The CEO
Gut Check
Does your belief about your company match what your people are living?
Answer from your gut. Don't look anything up. Your read is the point, and a number you go and verify tells you nothing about what you were carrying in your head this morning.
Nobody sees your answers. Not your board, not your CPO, not your people.
So the numbers at the end are yours and not an average.
Average salary across the company
Rate your culture.
Now the median employee. Not your best people. The one in the middle.
What would they say?
If a strong performer were quietly falling apart, how long before it reached you?
Right now, what percentage of your workforce is carrying something heavy outside of work?
- A struggling teenager.
- A divorce in progress.
- Aging parents.
- Grief that hasn't landed.
- Money trouble.
- Their own health.
- Addiction, theirs or someone they live with.
Same question. What's your number now?
How did you arrive at that?
In the last twelve months, how many people you didn't want to lose left?
How many left for reasons that had nothing to do with the job?
Something at home. Something they were carrying. Something that had run out before they walked in.
How do you know?
Think of the last time someone here was going through something serious enough that it changed how they showed up at work.
Missed things they don't miss. Went quiet. Started running on empty.
How did you find out?
When did you last hear something genuinely bad from someone three or more levels below you, before it reached you through a report?
Think of one manager you'd trust to notice a strong performer coming apart.
You don't have to type a name. Just have them in mind.
What percentage of your managers are that person?
What percentage would your employees say?
If your people told you tomorrow that you were wrong about most of this, how would you find out you were wrong?
That's your gap. The report tells you where it came from, which of your four is the one to worry about, and what it's costing you in people you didn't want to lose.
Your report opens on the next screen and a copy goes to your inbox. Your answers stay with me. I don't sell lists, I don't run you through a sequence, and one reply gets you off it for good.
One question. That is all you will get from me.
It will land in a day or so. Sit with it. If it opens something up, you know where to find me.
Chris Coulter / The MentorWell