You Need to Hire the People Who Can Disrupt Themselves

It’s sort of a funny interview question, “Have you ever fired anybody?”  But I’m not going to bring on a manager who has never fired somebody because they have to be able to do that.  That’s part of the skill set. 

There is a lot of different things that we interview for.  We’re really looking for people who are willing to disrupt themselves, willing to not embrace the status quo, look at a system and say “Okay, well we’re bigger now—we need to bring in a new financial system” or “We’re bigger now, we need a different database, we need a different kind of email company to distribute our emails,” whatever it might be. 

I think a lot of people very naturally get comfortable with what they have and comfortable with what they’re doing, but one of the markers of a fast growing company is you constantly have to reevaluate everything and what worked for you last month or last year might not work for you this year or next year and so you don’t always find people who have that skill set who are willing to look forward and willing to embrace that.

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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