Never trust your company to keep organizational secrets

I was reminded last week that no matter how confidential you try to keep a job search, someone inside the company will let the information leak. The best strategy is always to tell your team that you are sourcing for a new position in the department before you actually extend an offer to a candidate. In the long run, it’s better to just tell people that a search is going on and manage the message instead of them hearing through the “HR grapevine” that a candidate accepted an offer.

One of my favorite books is “Good to Great” by Jim Colins. I forget to implement his cardinal rule for change management which is “tell the brutal honest truth.” If I had done that earlier, I wouldn’t have had a team walking around wasting productivity wondering who the new guy is and if they are a) losing their jobs, or b) being pushed down the org chart.