Four Reasons to Quit Your Job

By Jack and Suzy Welch

What criteria can you use to determine if you have been with the same company too long?

A friend of ours, an investment manager at a highly regarded company in the Midwest, who drove to work one morning, parked his car in the usual spot, and then found he simply could not bring himself to get out of the car. “I guess I stayed on the farm one day too long,” he joked later. When we asked him what went wrong, he answered, “It wasn’t one thing. It was everything.” No wonder he drove home and called in his resignation.

Obviously, most people don’t decide they’ve overstayed at their companies in such a dramatic fashion. Usually, angst about work creeps in, and then builds until it consumes you. And that can happen early or late in a career. Gone are the days when, after graduation, you took the best available job and stayed for as many years as you could possibly stand, frustration be damned. These days, it is not unusual to hear of perfectly legitimate careers built on multiple job stints.

So, to your question, how can you tell when it’s time to move on? We wouldn’t set out specific criteria as much as offer four questions to help sort out an answer.

The first is so simple it almost goes without saying, but the fact that a lot of people don’t confront it, including our friend who ended up stuck in his car—a Harvard MBA, by the way—suggests we should go ahead and put it out there: Do you want to go to work every morning?

This is not a matter to be over-brained. Does the prospect of going in each day excite you or fill you with dread? Does the work feel interesting and meaningful or are you just going through motions to pull a paycheck? Are you still learning and growing?

We know of a woman who worked in consulting for seven years. She loved her firm and had originally planned a career with it, but suddenly started noticing that she wished every weekend was five days long. “Basically, I felt like we were putting together massive books in order to make recommendations to people who knew more than we did,” she said. “Every day at the office, I felt a little bit more of a hypocrite.” She now happily works on the “front lines,” to use her phrase, in the marketing department of a retail company.

Second, do you enjoy spending time with your coworkers or do they generally bug the living daylights out of you? We’re not saying you should only stay at your company if you want to barbecue with your team every weekend, but if you don’t sincerely enjoy and respect the people you spend 10 hours a day with, you can be sure you will eventually decide to leave your organization. Why not make the break sooner rather than later and start cultivating relationships at a company where you might actually plant roots?

Third, does your company help you fulfill your personal mission? Essentially, this question asks whether your company jibes with your life’s goals and values. Does it require you, for instance, to travel more than you’d like, given your chosen work-life balance? Does it offer enough upward mobility, given your level of ambition? There are no right or wrong answers to such questions, only a sense of whether you are investing your time at the right or wrong company for you.

Fourth and finally, can you picture yourself at your company in a year? We use that time frame because that’s how long it usually takes to find a new, better job once you decide to move on. So peer, as best you can, into the future, and predict where you’ll be in the organization, what work you’ll be doing, whom you will be managing, and who will be managing you. If that scenario strikes you with anything short of excitement, then you’re spinning your wheels. Or put another way, you’re just about to stay too long.

To be clear: We’re not suggesting people quit at the first inkling of discontent. No matter where you work, at some point you will have to endure difficult times, and even a deadly dull assignment, to survive a crisis or move up. But it makes little sense to stay and stay at a company because of inertia. Unlock your door and get out.

Jack Welch is Executive Chairman of the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University. Through its Executive MBA program, the Jack Welch Management Institute provides students and organizations with the proven methodologies, immediately actionable practices, and respected credentials needed to win in business.

Suzy Welch is a best-selling author, popular television commentator, and noted business journalist. Her New York Times bestselling book, 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea, presents a powerful decision-making strategy for success at work and in parenting, love and friendship. Together with her husband Jack Welch, Suzy is also co-author of the #1 international bestsellerWinning, and its companion volume, Winning: The Answers. Since 2005, they have written business columns for several publications, including Business Week magazine, Thomson Reuters digital platforms, Fortune magazine, and the New York Times syndicate.

A version of this column originally appeared in BusinessWeek Magazine.

Thanks for Being a Star Performer. Now I Will Ignore You.

Most managers spend 80% of their time with those who only do 20% of the work while the top talent quietly does 80% of the workload with minimal fuss. It is easy to get distracted by the high maintenance of underperformers and the requisite babysitting, investigating, cajoling, and documentation they require.

Thank goodness for our “A” players, the ones we count on and those who have stepped up in these lean times to go above and beyond. They are the “easy” ones because they are low maintenance (unlike those pesky low performers that are always setting fires that need to be extinguished). We don’t need to babysit them, we don’t need to micro-manage them. They know what they need to do and they do it so we can just leave them alone. Right?

Based on a study showing that high performers were more than twice as likely to actively look for another job than low performers, Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ aptly says,

"Frankly, we treat our high performers worse than any other employee," he says. "When a manager has a tough project upon which the whole company depends, to whom do they turn? Who gets the late hours and the stress? It's not the low performers."

What are the behaviors that we as leaders do that unintentionally drive our high performers away? Check this list:

High performers are rewarded by being left alone.

It’s a sign of praise and respect to leave someone alone isn’t it? To tell someone, “I never have to worry about you” is a compliment, right? Yes but overused it turns into neglect and everyone, even high performers, want to know that their efforts are being seen and appreciated. Too often we bias our performance dialogue and coaching time to the low performers. Work to touch base with your super stars on a weekly basis.

High performers are given the toughest projects.

We throw the most difficult challenges to our top talent on a continuous basis, often without commensurate reward or recognition. In worst cases, we ask them to clean up or finish work that the underperformers do not complete, which can lead to resentment. Avoid using your high performers as a constant source of catching up for those not pulling their weight.

We have unrealistic expectations of our high performers.

They are not allowed to have a bad day, complain, miss a deadline or make a mistake. We put a tremendous amount of pressure on them that is unrealistic and unfair. Give your A players room to not always be perfect and appreciate them for the effort.

They work the longest hours with the highest stress.

Left alone, your high performers are intrinsically driven to achieve and often put in long hours to meet your and their expectations. Unchecked, this can lead to serious burn out and health issues from stress. Tune into them and note when irritability or fatigue is taking a toll. Encourage time off, vacation days or mental health breaks.

They suffer from a lack of coaching and targeted development.

It’s easy to assume that since they are a high performer, what more coaching or development can they need? Plenty. Most high performers want to continually improve, learn new things and hate to get bored. Consider ways to expand their scope of responsibilities, use them as mentors, involve them in cross-training, or opportunities to mingle with senior execs.

Make a conscious effort to not ignore those that make you look good everyday, even though they quietly work behind the scenes. Or, if you are a high performer yourself and could use a little attention from your boss go ahead and print this article and leave it on their desk. We won’t tell.