I’ve seen people come and go at startups for a few years now. I’ve started noticing a major trend as to why people leave those startups. Most of the time, it is when they get next to no support to be successful at their function.



Now, startups are very hard and having limited support is pretty typical. Structure is usually not there and you need to figure out what the problems are and then solve them without much help. What I’m talking about is when a certain function or job requires the support or assistance of others, usually executives or the people you report to, to do the basics and you don’t get it. When this happens often enough, employees get fed up and start looking for a new job. I’ve seen it happen quite fast when you have a job that has lofty internal goals, but you can’t actually get your job done because something is blocking it (it could be product, money, senior management support, or something else).

I’ve seen it happen time and time again and I think I have a decent solution for solving this problem. It’s not a surefire solution, but one worth exploring. The solution is that you should often ask employees the following two questions: 1) Are you getting all the support you need to do your job well? If not, what is missing? 2) Is anything or anyone holding you back? If so, how and who and what can be done to fix this?

If you truly listen to the answers and work on solutions you should be able to avoid losing employees due to things like lack of support in a position.

What do you think? Any other ideas?