As the company's top leaders, senior executives take great pride in their work. They will work hard and invest a lot of their own sweat and tears to ensure a company's success. But if the company's goals change and the executive does not buy into the changes, the executive may jump ship. Offering executives more stock options and cool perks is not enough to keep them. Instead, consider these techniques:
Make good hires. Determine whether this position is ready to be filled. Bringing in a new CEO may require the company founder to step aside. "You must ask yourself, 'Am I ready to have someone else take control?'" says Leigh Branham, author of Keeping the People Who Keep You in Business. Once you've made a decision to hire, make sure that the new exec's values and goals are in line with the company. Will this person fit into the company culture?
Be realistic. Paint a fair and accurate picture of your company and its products. Many execs say they left an employer because the company or job did not live up to its billing. "If you promise the moon and can't deliver, the person isn't going to want to be part of the team for very long," says Jeff Heath, president of The Landstone Group, a high-tech executive search firm in New York.
Ask them what they want. Gary Gannaway, chairman and CEO of WorldNow, a New York-based provider of Web-based applications for broadcasters, schedules regular breakfasts with employees. Each week, Gannaway spends one-on-one time with a different employee to learn about the employee's concerns and goals. "It's all about listening and caring about what they have to say," says Gannaway, who says he's lost only one executive - out of 110 employees - during the two years he's owned the company.
Give them authority and resources. High-level executives want to be in control of their own destiny, so that means giving them the power to make important decisions and the budget to buy the right tools. Let them hire and build their own teams.
Offer new challenges. It's not often that Scott O'Hare wonders about life outside of stalwart Dell Computer (DELL). During the seven years he's been at Dell, he has worked his way up from CEO Michael Dell's executive assistant to VP and general manager of the Preferred Accounts Division, where he now runs a $1 billion-plus, 550-person unit serving the company's middle-market customers. "Sure, I could go off and run a startup, but the intellectual challenge and the ability to work with great people is here," O'Hare says.
