Table of Contents

The Demand

This week, you treat losing a cast member to a competitor as validation, not betrayal, and you build your recruiting posture accordingly. If you keep waiting for A level talent to apply to you, you get the candidates nobody else wanted while the operator actively recruiting gets the candidates everyone else is trying to keep.

The Work

  1. Review your last departure to a competitor. Was it departure by growth — they were ready and the competitor opened the door first — or departure by neglect, where your internal opportunity had already stopped being compelling? Answer honestly.
  2. If it was neglect, name the gap in development that let it happen and fix it for your current A level cast this week.
  3. Maintain your B level floor this week. Identify any cast member performing below it and address it directly — every day that standard goes unenforced is a reason an A level person quietly starts looking elsewhere.
  4. Reach out to one A level person currently working for someone else this week, through your network, not a job posting. Be honest about the opportunity you are offering and only recruit if you intend to actually develop them.
  5. If a competitor tries to recruit one of your people this week, do not counteroffer. Have the growth conversation instead: what is still ahead of them here that makes leaving premature.
  6. Make your next exit conversation, if one comes up, worthy of the relationship — that departing cast member is talking to the next A level candidate you have not met yet.

This week, you take at least one active step to recruit A level talent through relationships, and you handle any departure or poach attempt as a signal to act on, not an attack to resent.