hiring, meetings, etc

I like asking up-front, “So what criteria would you use if you were the one hiring someone for this role?”

Questions like “what are you compulsive about?” can sometimes reveal the other person’s elephant. Or: “Where have you experienced a moment of ignition, when you saw some older person doing an activity and you intuited that they were wired the same way you were, and you said to yourself ‘I want to be that’?” Or: “How would your spouse/sibling/parent... See more

During interviews, I try to create a stillness that helps separate signal from noise, elephants from riders. The easiest way to create conditions of stillness is to talk very little. It also helps to have the candidate you’re trying to see clearly ask you questions. Questions have very high signal value compared to most anything else you can get fr... See more

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 t... See more

I try to conduct references with an eye to quirky forms of excellence.

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.

Problems should come from success, or being on the brink of success rather than being invented by some intellectual quest.

I’ll bet that as few as 20% of us are in the seat that best optimizes our talents and skills at any given time—the seat that makes us feel at home in the world.