Hiring the Right People from the Beginning

“Like the Steve Jobs quote, ‘hire smart people to teach you what to do, don’t hire smart people and tell them what to do.'”

– Chris Powers

When you start a company, there’s less people and the funnel is like this. We make all the decisions. We’re the two at the top and maybe there’s seven underneath us. As that keeps widening, there’s one, two, three, four, twenty, twenty-five. If that funnel, if it keeps having to go to here, it really creates that bottleneck and you just can’t move. You gotta figure out how to open that funnel back up.

If I have to hire you and then worry about everything you’re doing, that’s just something I need to ask myself. “Why am I worried?” Or if there is a reason to be worried, why did I hire this person if I’m still doing the entire job or at least not letting them do anything that they believe they should be doing because I can’t approve it yet? It’s like the Steve Jobs quote, ‘Hire smart people to teach you what to do, don’t hire smart people and tell them what to do.’