Companies run because of people. People are effective because of their relationships. Relationships are based on how we treat each other. And how we treat each other is defined in our worst moments.

When you’re stressed, do you take it out on your teammates? When you’re feeling tired, do you exclude peers from conversations they could add value to? Do you ignore people? Do you treat things as “not my problem”? Do you expect others to just deal with it?

You probably have your excuses, but the person on the other end of things won’t care. The damage is done. And that puts you firmly on the road to less effective teams, higher attrition and a greater chance of failure.

Hiring is backwards

For hiring, it’s amazing how backwards it is. We start not really knowing what skills we need to hire for, so:

• we filter based on past experience by company/market category
• we then filter down based on past experience by title
• we then filter based on past experience by storytelling ability
• we then filter based on potential and soft skills

But I’m going to argue that it’s the last filter that really determines the impact that person will have, and once you find a talented individual, you should be trying to bridge what they learned from their past experiences to your future needs.

I don’t know why we blindly winnow out good people because they didn’t work at the right company or have the right title. Besides, putting people in growth positions has to improve their staying power, no?