Your Top Talent is Being Headhunted

March 31, 2025

Good morning! Let’s pause for a brief return to winter. Last Friday, after procrastinating for more than a decade, we hired a crew to chop down four of our large Silver Maple trees. This was a crew from the old days, wanting coffee served to them at the break of dawn — and a stove at which to cook their sausages midday. We are very sad to see those trees go, but it seemed like the right thing to do. The woodpeckers have already swooped in to forage on the fresh stumps. We will now worry less about wind storms and the neighbors might thank us for having fewer of our leaves to rake from their yards. Somewhere in there is a metaphor, but I haven’t as of yet been able to conjure up what it is. It receives our highest recommendation/ Must watch:  Wicked 

• Did you hear?  Train robbery is back in style and is making a $100,000,000 annual impact — against Warren Buffet’s trains, no less.
  • Just like the old days, the robbers wait in the mesquite brush and cactus bushes for the train to come, somehow sabotage or disable it, steal the loot (often Nike shoes), and make their getaway.
  • Many of these train hold-ups are occurring in the Mojave Desert, zero humans (except the crooks), and you can watch those trains moving East from 50 miles away.
  • Romantic?  No.
  • Nostalgic?  No.
  • But, you gotta be fascinated by history repeating itself.
  • Reminds us of the old maxim:  You’ve gotta dig for gold where the gold is.  (CFO Brew)
• From research at the University of Wisconsin, it would appear Minnesota is among the healthier 10% of places to live in the United States.
• Generative Artificial Intelligence continues to explode exponentially in the marketplace, much of it behind the scenes.
  • Those working closely with it tend to be more optimistic than pessimistic; more bullish than bearish, though naysayers, doomers, and gloomers exist.
  • From an expert on the topic:  “We have a talent shortage… and the demographics are making the talent shortage even worse.  I don’t think that’s going to change.  (People were worrying for years about how the mechanization of agriculture would put people out of work.)  It’s early days, so I could be wrong about this, but the interesting thing about this technology is that it’s not highly technical.  What you need is judgment and maybe some sectoral knowledge to be able to use it well.  It calls for much more human skills.  Maybe we’ll go back to liberal arts degrees.  And remember, it wasn’t that long ago that BusinessWeek ran a cover story declaring everybody needs to learn how to code.  But now the code’s writing itself, thank you very much.  So, we don’t need everyone learning how to code.  But we do need people with experience, judgment, and wisdom so they can ask the right questions, prepare the right prompts, and know when the algorithms are spewing out nonsense.”  (Murray, McKinsey 2025)
• King Solomon was among the first to say this — and centuries later it holds true:  There is nothing new under the sun.
  • Debatable, perhaps, and we could nit-pick millions of things that are indeed different since the reign of Solomon, but
  • when it comes to the fundamentals of humankind – the rivers still flow to the sea as he observed.
  • This well-organized list compiled and published by Turc (2025) caught my eye and I thought I’d share it here.
  • There is nothing new in the information, it can be found in thousands of books about leadership and success, but I found it concise, relevant, timeless, practical, filled with truth.
  • This is something you might want to clip and add to your bulletin board — and then do more than just stare at it.
    • Your top talent is constantly being head-hunted;
      • for every reason to leave, create ten reasons to stay.
    • Your best employees have the best options;
      • offer better working conditions than competitors.
    • Your best people leave when you stifle their growth;
      • always keep investing in their development.
    • High performers expect honest, frequent feedback;
      • schedule — and follow through with — frequent one-on-one check-ins.
    • Rainmakers need challenges, not just checklists;
      • give them the most important and challenging work.
    • Your best people want to work with your other best people;
      • always keep them connected with one another.
    • Top talent craves leadership, not just management;
      • always be communicating your boldest vision internally.
    • Your best people won’t tolerate meaningless busy work;
      • audit and monitor work assignments to avoid and/or to correct this.
    • Top workers want autonomy to shape their roles;
      • extend and expand their areas of responsibility.
    • Transparency is essential in all areas of business;
      • never hide the truth:  “Tell the truth, tell it all, tell it now.”  (Holtz)
• Now, for equal time, kudos to the workers who perform mundane, repetitive chores day after day, and enjoy it, they are solid gold.
  • Their wants, needs, motivations, and ambitions are different than Turc’s fastest horses up above, but they are irreplaceable in the organizational structure.
• If you care about the future you should probably care about infrastructure.
  • In 18 different categories — from drinking water to waste water; from roads to energy — we are a little bit better than a few years ago.
  • But… I would not want to be crossing the bridges or using the tunnels in the northeast corridor on any regular schedule.
  • It’s a fascinating report:  U. S. Infrastructure