The Manager's Handbook

1Hire for Outcomes

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

—African proverb

Apple, Inc. didn't invent the mouse, the graphic interface, or even the personal computer, but it turned these technologies into one of the most valuable companies in the world because Steve Jobs was ruthless about surrounding himself with top talent. His leadership is one of the best examples of “First Who, Then What,” the expression coined by the business expert Jim Collins, in Good to Great.¹ Jobs understood that inventing the next big thing wouldn't make a lick of difference if he didn't have the right team in place to pull it off. “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it,” as Halford E. Luccock, the early twentieth‐century Methodist minister, once said.

Yet most managers are really bad at hiring. A study involving 7,000 hiring managers found that 46% of all new hires fail within the first 18 months, and a mere 19% achieved “unequivocal success.”² Can you imagine accepting those results in any other aspect of your business? Instead of hiring for outcomes—or put more bluntly, hiring “to get things done”—most of us hire the person whom we personally click with, cross the chore off our to‐do list, and willingly accept a 50/50 shot at having gotten it right.

Fortunately, hiring for outcomes doesn't require special instincts or talents. Better hiring begins with committing to a standardized approach across your organization. Standardizing your process ...