Dear Stephen,
I work in human resources and oversee executive recruiting for a large contract furniture manufacturer. Over the course of my career, I have recruited hundreds of people at every level of our organization. Looking back, one executive hire stands out as the most successful recruiting decision we ever made. Ironically, it is also the one that now keeps me awake at night.
Shortly after Herman Miller acquired Knoll, our CEO personally recruited a highly respected sales executive who had spent many successful years there. Like everyone else in our industry, we knew Knoll had developed one of the strongest sales cultures in commercial furniture. We also knew that many talented Knoll people were suddenly more willing to consider opportunities they might never have explored before. Our CEO likes to do some of his own recruiting, which, as you can imagine, is every HR person's dream until it becomes every HR person's nightmare.
What happened next exceeded everyone's expectations. That Knoll executive began attracting other Knoll executives to our firm. One successful hire led to another, and before long we had recruited an impressive number of former Knoll salespeople, regional managers, and sales leaders. We are a large and respected company, but we are certainly not known for manufacturing iconic designer brands. I often wondered why so many accomplished people wanted to join us, although I was not about to interrupt our hiring success by asking too many questions.
Over the past few months, however, I have started looking at those hires differently. During a conversation with another well-known salesperson we had recruited from Knoll, the employee casually said something that has stayed with me. After discussing our company, the employee remarked, “If so-and-so, the big-shot former Knoll executive, ever leaves, I hope they take me with them.” I did not react because it was an informal conversation, but from an HR perspective, a lightbulb immediately went off in my head.
Looking back at the people we hired over the past four years, I realized they had much more in common than simply having worked at Knoll. Many had built their careers together, trusted one another, and remained close long after leaving the company. Most importantly, they appeared to have tremendous respect for the executive who joined us first and later helped attract many of them.
Today, that executive remains an important member of our leadership team, and I hope that never changes. Still, companies evolve, reporting structures change, and career opportunities come and go. If another manufacturer recruited this executive tomorrow, I honestly do not know whether we would lose just one employee or the entire team.
Stephen, I spend my career recruiting talented people into our company, but this experience has made me wonder whether I have been looking at recruiting all wrong. Do people choose companies, or do they really choose leaders they trust? If one influential executive leaves, is it realistic to think others may follow? More importantly, can management build loyalty to the organization itself, or is this simply the price of hiring exceptional leaders who have spent their careers building exceptional relationships?
Signed,
Connecting the Dots
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Dear Connecting the Dots,
As I mentioned in my earlier “Knoll Diaspora” column, most people focused on the furniture companies when Herman Miller acquired Knoll. I was watching the people because, after more than forty years recruiting in this industry, I have learned that products stay in the showroom while people eventually walk out the door.
I think the most valuable thing Knoll ever produced was not furniture. It was leaders.
Yes, Knoll created some of the most important furniture designs in the world, and every former Knoll employee reading this is already preparing a lecture for me about Florence Knoll, Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, and whichever chair I forgot to mention. Please save your energy.
Knoll taught generations of people how to sell design, influence architects, work with dealers, entertain customers, and carry themselves as though the building had been designed around them. Sometimes that confidence crossed the line into arrogance, but a little arrogance has never hurt anyone during a job interview. It certainly never stopped a Knoll salesperson from explaining why they were uniquely qualified to improve another company.
Every industry has a company like this. Wall Street has Goldman Sachs, consumer products has Procter & Gamble, and consulting has McKinsey. McKinsey understands the value of its alumni so well that it deliberately maintains a worldwide network connecting former employees with one another and with the firm. Knoll never needed an alumni website because its former employees apparently had one another on speed dial.
Your CEO thought he recruited one executive. What he really recruited was one of the strongest alumni networks the contract furniture industry has ever produced.
He was not the only person who figured this out. After the acquisition, every smart manufacturer, owner, and headhunter in our industry was looking at the same group of people. Some companies recruited one former Knoll executive, some recruited several, and others appeared to be attempting a complete Knoll reunion without having to pay for the catering.
That was the Knoll Diaspora. The company changed, the people scattered, and suddenly former Knoll executives could be found throughout the industry bringing their relationships, confidence, and credibility with them. They did not all leave because they were unhappy, and they did not all join iconic design brands. Many believed, correctly or incorrectly, that they were “the magic” and could make almost any brand more important simply by arriving.
Your executive undoubtedly helped recruit some of these people, but do not give one individual all the credit. That executive did not create those twenty-year relationships, train those people, or build the culture that connected them. Knoll did that. Your executive simply knew how to harvest what Knoll had spent decades planting.
That may sound harsh, but recruiters often receive too much credit when people join and too much blame when they leave. No executive has magical control over another adult's career. Salespeople have compensation plans, territories, customers, mortgages, spouses, children, egos, and career ambitions of their own. They may admire the executive who recruited them, but admiration is not the same as ownership.
Companies do not own relationships. Employees do.
That is the part many CEOs and HR executives hate to hear. They believe the relationships developed inside their company belong to the organization because the company paid the salaries and picked up the dinner checks. Unfortunately, the salesperson remembers who helped close the order, who protected them during a bad year, and who answered the phone when their career was in trouble.
Now let me answer the question that is keeping you awake. If this executive leaves, will every former Knoll employee follow that person to another manufacturer? No, and I doubt even the executive believes they have that much power. Some people might follow, particularly if the new opportunity is better and the executive has earned their trust. Most will remain because they have built something valuable at your company. They now have customers, income, authority, reputations, and perhaps better careers than they had before. At some point, the former Knoll people stopped being Knoll people and became your people. At least, management had better hope they did.
Your real danger is not that they all follow one leader to another company. That would be convenient because you could see it happening and blame one person. The more realistic danger is that the executive's resignation gives everyone else permission to reconsider their own careers.
One respected person leaves, and another employee begins wondering what that person knew. Someone returns a recruiter's call that they ignored six months earlier. Another agrees to have coffee, updates a LinkedIn profile, or quietly asks a former colleague about compensation. Nobody marches out together, but over the next year several people scatter in different directions and management insists there must be something in the water.
There is something in the water. It is called confidence.
The first departure proves that leaving is possible. It reminds successful employees that the world outside their company still exists, and it gives every recruiter calling them a new opening question. Research calls this turnover contagion, but I do not need an HR expression for something I have watched throughout my entire career. When a respected executive leaves, the resignation itself becomes a recruiting advertisement.
That candidate who said, “If the executive ever leaves, I hope they take me with them,” was not really declaring loyalty to the executive. The candidate was telling you they trusted that person's career judgment more than they trusted your company's reputation. That should concern you, although it should not surprise you.
You admitted that your company is large and respected but is not known for iconic design. Those former Knoll people did not spend their childhoods dreaming of selling your particular furniture. They joined because someone they respected made your company sound like a better career opportunity. Your responsibility is to make sure the opportunity eventually becomes more important than the person who introduced it.
That is how loyalty transfers from a leader to a company. You give talented people real authority, competitive compensation, visible career growth, and enough respect that staying continues to feel like the intelligent decision. You do not accomplish it with an employee survey, a retention committee, or an inspirational memo from the CEO explaining that everyone is family. Most employees already have families, and very few want another one conducting their performance review.
Here is another uncomfortable truth. Companies spend far too much time asking whether employees are happy, as though happiness somehow protects them from recruiters. I recruit happy people every day.
The best candidates The Viscusi Group recruits are usually successful, respected, and well compensated. They are not desperately applying for jobs while hiding from their managers. If my recruiters could only attract miserable people, my clients could find those candidates themselves. We earn our fees by convincing gainfully employed people to consider a career opportunity they did not know they wanted.
People repeat the old line that “employees do not leave companies, they leave managers.” That is occasionally true, but it is too simple and makes management feel better because it gives them one person to blame. People leave good managers and good companies all the time. They leave because someone paints a bigger picture of their future, and once they can see that picture, their current job never looks quite the same.
Your CEO made a brilliant recruiting decision. I would recruit that executive again, and I would happily recruit every talented former Knoll person who fit your company. Great leaders attract great people, and any CEO who refuses to hire a powerful executive may have doubts about their own abilities. Recruiting a network and retaining a network, however, require two very different talents. Your CEO proved your company could attract these people. Now your company must prove it deserves to keep them.
Signed,
Stephen Viscusi
Stephen Viscusi is one of the best-known executive recruiters in the furnishings and interior products industries. As founder and president of The Viscusi Group, he has spent more than four decades recruiting senior executives and sales leaders for furniture manufacturers, dealers, flooring, textiles, kitchen and bath, lighting, tile and stone, glass, and other interior products companies throughout North America. He is the author of two bestselling career books, a frequent television and media commentator, and writes the nationally followed “Ask Stephen” workplace advice column.
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