Turnover blows. Here is how you can prevent the pain – forever:

1. Hire incompetent people – no one else ever will. They will be yours to keep until the day they retire.
2. Promote people beyond their abilities.
3. Always eliminate training first in budget cuts. Training only enhances peoples’ self worth and sense of mobility.
4. Describe your micro-management practices in “employee collaboration” terms.
5. Work your people to death, and enforce “use it or lose it” vacation time. They will not have time to interview, or realize that their work/life balance sucks.
6. Never give people performance reviews. Reviews present the risk of encouraging or discouraging marginal (or exceptional) performers, and can lead them to take action.
7. Create an environment that embraces the teflon suit: make commitments on others behalf, but then encourage professionals of all ranks to side-step accountability when It hits the fan.
8. Managers: after whipping your team into a performance frenzy, be sure to publicly take credit for all their good work. This ensures that they will not get a big head or reputation within the company, and keeps the keys to their success tightly deposited in your hip pocket.
9. Praise in private, abuse in public. See #8 for the logic of this.
10. Don’t press, don’t push, don’t punish, don’t encourage. Treat your employees like mushrooms – keep them in the closet, feed them a little crap now and then, and definitely keep them in the dark.

If you – a reflective, humble professional – have checked more than a box or two, consider dusting off your resume. Or looking for a way to start getting some independent feedback. This isn’t a “congratulations, you’ve won” list where the highest score wins.