The barrier to exit is the cost of rebuilding those relationships. The old saw, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” applies quite heavily to management. The key value that managers add to front-line people is that quality of being a “human switchboard”, knowing who is working on what, who needs to talk to whom and, most importantly, who should not talk to whom. When a manager switches firms, all of that implicit knowledge has to be built up from zero. It’s a huge cost, and represents a significant barrier to exit.
The barrier to exit is the cost of rebuilding those relationships. The old saw, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” applies quite heavily to management. The key value that managers add to front-line people is that quality of being a “human switchboard”, knowing who is working on what, who needs to talk to whom and, most importantly, who should not talk to whom. When a manager switches firms, all of that implicit knowledge has to be built up from zero. It’s a huge cost, and represents a significant barrier to exit.