The Action Gap Field Kit
You usually see it coming. The hard part is closing the gap before they go.
There is a distance between the moment you notice a good person slipping and the moment anyone actually does something about it. We call it the Action Gap. Everything below teaches you to close it, by hand, with nothing but your own attention and a few simple habits.
Free. No sign-up. Three guides, a course, and a dozen tools, all in one place.
The Action Gap, in your own team
How wide is your Action Gap?
Eight short statements. Answer how often each one is true for you. In about a minute, you will see where the distance between noticing a good person slipping and actually acting is widest, and where to start closing it.
A reflection, not a test. Your answers stay on this device and are never sent anywhere.
A note from the founder
Why we built this, and why it is free.
If you lead people, you know the feeling. You can tell when someone good is starting to drift, long before they ever say a word. The hard part was never noticing. It was doing something about it in time, every time, across a whole team.
I built Anchor because I lived on the wrong side of that gap. I lost people I should have kept, not because I did not care, but because I could not act fast enough on what I already felt. Everything in here is what I wish someone had handed me back then.
So we gathered all of it in one place and took the price off. The guides, the courses, the working tools, the research underneath them. Take what helps you. Change it, rename it, make it your own. We would rather the whole field got better at keeping good people than hold any of this back.
We built Anchor to run this discipline at scale, but the discipline belongs to everyone who does the work. If what is here helps you keep one good person, it has done its job. That is reason enough for us.
James Little
Founder, Retentio Group Inc.
The Guides
Three deep references. Read the one for you.
The full discipline, written three ways: for the leaders who fund it, the HR architects who build it, and the frontline managers who run it.
For leaders
The Program Guide
The deep leadership reference. Spot the signal, read it honestly, plan the conversation, follow through, and run it as a real program, written for the people who carry the number.
Open the guideFor HR
The HR Leader's Playbook
The HR companion: how to be the architect of retention. Map your gap, build the triage, enable managers, run stay interviews as a program, and make the case upward.
Open the playbookFor frontline teams
The Deskless Playbook
For frontline teams. When most of your workforce never opens a laptop, the strategy runs through the one person who can act: the manager standing right there.
Open the playbookThe Courses
Learn the discipline, one move at a time.
Two short, honest courses, written for the two seats that close the gap: the manager who has the conversation, and the HR leader who builds the system behind it. Plain language, no theory, no scoring gate.
For managers
The Action Gap Course
How to catch a good person before you lose them, and what to do about it, using nothing but your own attention and a few simple habits. Seven short modules for the frontline manager.
Start the manager courseFor HR leaders
The Action Gap Course for HR
Become the architect of retention: map your gap, build the triage, enable your managers, run the practices, turn data into action, and make the case upward. Eight short modules for the HR leader.
Start the HR courseTools for Managers
The habits, made simple.
Ready-made tools you can put to work today. Each one is free, needs no sign-up, and keeps your work private to your own device.
Cost-of-Turnover Calculator
See what a single departure actually costs, in plain dollars, on your own numbers.
OpenThe Stay Conversation Planner
One page to fill in before the conversation that matters, so you walk in clear.
OpenThe Follow-Up Tracker
Track what you tried and what was committed, so a follow-up never quietly slips.
OpenThe Program Starter Checklist
From good intentions to a program you can run: cadence, owners, follow-through.
OpenTools for HR Leaders
For the architect of the program.
The tools that go with the HR Playbook: audit your workflow, coach your managers, convert your surveys, run the stay program, and make the case upward.
The HR Action Gap Self-Audit
Find the one stage where your workflow loses people, from intake to outcome.
OpenThe Manager Retention Scorecard
Track the behaviors that keep people, not the turnover that arrives too late.
OpenThe Stay Interview Program Kit
Run stay interviews as a program: the rollout, the briefing, the one rule.
OpenThe Executive One-Pager
The page you leave on a CEO or CFO desk: the cost, the fix, and a clean ask.
OpenStraight with you, from the start.
This kit teaches you to do retention by hand: to notice the quiet signals, to read them honestly, to plan the one conversation that matters, and to follow through. All of it is real. All of it works. People have kept good employees with nothing more than attention and a hard conversation held at the right time.
We will also be honest about the limits. Doing this by hand works beautifully for the people right in front of you. The harder problem is the quiet ones you do not happen to be standing next to: a different schedule, a different location, the person who never comes up in your day. Catching every one of them, every week, by memory alone, is more than any one person can carry. That is not a knock on you. It is just the shape of the job. It is also exactly where Anchor was built to lift past what hands can carry.
Take the templates with you
The field tools, yours to keep.
Every tool is free to use on this site, right now, with nothing to sign. Want your own editable copies to adapt for your team? Tell us where to send them.
The Watch List
Record who feels off, since when, and what changed, so a gut feeling becomes something you can act on.
The Signal Field Guide
A one-page reference to the early signs a good person is checking out.
The Stay Conversation Planner
The one page you fill in before the conversation that matters, so you walk in clear instead of winging it.
The Follow-Up Tracker
Track what you tried, what was committed, and what actually happened, so the loop never quietly slips.
The Program Starter Checklist
From good intentions to a program you can run: cadence, owners, follow-through.
From Survey to Action
Turn each survey finding into a named action, with an owner and a date.
The Manager Retention Scorecard
Track the behaviors that keep people, not the turnover that arrives too late.
The Stay Interview Program Kit
Run stay interviews as a program: the rollout, the briefing, the one rule.
The Executive One-Pager
The page you leave on a CEO or CFO desk: the cost, the fix, and a clean ask.
Take the kit. It is yours.
Start anywhere. Run the numbers, take the course, or open a guide. It is all free, and there is nothing to sign. When you reach the edge of what one person can watch by hand, and most good leaders eventually do, the door to a conversation is right here. No pressure, no pitch. Just a way to see whether we can help.
See how Anchor could help youThis opens a short request form. We will reach out to talk, not to sell.