hiring, meetings, etc

I also try to stick to the default assumption that “everyone is an A player at something.” It’s a more effective and more dynamic way to approach an interview—a live, fascinating puzzle to discover what the elephant and the rider do well—rather than going in with the purpose of determining whether someone is an A player in a binary, Manichean way.... See more

• Can we re-frame this in terms of the customer’s problem?


• What’s the soonest we could get this done?


• What would you need to get this done tomorrow instead of next week?


• What would we need to do to get twice as many customers? Ten times as many customers?


• How does this relate to our goal? Is this the most important thing we can do for our goal?


• What’s

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A major difference between my friend's team and most teams is that my friend's team was composed of people who had a track record of being highly effective across a variety of contexts. In an earlier job, my friend started a job at a large-ish ($5B/yr revenue) government-run utility company and was immediately assigned a problem that, unbeknownst... See more

You should find the candidate confusing at times. If you first see their dysfunction, you should know you have yet to find their genius, and vice versa.

Some questions that I’ve found to be very effective in one-on-ones: If we could improve in any way, how would we do it? What’s the number-one problem with our organization? Why? What’s not fun about working here? Who is really kicking ass in the company? Whom do you admire? If you were me, what changes would you make? What don’t you like about the

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