• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

How to Hire People Who Are Smarter Than You Are

June 27, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Apple’s Steve Jobs frequently pointed to the risk of a “bozo explosion,” which is what happens within a company that makes the mistake of hiring B-grade managers early on. As the company expands, these bozos—Jobs’s label for well-meaning, but less-competent managers—tend to emerge through the ranks and run important divisions of the company.

When bozos hire other people, they prefer to hire bozos. As entrepreneur (and bonafide Steve Jobs’s coattail-rider) Guy Kawasaki explains, “B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players.” Lo and behold, entire divisions are soon swarming with hordes of bozos.

How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion

How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion

The heuristic “hire people smarter than you” is obvious enough, but, every so often, smart people can be a terrible fit within your team.

In this Startup School 2013 interview with venture capitalist Paul Graham, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg offers a better heuristic to hiring and keeping smart people who aren’t jerks and can get things done:

What’s the right heuristic for determining if someone is really good? Over time, what I figured out was that the only actual way to let someone analyze whether someone was really good was if they would work for that person. I don’t think that needs to recurse too many levels down in the organization but I basically think that’s a really good heuristic. I believe that. If you look at my management team today if we were in an alternate universe and I hadn’t started the company it would be an honor to work for any of these people. I think if you build a company that has those kind of values, rather than just saying ‘oh I want to hire the best person I can find’ or whatever, if you hold yourself to that standard then I think you’ll build a pretty strong company.

Idea for Impact: Mediocre managers often feel threatened by employees who seem more intelligent than they are, and could potentially pinch their jobs. In contrast, a wise manager knows that she reveals well on her own ability to discover and nurture talent.

  • As with advertising tycoon David Ogilvy’s Russian nesting dolls metaphor for building “a company of giants,” insist that managers hire folks who are better than themselves. For example, a product manager should hire a designer who is better at design than the manager is, not worse.
  • Insist that each interviewer ask themselves of job candidates, “Would I want to work for this person?”
  • Remember, the best don’t come cheap.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees
  2. Never Hire a Warm Body
  3. General Electric’s Jack Welch Identifies Four Types of Managers
  4. How to Manage Overqualified Employees
  5. Why Hiring Self-Leaders is the Best Strategy

Filed Under: Leading Teams, Managing People, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Coaching, Feedback, Getting Ahead, Great Manager, Hiring, Hiring & Firing, Interviewing, Teams

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Popular Now

Anxiety Assertiveness Attitudes Balance Biases Coaching Conflict Conversations Creativity Critical Thinking Decision-Making Discipline Emotions Entrepreneurs Etiquette Feedback Getting Along Getting Things Done Goals Great Manager Leadership Leadership Lessons Likeability Mental Models Mentoring Mindfulness Motivation Networking Parables Perfectionism Performance Management Persuasion Philosophy Problem Solving Procrastination Relationships Simple Living Social Skills Stress Suffering Thinking Tools Thought Process Time Management Winning on the Job Wisdom

About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

Get Updates

Signup for emails

Subscribe via RSS

Contact Nagesh Belludi

RECOMMENDED BOOK:
Made in America

Made in America: Sam Walton

Walmart founder Sam Walton’s very educational, insightful, and stimulating autobiography is teeming with his relentless search for better ideas.

Explore

  • Announcements
  • Belief and Spirituality
  • Business Stories
  • Career Development
  • Effective Communication
  • Great Personalities
  • Health and Well-being
  • Ideas and Insights
  • Inspirational Quotations
  • Leadership
  • Leadership Reading
  • Leading Teams
  • Living the Good Life
  • Managing Business Functions
  • Managing People
  • MBA in a Nutshell
  • Mental Models
  • News Analysis
  • Personal Finance
  • Podcasts
  • Project Management
  • Proverbs & Maxims
  • Sharpening Your Skills
  • The Great Innovators

Recently,

  • Did School Turn You Into a Procrastinator?
  • Inspirational Quotations #1101
  • Luck Doesn’t Just Happen
  • The Speed Trap: How Extreme Pressure Stifles Creativity
  • Inspirational Quotations #1100
  • Airline Safety Videos: From Dull Briefings to Dynamic Ad Platforms
  • How Small Talk in Italy Changed My Perspective on Talking to Strangers

Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!