know, for them to really see what it means to lead with clear and caring candor. Both for people who are departing and people who are still here. So that's the one thing. If you want to read more about that, you can go look this up. It's, you know, the No Spin Zone, or go read No Rules Rules. That's a fantastic book for leaders. But that was one of the big things that, like, I struggled with this as a leader, is we would constantly send the sugarcoated messages. And I want to say we stopped that probably about 2 years ago. And I've had people come up to me afterwards and they're like, man, I'm so glad that you do this right, that you're willing to be open and honest with your teammates. And that you can trust us with this information. It's refreshing. And honestly, it helps settle a lot of nerves, a lot of nerves when they come back and they're like, oh my gosh, what happened? Why? And we just nip all that in the bud. So second thing, remind them of the vision, right? I remember, you know, there's one time we did basically— it wasn't a layoff event, but it was, you know, we were restructuring the company. I want to say we let go of about 5 people in the space of 2 hours. You know, which in some companies, that's really nothing at all. Some companies will lay off 20,000. For us, that was about 17% of the workforce, right, at one time. And that can be pretty jarring, right? I mean, effectively, like when you think about your body, you're cutting off a limb to some extent, right? Now, thankfully, we're a company, so we can regrow limbs. But, you know, the idea is still that it's painful. And there's relationships there that people, you know, that they are friends with these people. And so what I have to do is in that moment, you know, as the leader of the team, or in my case as a CEO, you get up in front of people and you remind them of why we're here, right? That it's not just for one person. This is why I don't like calling our company— it's, it's not a family-oriented culture, right? We're a family-friendly culture, uh, you know, you're not going to come around and see a bunch of swearing or anything like that, but, um, we're not a family, we're a team. right? A team— players get traded, players get cut because we're all after a goal, right? And we have to remind them of the goal, that the goal is really why we're all here. We're not here to, you know, be friends and make all that. That's— we do that because we don't want work to suck, but we do have to remember that there's still a job to be done, right? You can't forget the mission. And so as a leader, you have to get up and find a compassionate way to remind people of the mission and say, hey guys, I know it's tough. We lose people. These are some great people, you know, and you've got to be honest, right? Sometimes they weren't meeting the expectations. And I owe it to you as the leader to put people around you that raise the bar, right? That push you to be better. That's what we're building here is a winning culture, right? Or I'll get up and say, look, like these are some— in one case I can remember, you know, finances were tight. It was probably during one of the recessions. And we got up and said, hey, Guys, this is, you know, this is what we're doing in order to make sure that everybody else still has a job, right? And we, we looked at it, we evaluated where could we afford to let, you know, basically let off some, some blood flow, uh, without hurting the company too much, that we could protect all of you, uh, and you're still here, right? Like, this is it. And, and that's another thing too, if you have to make cuts, do one cut. Don't sit here and like do a cut one month and then do a cut another month and then do another cut later. Go deep on the first one, deeper than you think you might need to, because nothing is worse for morale than establishing a pattern of having to cut people back, especially if it's financially driven. The worst thing you could do is create that type of pattern, and now people are waiting for it. They're kind of looking to you and saying, "Okay, when's the next round? And am I going to survive? Those people didn't have any warning. Am I going to survive?" Uh, which is another piece of this too, is if as much warning as you can give people, give it to them, right? As much warning as you can get out in front of it. Whenever we have a performance issue, I guarantee you we've been talking to that individual for at least 2 months before we, before we make a move like this, right? And sometimes, you know, in some cases I've had it where you might have had some conversations in 2 months, but you just know. And then what you— we end up doing, a part of our culture is if we haven't been able to have those in-depth conversations and we're ready to make a move now, we just ramp up the severance, right, to basically cover for the time that we would have been having those conversations. So that's another way you can kind of mitigate that. But I always get out and remind them of the vision, right? Here at RTA, we help fleets succeed. We're here to help push and drive the mission. You just have to remind them what the goal is, right? And why we needed to make these moves in order to achieve that goal. Um, I will also say this too, which is, yeah, especially if it's a financial thing, uh, if you're the leader and you put yourself in a position like this where you had to make cuts, recognize your part, the part you played in getting the company to this position, and apologize for that, right? You have to take some ownership. You have to take some accountability. Um, I would honestly, I'd be looking at cutting my own pay if I have to do something like that. I've been very public about that, that, you know, as part of this, like, I've demoted myself effectively. You know, I haven't taken myself out of the position, but I, you know, basically gave back. If I'd been giving myself raises, I'm giving them all back, right? And the idea here is that, you know, in times of growth and prosperity, if you were willing to bet the bank and grow and hire all these people and then you couldn't afford to keep them later, recognize that that was your decision to do it. Right, to hire them in the first place, even though you probably shouldn't have. Right. So again, depending on the reason you're having to let people go, it changes how you communicate. But I always tie it back to the vision, right? How does this support the mission? The last piece, I always try to talk to the team first, right? So once we've made a decision with, you know, with an employee or with a team member, we'll always try to talk to that person's team first. If they were a manager, we'll talk to that person's team and our management channel. So all the managers know what's going on. But we kind of go through and the reason we do that is we do it face to face, you know, and I'll pull in the whole team and as much as I can, if they're virtual or they're remote or something like that, I'll do it over Zoom. But we'll sit them down in a room like this and we'll just have a quick conversation and say, hey, you know, just want to let you know today we decided to move on from so-and-so. You know, here's the reasons why. Effectively, you're pre-crafting that email that you're going to send to everybody. With the reasons why you decided to make the move. And again, most of the time the team already knows. The team already knows this is coming because they've seen the writing on the wall. They've interacted with this individual. They know where their performance gaps are. They know what's going on. Right. And so it's not going to be a big shock to some of them. Some of them are completely clueless. Right. And I've seen that too, where they come in, their heads are in the, in the sand. Maybe they're really good friends with this person. And so there's some halo effect or some recency bias going on. We've seen those too. And that's why I pull people in and I look people in the eye just like this. I need them to know and understand why we're making the move we're making. And then it gives them a chance to like, do you guys have any questions? Are there any concerns? Anything else I can answer before we send this out to the rest of the team, right? Or the rest of the company? Sometimes they will like, oh, well, you know, did they see it coming? And like, yep, we had them on a PIP for 2 months. They definitely saw it coming. Yep. You know, we had had options on the table for them and they chose to take option A. Uh, we'll usually put two options in front of them, like, you know, do you want to go on a PIP or would you rather just take a severance, right? We call that an emotional firing. Um, so we kind of explain that whole situation. Again, we want to help people feel safe, that your job's not in threat. Uh, at the same time, we want to make sure that they, you know, understand that there's changes, right? And that's probably the biggest thing for a team, especially if you let go of a manager, as the team has to— they know that there's going to be a new manager coming in, they're going to have a new leadership style. Sometimes when we're interviewing a manager, we might have the team interview that manager, although if we had to make a change with the manager, you know, odds are is that we also sometimes have to make changes with the team that that manager wasn't making. And that can be a little bit disconcerting for some team members who might have been flying under the radar. And all I do in those situations is I just remind them of the culture and remind them of the mission. This is what we're doing here. This is why we're doing it. And if you're not, you know, I always talk about our golden handcuffs quadrant, which if you haven't watched that podcast, you should definitely go watch that. We'll probably post a video up on that pretty soon. But I always tell them, make sure you know where you stand with your manager on that golden handcuffs. Make sure you understand where you fall in the keeper test. right? And the keeper test, for those who don't remember, that's where, you know, you ask your manager the question, how hard would you fight to keep me if I turned in my resignation, right? And would they be just floored? Would they fight to keep you? Or, you know, would they gladly accept it, right? And know where you stand at all times. And that's a great way for you to feel safe as well. So those are my 3 things, you know, no spin, tell it like it is, tell the truth to your team, everybody who's left behind so they know why you did what you did. Remind them of the vision. Remind them of why you're doing what you're doing, where you're going, what you're trying to achieve as a company. And then always start with the team, you know, their team first. So that way you can, you know, have more of a face-to-face conversation than them finding out via email or via like a Slack chat or something. So with that, that's going to be our episode today. If you have any questions, I love getting requests like this. Email us at podcast@rtafleet.com. We would love hearing from you. And until next time.