Someone resigned last month. Good employee, two and a half years with us, taking a role closer to her family. I ran our exit interview on a Thursday afternoon, forty minutes, closed-door. By Friday I had three things to fix. That's the only reason I still do these.
Most exit interview forms ask fifteen questions and produce nothing. "Rate your manager 1-5." "Woudl you recommend us to a friend?" The departing employee gives polite, median answers because they want the reference and they're already mentally gone. You get a folder full of 4-out-of-5s and no information. I ran it that way for about a year when we were smaller. I stopped because I realized I was collecting paperwork, not learning anything. If the person is leaving on good terms, they'll soften everything. If they're leaving angry, they'll either torch the place or go silent. Neither extreme tells you what to change on Monday.
I ask three things now, and I ask them in this order. First: what did you spend time on that you felt was wasted? Second: who should I be paying more attention to? Third: if you were me, what would you change in the next ninety days? That's it. Notice none of them are about the person leaving. They're about the business they're leaving behind. People will tell you remarkable things when the questions aren't about rating their own experience. Last month I learned that our Tuesday ops meeting had quietly become a status readout nobody prepared for, that one of our quieter team members has been doing coordination work I wasn't crediting, and that our client intake form asks for information we never use.
I write the answers down in front of them. Not on a laptop — on paper, so they can see I'm actually recording it. That changes the quality of the response. And I don't argue, defend, or explain. If she says the Tuesday meeting is useless, I don't tell her why we started it. I just write it down and ask what she'd do instead.
Within one week, I decide which items to act on and which to shelve, and I tell the remaining team what changed and why. Not who said it — the departing person gets confidentiality — but what we're doing differently. The Tuesday meeting is now twenty minutes with a written agenda or it doesn't happen. The quiet coordinator got a title change and a raise at the next cycle. The intake form lost four fields. Three concrete changes from forty minutes of honest conversation. That's a better return than most consultants deliver.
If your exit interviews feel like a formality and you're ready to run them as actual intelligence-gathering, send us a note — this is the kind of operational cleanup we help small teams build into their rhythm.
— Amanda @ SBATC
