Hiring and Firing

Have you done both?

I spend *a lot* of time with our companies thinking through and advising on hiring. Everyone understands the “hire slow, fire fast” mantra, but it’s hard to internalize the importance of hire slow until you’ve had to deliver, in person, the difficult news that you’re letting someone go. Some of these meetings are easier than others, but ones for people you like where performance was just not up to expectation is often the hardest.

Experience managing talent (recruiting it and delivering bad news when it’s not working) is what we’ve consistently seen set the best teams and companies apart. Are you rigorous and disciplined in your recruiting and interview process? Do you provide your team the clarity of direction and resources to be successful (and grow!) in their role? In a perfect diligence process, I spend 90% of my time understanding how founders and leaders think through these challenges, and 10% on everything else.

The good news is all of this can be learned, but it takes time! It’s an especially critical function in Hard Tech, where metrics can take longer to show and talent/culture is the leading indicator of success. The most famous book on this is The Goal, but I’m sure there are others. Feel free to share any suggestions / resources!