Think about your most solid performer. Not the one showing potential, or the person you like the best. Someone who is reliable, trusted, and efficient. They have mastered the role and are at the top of their game.
When you think about them, you think, “Dream employee. Nothing is wrong.”
That’s the problem.
They probably want more, but they can’t articulate what that looks like. They might say a raise, or even a promotion, but often that’s not possible. They start to get bored, or restless, and from the outside, it looks like a motivation problem.
Then a recruiter calls. And the recruiter does what the company hasn’t: they describe what more looks like. They give your best person a vision of the next stage of their career.
It might not even be the stage they would have picked for themselves, if anyone had asked. But it beats stagnating.
They probably got a raise too, so the company chalks it up to leaving for money.
But they’d be wrong.
It isn’t that you weren’t paying them enough. You weren’t expecting enough. The recruiter didn’t out-recruit you. They out-defined you.
Name the Stage
In my model for developing people, every role has three stages: Practice, Perform, and Pioneer. Pioneer is the one most companies never define, and it’s the one that keeps your best people.
Pioneer isn’t a promotion or a different role. It’s contributing at a high level in the role someone already has: improving operations, developing others for the role, preparing for a future role, or expanding the scope of the work. Something more, with significance and value to the organization and to the person.
Most companies never define it because they think “more” requires an open position. It doesn’t. It requires an open need, and every growing business has more needs than titles.
People don’t leave jobs where they can see their next contribution. They leave jobs where more is undefined. They don’t even need the promotion right away. If they can see opportunities, and a path for getting there, they stay.
Titles Come Last
Defining Pioneer stages enables something bigger. I call it modular management.
Most companies build structure in this order: draw the org chart, create the title, then hope the person grows into it. Modular management reverses it. You move people to the business’s needs first through Pioneer-stage work done by the employee ready to take on more responsibility. It might be mentoring the newest team member, owning a system, or running an improvement effort.
The business gets the need met now. The person gets to try the work. And when you update the org structure later, you’re codifying what already works instead of betting on potential. Titles become the last step of development, not the first.
What This Means for You
Start by understanding the cost of not doing it. When you lose a star performer, it isn’t just the line item they represent. It’s the recruiting fee, the months of ramp time, the relationships that must be rebuilt, the projects that get put at risk, and the lost opportunities.
When you add that up, the investment in defining a Pioneer stage is miniscule.
So have the conversation. Make a list of your solid performers. Sit down with each one and ask about their interests and ambitions. Tell them about the business’s needs. Show them how contributing to those needs creates value now, for them and for the organization.
Do it before a recruiter does.
If you want to talk about how to retain your high performers and design your talent development systems for growth, book a strategy call with me at shiftfocus.com.
Your best people will hear a definition of more from someone this year. Make sure it’s you.