When there is no financial argument to make, presence and honesty are the only currency left.

principle — attributed to Ben Erwin

In 2020, Erwin was asking a workforce to stay on roughly half their take-home pay, in an industry the pandemic had shut down entirely. He made no financial case, because none existed. What he offered instead was the plain fact of where the company stood and a commitment to show up every day while it found out what came next. Eleven thousand people stayed. The mechanism was not incentive; it was sustained presence combined with a refusal to dress up the situation. That combination, held long enough to be believed, functioned as compensation when actual compensation could not.

For leaders managing a team through a period with no good news and no budget to soften it.

retention, honesty, crisis-leadership, trust