Hire for skills when hiring into an established organization or institution. Hire for intelligence, cooperativeness, and other skills when you need to build something from scratch.If you need to hire a bunch of people quickly, option 2 is best.I’m often in build mode and find myself opting for #2 more often than not. Based on my experience, #2 consistently produces strong results — very rarely have the people had their roles reduced, and many get promoted into better roles. Extracted from Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross’, “Talent”
I like this idea from Jame Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter.“Move toward the next thing, not away from the last thing. Same direction. Completely different energy.” The destination doesn’t matter as much as the person you are when you arrive.
An excerpt from A Killer Golf Swing is a Hot Job Skill (WSJ, gated). Excerpt below:People who can smash 300-yard drives and sink birdie putts are sought-after hires in finance, consulting, sales and other industries, recruiters say. In the hybrid work era, the business golf outing is back in a big way. Executive recruiter Shawn Cole says he gets so many requests to find ace golfers that he records candidates’ handicaps, an index based on average number of strokes over par, in the information packets he submits to clients. Golf alone can’t get you a plum job, he says—but not playing could cost you one.I get it. I don’t like it. How much great talent is out in the labor market? Lots.How much of it plays golf? Who knows.. my guess, not as much as I might imagine. What is the relationship between skill and knowledge acquisition and golf? My theory is it’s weak.If my guesses are true, then why would we place such a premium on golf? Golf might be a channel for skilled connectors to generate or keep business. I suppose, now in defense of the article, it’s like entertainment. If you’re going to make it in the music industry, you’re going to supply to your market what they demand from you. BIlly Joel is always going to play “Piano Man,” and Norah Jones might always play “Don’t Know Why” — it’s what the people want to hear. Doing anything in service of people requires that the servant know their markets demand so that they supply the right type of work — that’s work that matters. I reasoned myself out of hating the article.
The more things change…“Cease to hope and you will cease to fear. (Hope and fear) are bound up with one another… widely different… the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to… both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety…. Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.” - Seneca
I find a tremendous amount of healing in trying to imagine at least one unbelievable thing every day. Every now and then the mind needs to go out and play.
A birthday marks a yearly milestone. Long term objective that matters because a group of people created and enforced a behavior around acknowledging the milestone. A vanity metric. What if we thought about birthdays at the margin? Every single day we can take incremental action to make ourselves and our world better with the resources available. If we use our time and energy wisely, we can end our day believing we left the world slightly better than where we left it. Should we wake up the next morning, we get another chance to make that incremental improvement. We celebrate that opportunity — a marginal birthday. I would rather go from measuring that I survived 365 days to measuring how I used the 24 hours I had available to leave the world slightly better — a true KPI. I’m all for a marginal birthday.
Historically, I dread this time of year. I don’t particularly enjoy my birthday, and I don’t particularly enjoy receiving birthday greetings. I do appreciate that others might receive some utility from wishing and greeting me a happy birthday. Perhaps they believe their message is a bright spot in my day. I do appreciate that someone thought about me. Some people enjoy being thought about it. But for me, the value of acknowledging that I am not 365 calendar days older than I was before creates little to no value. I could say that about every day — every calendar day is 365 days from the same time last year. So what’s my problem? Nothing. This is a time of year for me when I need to necessarily chill. I need to retreat to myself for a bit — recover and restore my energy, spend more time in reflection, and not go out of my way to exert. Almost like re-birthing myself into my next 365 day cycle.
Learn how to do financial reporting! It’s something I suck at (for now!), and it’s not the work I typically do. Every transaction matters! Every single one. Everything, in some way, becomes accounted for now or in the future. A useful idea at or outside of work.Ability to create and keep trust and deploy compassion are forms of undervalued human capital. That’s not an entirely new idea — so many people talk about “soft skills.” I don’t think there’s anything soft about trust — it’s hard work. What you see is not all there is.
Music, like most works of innovations, is iterative. One way to define culture is a set of norms and behaviors defined and enforced by a group. There are groups, of people, who have created music cultures — such as the multi-dimensional jazz. Jazz gets passed down from generation to generation through media and education. That’s one dimension — depth.Jazz also gets moved across the globe. The people of the world have made the form theirs. That’s another dimension — breadth. When our ideas and our work spread, those who receive value from our work will desire to make it their own. They will desire for our work to assimilate into or complement their culture. It’s easy to spread an idea. It’s better when those that interact with our work, make it their own. Inspiration from “5 Minutes That will Make You Love South African Jazz” via Tyler Cowen.
Getting upset over spilled milk.… and everything that is its equivalent.