Quiet Quitting is Nothing New

The term “Quiet Quitting” is getting a lot of attention right now, but it’s not a new phenomenon. Sure, the cultural and environmental shift that has taken place since the pandemic has changed the game a little, but the rules have always been the same: if you don’t understand, value, and engage your people on a meaningful level, they’re as good as gone.

The pandemic opened a lot of eyes. It provided perspective and pushed a lot of us to reevaluate our priorities and reassess what we’re willing to tolerate, and maybe more important, what we aren’t. Yes, money still matters. So does winning. But the “how we get there” is more front of mind than it probably ever has been before.

If you’re leading a toxic, dysfunctional, or frankly just a “meh” kind of culture, your best players aren’t going to bitch and moan. They’re not going to flip a table over and demand more out of you. They’re probably not going to go out of their way to help you become a better tactician, communicator, or leader, either. They’re just going to leave. Explore their options. Enter the transfer portal. Take that recruiter’s call. Sign elsewhere as a free agent. The good ones tend to be wired differently. They’re driven and expect more out of themselves, their teammates, and especially their leaders. If you’re not holding up your end of the bargain, they’re going to find somewhere they can get what they need. Once you lose the hearts and minds, there’s no recovering.

When I first started scouting years ago, I worked for the Cleveland Indians. One of our division rivals was the Minnesota Twins. It was notoriously difficult to entice a Twins scout to take an opportunity with another team. The salary bands in the scouting community are, by and large, pretty tight. A relatively small bump in pay can sometimes represent a meaningful difference for a scout. The Twins, like the Indians, were a smaller market club, with shallow pockets. There were other teams that could pay more were they so inclined. Nonetheless, the Twins were better than most in retaining their staff. Why? The scouts knew they had a voice. They knew both where they stood with the organization and what the organization itself stood for. At a time when there was a popular (albeit bastardized) narrative emerging of “scouts vs stats”, it was more than the Twins simply being a decidedly scout-friendly organization. Rather, thanks in large part to the leadership of GM Terry Ryan, the Twins had established a culture of trust, stability, and integrity. Each scout felt valued and a part of something bigger than himself. So, when other teams called, the Twins scouts demurred.

The other approach? Silo people, lean on them only when you need something from them, and hide the ball on leadership decisions. Extract as much value out of them as you can, give them just enough to make them feel obligated or fearful of leaving, and make that path for advancement extra blurry. Then all you have to do is install a revolving door for your personnel department, and watch it spin.

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