In the Summer of 2010, Kilo Company of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines got dropped off on top of a desert knoll in Musa Qalah, Afghanistan. Along with them, as one of their combat engineer attachments specializing in IED detection, was me. Our mission over the next two weeks was to proceed North from that knoll and seize the Taliban territory between us and another Battalion of Marines that was pushing South.
As part of this, we would wake up before dawn and begin walking, typically covering over 10 miles across an eight-hour day. At the end of the day, we would set up in mud compounds that we cleared out of IEDs and spend the night, just to repeat that process the next day. We carried everything we needed, including food, water, weapons, ammunition, and gear, totaling well over 60 pounds, on our backs.
Naturally, the Taliban was not going to simply retreat. The days of walking were typically full of firefights that left us exhausted. The conditions in the desert were atrocious. The temperature soared well over 100 degrees during the day. The sand fleas made meals of our skin. Our gear rubbed the rest of our skin raw. We moved so fast that we outran our supply train, meaning that we had to drink Afghani well water, the bacterium within wreaking havoc on our guts.
By the end of the two-week push, when we returned to the same knoll upon which we were dropped originally, we were skeletons of the men we were when we set out. The day before we were to load up and return to the main base, I sat against the four-foot-tall wheel of an armored truck. Despite the pain, the dysentery, and the fatigue, as I looked out across the Afghan expanse, all I could think about was how much I loved being a Marine. At that moment, I decided that I was going to keep deploying as many times as I could.
The Effects of High Attrition Rate
The ideal situation for any organization is that their people feel the same way that I felt on that knoll in Afghanistan. That, no matter how difficult things get, they will stay on this team for better or worse, and give as much to that team as they can. In a perfect world, every single person on the team would stay until they are ready to retire.
The reality, however, is that no team has an attrition rate of zero. There will always be a certain amount of turnover, and that is unavoidable. Even the people who have the mindset that we seek will one day leave. Indeed, despite attrition having a negative connotation, it is not always a bad thing. When people leave at the end of a long career, or go on to pursue dreams and ambitions they have been planning and waiting for, that is considered to be desirable attrition.
Of course, most commonly, attrition is of the negative kind. The kind where people are dissatisfied in one way or another to the point that they decide that they are better off leaving and taking their chances with what they get. Such attrition has long-term ill effects on any team, and if it becomes rampant, can severely reduce the effectiveness of that team.
When attrition is too dramatic, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the culture of the team. The more new people come in, the more time needs to be spent on training them, and that will naturally take away from the time that more experienced team members have to work on the mission.
Reconfiguring Attrition Rate
Accepting that there is no such thing as 0% attrition rate, our goal must be to convert as much of our bad attrition rate to a good attrition rate. How do we go about doing this? What was it that convinced me atop that knoll in Afghanistan to stay in the Marine Corps, despite the danger, the atrocious conditions, the low pay, and the almost total absence of freedom?
The answer was right in front of my face. As I shifted my focus away from the horizon, and to the scene around me, I saw my fellow Marines. They were cleaning their rifles, eating a snack out of their MREs, and standing around laughing. I wanted to stay in the Marine Corps so that I could spend as much time with them as humanly possible.
Are things like a meaningful mission that everyone identifies with and supports, great pay, great benefits, and control good things to have on your team that will most certainly help to reduce your bad attrition rate? Yes, they are. But, there is one thing that we can all do that will help to reconfigure that attrition rate to the good side. And, that is being someone that other people want to work with.
Most people spend the majority of their time at work. Many of us don’t have the luxury of doing something we always dreamed of. A lot of workplaces are less than ideal. And the pay and the benefits could almost always be better. But there is one thing that will make all of that time away from home worth it: if the people at the place we go to are people we look forward to seeing.
That is why I foresaw a long career in the Marine Corps with as many deployments as I could manage. I knew that when I showed up to work, I had my best friends by my side, who cared about me and would sacrifice all they had for me.
How can we be a person that others would want to work with? We use the Laws of Combat. We use Cover and Move. We support each other, and build relationships. We use Simple, and communicate so that we are all working together toward the same mission. We Prioritize and Execute. We align on the priorities and stay detached when the pressure is high. And we use Decentralized Command. We make sure we understand the why behind everything we do, and we let other people lead. We are humble. We put our egos aside. And we take Extreme Ownership of the team’s mission.
Conclusion
People are going to leave your team. There is no avoiding that. But there is no reason for anyone to leave on bad terms. We must do everything we can to ensure that any attrition from the team comes in good form. And, yes, there are many tools available to help reduce attrition rate, but the philosophy that we all need to develop that underlies it all is to take it upon ourselves to be the person that everyone else on the team would go through the toughest of times with.
