You Cannot Retain a Superstar Employee With Money

This is a question I get asked often. Bluntly, there is no way. (I could stop there, but let me continue.)

Let me explain why you cannot retain a superstar.

Superstars are financially independent. In other words, they already have plenty of other offers. You cannot retain them with a pay raise. They almost certainly already hold several offers with better terms than whatever figure you present.

Superstars believe nothing is more reliable than their own skills and knowledge. The false stability a company offers will never sway them. They made peace with living amid instability a long time ago.

Superstars build their own growth plans by themselves. They will work with you as long as doing so aligns with that plan, and leave once it no longer does. Nothing more, nothing less.

Superstars basically treat what other people say as no more than a reference point. Persuasion is meaningless to them.

You might think this sounds like an impossible task. And you’d be right. But there is a sliver of hope. Superstars are lonely. Having some kind of exceptional ability means very few people exist who can discuss things at their level. So almost no one around them truly understands them. Superstars are used to loneliness. But in their heart, they do want to be understood and acknowledged.

There’s a somewhat cynical rule of thumb that says “to offer an accurate critique of someone’s output, having a third of that person’s ability is enough.” The number itself has no deep meaning, but the point is usually to say “critiquing and posturing over someone doesn’t prove your own ability.” Let’s use it in a positive sense here instead. In the sense that “even if the other person’s ability far exceeds yours, having roughly a third of their level of understanding is enough to genuinely engage with what they’re saying.”

A superstar produces not just twice but ten times, a hundred times the output of an ordinary person, so even a third of that is not exactly a low bar. But if you clear it, you can become someone who understands them.

Even if you can’t go toe-to-toe with them in discussion at their level, you can still stand beside them, listen, and be someone they can talk to. This isn’t something that happens overnight, but it’s the only method I know of for preventing superstar attrition.

The content of this post is an excerpt (original text) from the following book. If you’re interested, please pick up a copy.

The Shape of a Happy IoT Startup

The Shape of a Happy IoT Startup

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2022/09/1169/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.