The Power of the Pause

Last Thursday I noticed a new large dark spot on my left arm.  For possibly the first time in my life, I was struck with the ever present fragile nature of my mortality.

Was it melanoma?

It looked like it might be.  The spot was a good quarter inch in diameter, although it was more square.  It initially seemed to have some slight redness to the edges.  I felt fear.  I scheduled an appointment to get it checked out, which will be tomorrow.

In the past few days, the spot’s aggressive nature seems to have shifted to passive - it’s less dark and any potential red edges have gone away.  Was it just my imagination?

Or was it a reminder that each day is a gift?

But how intentionally do we live each day so that months and years later we have the peace and joy of knowing that we loved our best, focused on what was truly most important, and avoided as many mistakes as possible?

What's the process or habit to achieve these three objectives - to love our best, focus on top priorities, and avoid mistakes?

Not attitude.  That's a separate post.

Here is what I've learned.  I encourage you to consider these simple four plays / game plan to get the most out of life.

GAME PLAN

Respecting our mortality is underrated.  

Choose love - the joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, courage, and foresight to primarily spend your time on meaningful activities.

Deny fear - the anxiety, isolation, paranoia, impatience, resentment, self-pity, cowardice, and reactivity that convinces you there is no time to think, no one to trust, and no margin for error.

Unhealthy fear rushes you toward the wrong decision and away from the people who could help you make the right one.

It whispers that pausing is weakness.  Fear lies.

How much time do you have left?

Not enough.  You’ll want more - particularly more time when you’re healthy. 

Here is part of the answer of how to make the most of the time you have:

PLAY #1

THE PAUSE THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING

Pausing before speaking or acting measurably improves decisions and relationships.

There are three pauses that change everything.

First, the pause before responding.  Think first.  Talk second.  Remember the old adage that warned us to be careful with our words:  “Ready, fire, aim?” 

Why would we ever shoot first and aim afterwards?

Pause before speaking.  Often, the best first thing to say is either a question to confirm understanding, or a statement to confirm understanding - “If I understand you correctly, you said…”

IMPORTANT NOTE:  This also applies to our internal thoughts.  Too often we take a soundbite, opinion, or fact and then stretch it with biased assumption and judgment into a false conclusion based on partial evidence.  This is always hurtful - and often, most painful to us in the long-run.

Second, the pause before acting.  Acting based on the wrong conclusion causes loss.  Loss of time.  Loss of relationship.  Loss of finances.  Loss of health.  And more. 

It is written, “For lack of guidance a nation falls, but many counselors make victory sure.” 

You may feel pressure to make quick decisions and take action.  However, rarely is that true.

The opposite is equally true:  You do not have an unlimited time to act.

Therefore, develop a habit to gather the facts, make decisions with wise counsel, and take action in just the right amount of time - Goldilocks time - not too fast and not too slow. 

Third, take Sanctuary time weekly.  Choose at least 15 minutes weekly, if not 30-60 minutes for focus, self-accountability, and thought.  No one can hold you accountable as well as you can yourself - although every wise person has counselors they trust with their candor.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  When appropriate and without risking the potential outcome, take action in steps rather than fully commit.  This limits risk while still progressing forward.

Sources:  

#1 - Goldilocks and the Three Bears | https://americanliterature.com/childrens-stories/goldilocks-and-the-three-bears

#2 - The Power of the Pause: Mastering the Art of Deliberate Decision-Making" | Noomii | September 28, 2025 | https://www.noomii.com/articles/16069-the-power-of-the-pause-mastering-the-art-of-deliberate-decisionmaking

#3 - The Power of Pausing in Collaborative Conversations" | ScienceDirect | October 9, 2025 | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597825000676

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PLAY #2

MAKE “MAP” A HABIT

Everything you’re working to achieve, individually or as a group, is an effort to move from Point “A” where you are today to Point “B,” which is a destination you have defined as better.

To get there, you need a map.

Here is how your MAP should be organized:

M – Metrics (focus is past) - Accountability on prior commitments.

Did I complete my daily and weekly WINs (“What’s Important NOW?”) and key tasks planned since my last meeting?  Did I meet or exceed all the metrics for my responsibilities?  Am I consistently demonstrating our mission, vision, and values?  Has my team met these standards?

A – Actions (focus is present) – What’s most important to do now?

What actions are being asked or required of me now?  For instance, project status;  new products, services, processes, clients, or people;  or new ideas.  Who needs my assistance?  Where do I need help, should research information, or make adjustments to stay on track?  Anything happening with our competition, the economy, or something else that can affect our progress?

P – Plan (focus is future) – Commitments with due dates to finish before next meeting.

What are my 1-3 WIN priorities?  Is my “B” List organized in order of priority based on what I know now?  What must be entered in my calendar?  What can be removed from my calendar?  Who needs to know about this Plan?  When is my first check-in on this Plan?

Review your MAP in Sanctuary time to confirm you are on track.  Seek help or readjust quickly when you are not.

BRAIN FOOD:  Shane Parrish in his Brain Food newsletter of May 24, 2026 advised:

People who get an unusual amount of work done are maniacal about removing things from their lives that others tolerate.

Guarding your time isn't rude; it's how you get stuff done.

Sources:  

#1 - Implementation Intentions: Strong Effects of Simple Plans" | American Psychologist | Peter M. Gollwitzer | 1999 | https://www.prospectivepsych.org/sites/default/files/pictures/Gollwitzer_Implementation-intentions-1999.pdf

#2 - The When and How of Planning: Meta-Analysis of the Scope and Components of Implementation Intentions in 642 Tests" | ResearchGate | Peter M. Gollwitzer | March 2024 | https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378870694

#3 - The Power of Reflection at Work" | Harvard Business Review | Francesca Gino & Gary Pisano | May 2014 | https://hbr.org/2014/05/the-power-of-reflection-at-work

#4 - How High-Performing CEOs Manage Their Time Effectively" | The CEO Project | April 6, 2025 | https://theceoproject.com/how-high-performing-ceos-manage-their-time-effectively/

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PLAY #3

COMMIT TO A SCHEDULE

From 1978 into the early 1980’s Lee Iacocca led an effort that saved Chrysler Corporation from bankruptcy.  One of the disciplines he credited for helping save the American carmaker was every Sunday evening, he would separate himself from the family to spend two hours in his study.

He was alone.  No interruptions.  No email.  First, Iacocca held himself accountable to the previous week’s objectives.  Did he follow his plan and accomplish what he had felt was most important?

Second, he considered new information, what had changed during the prior week, what he did not accomplish last week, and his overall plan.  From this data, he wrote his new plan for the upcoming week and noted key activities that must be set aside in his calendar.

Iacocca credited this habit as a major reason he was able to stay focused on what was most important each week, and ultimately led the way to achieve his mission:  Restore Chrysler’s profitability and market share.

Iacocca had a map to get Chrysler from where it was – his Point “A” - to where he wanted it to be – his Point “B.”  He knew his short and long-term goals and how to get there.  But he still needed to spend time each week holding himself accountable to his metrics, which was his prior week’s Plan;  consider and prioritize Actions for the upcoming week;  and then confirm his Plan for the upcoming week.

Sanctuary time is the discipline of an individual or small accountability group spending uninterrupted time to review their MAP and adjust the routes to their various Point “B”  destinations they want to reach.

President Abraham Lincoln’s advice:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

THE PLAY:  Schedule time in your calendar each week - 15-60 minutes, as explained in Play #1 above - for Sanctuary time.  Choose a time when you are least likely to be interrupted and when you think clearly.  (Coffee can help.)

Commit to it.  ALWAYS take this time for self-accountability, perspective, and planning - use the MAP system.

NOTE:  A 1-5 minute daily sanctuary at the start or end of a day can also increase productivity and focus.

Sources:

#1 - Lee Iacocca, Chrysler saviour, minivan innovator, dies at 94 | Windsor Star | July 2, 2019 - https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/lee-iacocca-auto-industry-saviour-minivan-innovator-dies-at-94

#2 - Timeblocking" | Wikipedia (aggregates peer-reviewed research) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeblocking

#3 - How to Make Time for the Work That Matters" | Atlassian Work Life | December 2023 | https://www.atlassian.com/blog/distributed-work/calendar-redesign-experiment

#4 - 27 Productivity Tips That Will Change the Way You Live, Work, and Feel" | RAIN Group | June 27, 2024 | https://www.rainsalestraining.com/blog/27-productivity-tips

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PLAY #4

WORK FROM A LIST OR JOURNAL

The “P” in MAP is Plan.

Where’s your plan each week?  Each day? 

Yes, your calendar supports your Plan, but you need a way to scan your Plan - this week’s - all past weeks - and maybe you list some priorities in future weeks. 

1.     Gadget / App:  Choose one.  I use OneNote.  It is not perfect due to limited formatting and search features.  But when used as a minimalist, it’s easy to create prioritized checklists and scan results. 

2.     Share:  Don’t fly solo, although some information may reasonably be best kept confidential - that can be in a separate app, or section of your app - e.g., a OneNote notebook that is not shared.  Sharing your goals and plans has been shown to improve your ability to follow through, achieve more, and experience higher personal fulfillment in the process.

3.     Look Back:  Review prior week and day notes.  Not to boast.  Not to shame.  To validate the facts, learn, and get better every day.

Sources:

#1 - The Impact of Commitment, Accountability, and Written Goals on Goal Achievement" | Dominican University (Dr. Gail Matthews) | 2015 | https://scholar.dominican.edu/psychology-faculty-conference-presentations/3/

#2 - Want to Be an Outstanding Leader? Keep a Journal | Harvard Business Review | Nancy J. Adler, McGill University | January 13, 2016 | https://hbr.org/2016/01/want-to-be-an-outstanding-leader-keep-a-journal

#3 - What Are the Benefits of Journaling? 200+ Studies Reviewed" | Mindsera | May 2026 | https://mindsera.com/articles/benefits-of-journaling-the-science-of-reflection/

#4 - The Do's and Don'ts of Goal Sharing | Full Focus (Michael Hyatt) | November 28, 2017 | https://fullfocus.co/goal-sharing/

#5 - When Intentions Go Public: Does Social Reality Widen the Intention-Behavior Gap |  Peter M. Gollwitzer, Paschal Sheeran, Verena Michalski, Andrea E. Seifert | Psychological Science, Volume 20, Issue 5 | May 2009 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19389130/

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Want more?

I humbly suggest this game plan can change your life for the better.  

Maybe it's a minor fine-tuning of how you manage your time and focus.  For others, this is an opportunity to stop allowing your schedule to control your life - professionally and personally.

If you're stressed out, struggling with priorities or decisions, don't hesitate to reach out to me for a conversation. Possibly I can be a sounding board for you to work through some issues.

I'm not talking about billable time.  I'm describing people time.  Talking as old friends or new friends.  Possibly I can come alongside you for a season that helps you in some way.  Just use the email address below and I will respond.

Email me your questions at info@manage2win.com.

Download our time management guide here - https://www.manage2win.com/s/times_up.pdf

Learn more about our services at www.manage2win.com.

Championship teams manage their time well.  Yours should too - for your benefit and the benefit of every team member.

See you next week!

- David

P.S. Help a friend - share this game plan.

The Real Cost of Bad Hires

Have you ever carefully added-up all the costs of one bad hire?

Most leaders have not.

How about adding-up the cost of all the people who started - and departed - your company in the past 12 months?

Even fewer leaders have done that.  

A Harvard Business Review article put the cost of bad hires as high as $9,000 a day - $450,000 a year!

Recruiter Jörgen Sundberg, CEO of Link Humans, puts the cost of hiring and onboarding new employees at $240,000.

I was told by a multi-billion dollar company’s HR exec that they estimate the cost to be 300% of their annual compensation.

I know someone who lost $1,500,000 on one bad hire.

But you do not know the cost until you add it up.

Our Bad Hire Calculator does it for you - free!  Go to www.badhire.app.

These four plays reveal what bad hiring actually costs - from the first job post to the day they walk out. 

Sources: 

#1 - No Bad Bosses #5, Kendra Angier, The No Bad Bosses Podcast, February 14, 2017, https://www.nobadbosses.com/podcast-episodes/2017/2/14/no-bad-bosses-5-kendra-angier

#2 - Putting a Price on People Problems at Work, Harvard Business Review, Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson, August 23, 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/08/putting-a-price-on-people-problems-at-work

#3 - The Cost Of A Bad Hire And Red Flags to Avoid, Ryan Bradshaw, February 22, 2026 - https://www.apollotechnical.com/cost-of-a-bad-hire/

GAME PLAN

Championship teams know their hiring numbers because who you allow on your team affects everything else.  Below you can learn how to improve the way you track yours.

Plays #1-3 track the 3 A's of our Hire the Best system:  Attract, Assess, Add.  Play #4 measures what it cost to have the wrong player on your team.

PLAY #1

COST TO ATTRACT THEM

You spent real money to find the people who failed - before you ever met them.  How much?

Promoting Openings

Money you spent to place job board ads, social media, career fairs, events, and website/email campaigns to build your player pipeline.

Staff Costs

Compensation you paid existing team time to promote openings, work with recruiters, and manage your Talent Community (referral network).

Recruiters

Fees you paid contract recruiters / agencies to find those people who left.

Referrals

Referral fees you paid to Talent Community members, including employees.  Committed upon hiring, earned after 90 days on the team.

Sources:  

#1 - Manage 2 Win Bad Hire Calculator - https://www.badhire.app/

#2 - Job Board Advertising Costs (Pin.com / LinkedIn Pricing Guide, April 2026) - https://www.pin.com/blog/linkedin-job-posting-pricing/

LinkedIn promoted posts start at $7-10/day using a pay-per-click model.  Enterprise Job Slots run $200-1,000 per slot per month on annual contracts.  

ZipRecruiter starts at approximately $299/month for its Standard plan, with Premium and Pro tiers ranging up to $899/month per job slot.  A mid-size company running five open positions on ZipRecruiter's Standard plan could pay $1,495-1,995/month - roughly $18,000-24,000/year - just for job distribution.

On Indeed, sponsored jobs can scale to $5.00+ per click in competitive markets, and CPC volatility makes budgeting a persistent challenge - a $600/month budget in March might need to be $900/month in January when hiring demand peaks and CPC rates spike 15–20%.

#2 - How Much Do Staffing Agencies Charge for Fees in 2026?  Upwork Resources | May 2026 (approximate) - https://www.upwork.com/resources/how-much-do-staffing-agencies-charge

Staffing agencies charge somewhere between 20% and 30% of the first-year salary of the placed resource as a recruitment fee.  For a hiree earning $100,000 annually, the markup would be roughly $20,000 to $30,000.  Staffing agencies typically charge a markup between 20% and 75% of the salary for temporary workers.

#3 - 25 Incredible Employee Referral Statistics [2026]: Facts About Employee Referrals In The U.S. Zippia | January 31, 2026 - https://www.zippia.com/advice/employee-referral-statistics/

The average employee referral bonus is $2,500.  However, bonuses can vary between $1,000 and $5,000 based on factors like employee seniority.  69% of companies offer referral bonuses ranging from $1,000–$5,000.

#4 - LinkedIn Job Posting Cost: The Number That Matters Isn't the Ad Spend Truffle (hiretruffle.com) | April 10, 2026 - https://www.hiretruffle.com/blog/linkedin-job-posting-cost

Most companies dramatically undercount this.  At a blended recruiter rate of roughly $45/hour, resume review takes approximately 7 hours per hire.  Phone screens add another 12.5 hours.  That's nearly 20 hours of recruiter time before a single panel interview - and the New York Times reported in June 2025 that employers are receiving unprecedented volumes of AI-generated résumés, calling the filtering problem a new operational cost layer.

#5 - The Real Cost of a Job Advertisement: Platform Pricing and Hidden Hiring Costs WorkRocket | February 19, 2026 - https://workrocket.com/cost-job-advertisement-hidden-hiring-costs/

A mis-hire can cost an organization around 30% of that employee's first-year salary in direct losses, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.  A 2022 CareerBuilder report found that 74% of employers admitted to hiring the wrong person, with a significant share estimating the mistake cost at least $25,000 - and many reporting losses north of $50,000 per incident.

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PLAY #2

COST TO ASSESS THEM

Your interview process - preparing, interviews, hiring team meetings, third party assessments, referral checks - either filters out the wrong people or lets them through.  Most leaders are paying for both outcomes.  How much cash are you wasting?

Scouting Reports

Staff time to screen out unqualified resumes, review potential matches, and check players’ social media presence.

Interview Workouts

Staff and consultant time for face-to-face interviews, hiring team collaboration, other player communication, and decision-making; possible travel expenses.

Assessments

Third party tools, such as our Talent Assessments - Skills tests, mindset evaluation, personality assessments (DISC, motivators, competencies)...

Reference Checks

Staff time to contact and evaluate references, or third-party reference checking service fees.

Sources:  

#1 - Manage 2 Win Bad Hire Calculator - https://www.badhire.app/

#2 - The Real Cost of Hiring an Employee in 2024 peopleHum | January 3, 2024 https://www.peoplehum.com/blog/the-real-cost-of-hiring-an-employee

Covers resume review time and cost in granular detail — 23.5+ hours and $587.50 just for review and shortlisting — plus phone screening, interviews, and ATS costs ranging from $2,500/month to $125,000/year for large enterprises.

#3 - 8 Best Pre-Employment Assessment Tools for Recruiters (2026) Pin.com | April 2026 (approximate) https://www.pin.com/blog/pre-employment-assessment-tools/

Covers third-party assessment pricing ($19/month to $5,000+/month), citing SHRM's 2025 Skills-Based Hiring research that 56% of employers now use assessments and 79% weigh scores as highly as resumes.  Includes consolidated pricing table across eight platforms.

#4 - How to Calculate Cost Per Hire: The Ultimate Guide Klearskill | September 6, 2025 https://www.klearskill.com/blog/how-to-calculate-cost-per-hire

Focuses heavily on the hidden cost of interview panel and hiring manager time - a senior engineer at $75/hour spending 10 hours interviewing = $750 per hire, multiplied across every panelist for every open role.  Argues this cost alone often dwarfs all external spend combined.

#5 -  Understanding Background Check Costs in 2026: A Complete Pricing Guide GCheck | December 18, 2025 https://gcheck.com/blog/background-check-cost-for-2026/

Covers background checks ($20–$200+ per candidate), employment verification ($30–$75 per employer verified), social media and digital reputation screening, and reference checks - including the compliance infrastructure costs most employers ignore.  Notes SHRM data that 69% of employers screen all candidates.

#6 - Cost Per Hire | Recruitment & Hiring Glossary 2026 AVUA | April 2, 2026 https://blogs.avua.online/glossary/cost-per-hire/

The most rigorous source on staff cost undercount - documents a real case study where a firm's reported $3,800 cost per hire ballooned when hiring manager time ($680/hire), ATS licensing ($190/hire), and amortized employer brand spend ($310/hire) were properly included.  

Cites a 2025 SHRM benchmarking study finding organizations using the full ANSI/SHRM methodology report costs 34% higher than those using incomplete calculations.  Notes a hiring manager at $180,000 total comp spending 20 hours per hire contributes $1,730 in labor cost to each hire.

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PLAY #3

COST TO ADD THEM

Most bad hiring decisions reveal themselves within 90 days.  By then you have already paid for everything below.  Do you know all the costs of onboarding new people?

NOTE:  Keeping the wrong players on your team beyond 90 days is a costly bad habit.  We can help - https://www.manage2win.com/consulting-coaching

Offer

Staff time to prepare offer letters, negotiate terms, and finalize employment agreements.

Verification

Background checks, employment and education verification, drug screening, and other pre-employment checks.

Preparation

Staff time to create or customize the onboarding plan, plus costs to purchase and prepare equipment (computer, desk, phone, software licenses, tools…); possible moving expenses.

First 90 Days

Staff time for new hire training, manager coaching, peer mentoring, time before contributing, HR paperwork, plus third-party training or certification costs.

Sources:

#1 - Manage 2 Win Bad Hire Calculator - https://www.badhire.app/

#2 - Cost of Onboarding a New Employee in 2026 GoWorkwize | November 12, 2025 https://www.goworkwize.com/blog/cost-of-onboarding-a-new-employees

The sharpest source on equipment and IT setup costs - the single most undercounted onboarding expense.  Breaks down how IT onboarding alone costs nearly $8,000 per new hire in 2025, covering hardware ($1,000–$3,000+), software licenses across an average of 106 SaaS applications, IT labor for provisioning and security, and the productivity loss while a new hire waits for assets.

Notes these figures balloon further for remote workers requiring equipment shipping and configuration.  Argues this $8,000 is a floor, not a ceiling, and scales with role complexity and company size.

2. The Cost of Onboarding New Employees in 2026 (+Calculator) Whatfix | January 12, 2026 https://whatfix.com/blog/cost-of-onboarding/

Comprehensive benchmark source covering every onboarding cost category from offer acceptance through ramp-up.  Documents that new employees function at approximately 25% productivity during their first four weeks and that it can take up to 26 weeks to reach expected performance levels - making lost productivity the single largest onboarding expense.

Cites SHRM's $4,100 average onboarding cost, ATD's $1,296 average training cost per employee, workspace setup of $500–$1,000+, admin paperwork costs of ~$400 per employee, and relocation costs ranging from $21,327 to $79,429.  Also notes a typical mid-level manager requires 6.2 months to become fully productive.

3. The True Cost of Onboarding New Employees Enboarder | July 9, 2025 https://enboarder.com/blog/cost-of-onboarding/

Covers the post-offer costs most leaders never see on an invoice.  Cites ATD's finding that organizations spend an average of $1,280 per employee annually on training and development, and documents that productivity loss during the ramp-up period can approach 2.5% of total yearly output per SHRM.

Reports workspace and technology setup costs of $1,000–$2,000 per hire, and notes that legal compliance costs during onboarding can exceed $3,000 per hire per the Canadian Conference Board - particularly in regulated industries where contract drafting, legal consultations, and compliance documentation are mandatory.  Frames best-in-class companies investing 15–20% of a new hire's first-year salary on onboarding.

4. Employee Training Statistics & Data in the U.S. (2024/2025) High5Test | January 15, 2026 https://high5test.com/employee-training-statistics/

The most data-dense source on what training costs per hour and what happens when it fails.  Reports direct learning cost per hour hit $165 in 2024 - up 34% year-over-year - and that U.S. organizations allocate an average of $774 per participant for training and development.

Documents that 1 in 3 new hires begin looking for another job soon after starting due to poor onboarding, and that almost 60% of first-time managers never received management training - a direct driver of new hire failure in the first 90 days.  Also establishes that the "first 90 days" is now the recognized make-or-break window where HR leaders and managers win or lose new hires, with career development ranking as the #1 controllable reason employees left jobs in exit interviews.

5. From Recruitment to Onboarding: What's the True Cost of Hiring Employees?  BambooHR | Updated 2025 https://www.bamboohr.com/blog/cost-of-onboarding-calculator

Pulls together the full picture from offer through 90-day integration, with one of the most striking summary figures available: hard costs of $7,500-28,000 per hire covering job board fees, background checks, and new hire training - before a single day of lost productivity is counted.

Cites SHRM's finding that soft costs such as lost productivity can add up to as much as 60% of the total cost to hire, making the true all-in figure for many roles well into five figures.  Frames the case that inefficient hiring and onboarding processes are where most of this money disappears - not in any single line item, but across dozens of overlooked costs that accumulate between offer acceptance and full productivity.

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PLAY #4

IMPACT:  WHAT THEY COST YOU

The biggest investment you make in a new hire is when they are an employee.  Often the cost is much higher than any revenue they generated.  Be fair.  Consider all the possible revenue they made happen versus the money you lost on them.

Gain (Revenue / Value)

Revenue generated or financial value contributed during their tenure (impact costs are deducted from this amount).

Overhead (Salary/Benefits)

Salary, bonuses, benefits, continued training, and development costs beyond initial 90 days.

Direct Losses

Cost to replace them (recruiting, hiring, onboarding), lost time training, fixing their mistakes, project delays, lost customers or employees …

Indirect Losses

Missed opportunities, lost momentum, negative customer impact, damaged team morale, increased stress...

Sources:

#1 - Manage 2 Win Bad Hire Calculator - https://www.badhire.app/

#2 - The Real Cost of a Bad Hire in 2026 (Backed by Data) DistantJob | February 26, 2026 https://distantjob.com/blog/bad-hire-cost/

The most comprehensive source on the cascading damage a wrong hire inflicts beyond their own salary.  Pulls from Gallup's 2025 State of the Global Workplace report to document that global employee disengagement cost the global economy an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity in 2024 alone - and $8.8 trillion annually in broader disengagement costs, equal to 9% of global GDP.

Establishes the mechanism most leaders miss:  Because managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement, a bad hire doesn't just consume their own salary - they neutralize the effectiveness of the manager above them, which cascades to every teammate.

Quantifies the customer exposure: late deliveries, quality failures, and communication breakdowns in client-facing roles that companies absorb silently as lost revenue rather than a line-item expense.  Notes Gallup's finding that manager engagement dropped from 30% to 27% in 2024, with managers under 35 dropping five points - a direct downstream effect of staffing failures.

#3 - Cost of a Bad Hire Statistics 2024–2026 & Salary Percentages INOP.ai | February 18, 2026 https://inop.ai/the-true-cost-of-a-bad-hire-in-2026/

The most rigorous on actual dollar losses per bad hire, combining CareerBuilder survey data, SHRM benchmarks, and layered cost modeling.  Documents that in a 2024 CareerBuilder study, nearly 75% of employers admitted to making a bad hire, with an average reported loss of $17,000 per incident - and for executive-level positions, that figure jumps to $240,000 or more when all related costs are included.

Identifies four distinct bad-hire profiles (skill misrepresenter, culture mismatch, disengaged employee, early departer), each with its own cost structure but all sharing one outcome: far more expensive than organizations acknowledge.  Frames the full cost as a series of financial ripples - recruiting fees, salary paid during underperformance, training investment, team productivity drag, and customer relationship damage - spreading outward from the moment the wrong person joins.

#4 - The Real Costs of Employee Turnover in 2026 Applauz | January 2, 2026 https://www.applauz.me/resources/costs-of-employee-turnover

Covers both voluntary and involuntary departures with the highest macro-level estimates available.  Reports that loss of productivity from turnover costs U.S. businesses $1.8 trillion every year - and documents the direct-to-indirect cost breakdown that most leaders ignore.  Cites Robert Half data that 39% of HR managers identify missed deadlines as one of the most significant impacts of turnover, and Work Institute research that turnover-related absences and lost productivity account for 58% of total turnover cost.

Addresses the chain-reaction risk:  When one good employee leaves, it visibly signals to other team members that something is wrong - triggering what HR professionals call "turnover contagion."  Also documents the customer-facing cost: production delays and undertrained replacements lead directly to lost clients, with HR consultant Tom Armour noting that chronic turnover causes customers to "lose interest in your business."

#5 - The Cost of Employee Turnover in the U.S. Wellhub | November 4, 2025 https://wellhub.com/en-us/blog/talent-acquisition-and-retention/employee-turnover-rate-for-us-companies/

Best source for role-by-role cost benchmarking across industries, making it directly actionable for budget conversations.  Establishes Gallup's definitive replacement cost tiers: leaders and managers cost approximately 200% of their salary to replace, technical roles average 80%, and frontline employees 40% - and documents how these figures compound when you account for vacancy cost, lost institutional knowledge, and the productivity drag on the team covering the open role.

Includes a summary table of average total turnover costs per employee across U.S. industries in 2024, covering recruiting, training, lost productivity, and other indirect costs as both dollar figures and percentage of payroll.  Frames turnover as "far more expensive than many executives realize" - precisely because the soft-cost majority never appears on a balance sheet.

#6 - The True Cost of Employee Turnover (And How to Reduce It) ClearlyRated | July 17, 2025 https://www.clearlyrated.ai/blog/cost-of-employee-turnover

The strongest source on the intangible cost majority - the 60–67% of turnover expense that never shows up on an invoice.  Establishes that nearly two-thirds of total turnover costs are intangible, covering lost productivity, delayed deliverables, and reduced customer satisfaction - and introduces the two-burden framework most cost analyses collapse into one: cost-per-hire (what it costs to replace the person) versus cost-of-vacancy (the revenue and productivity lost while the role sits open or understaffed).

Documents that for executive roles, replacement cost can reach 213% of annual salary per the Center for American Progress, with technical positions running 100–150% per SHRM.  Highlights the compounding damage: when a role is vacant, team members split their time between their own work and the departed employee's responsibilities - creating delivery delays, missed revenue targets, and burnout among the people you most need to retain.

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Want more?

The data in these four plays either protects your EBITDA, or hurts it - sometimes wiping out entire profits.  Your number is personal.

Use our Bad Hire Calculator to find out what bad hiring has actually cost your organization - free, in minutes.

Go to www.badhire.app.

Email us your questions at info@manage2win.com.

Learn more at www.manage2win.com/htb-home.

Championship teams know their numbers.  Now know yours.

See you next week!

- David

P.S. Help a friend - share this game plan.

99% of Hiring Leaders Now Use AI. Most Are Using It Wrong

AI belongs in your hiring process - but only where it makes you faster and smarter.  

The moment it starts making judgment calls, you are no longer hiring.  A machine is.  That is gambling.

A survey of 1,005 U.S. hiring managers found that 99% report using AI in some capacity in hiring.  The question is no longer whether to use it.  

The question is where AI helps you hire the best - and where it exposes you to risk.  Insight Global

Add these four plays to your hiring game plan to significantly improve your ability to hire the best - avoid the rest - and limit risk.

GAME PLAN

PLAY #1

AI HELPS SOURCE CANDIDATES.  NOT SELECT THEM

AI finds more qualified candidates faster than any recruiter working alone. That is its job.  Deciding who is worth your time is yours.

OBJECTIVE:  AI-powered sourcing tools scan résumés, job boards, and LinkedIn at a scale no human can match.  Teams using AI screening report up to 40% faster time-to-shortlist for volume roles.  Used correctly, AI gets more qualified names in front of you in less time.  Truffle

EXAMPLE:  You post a role.  AI screens 300 applications overnight against your defined criteria and surfaces the top 30 for human review by morning. Your team spends zero time on the bottom 270.

AVOID:  Letting AI make the final cut without human review.  A three-year study of a global consumer-goods firm found that their AI hiring system privileged a rigid definition of fitness - locking in one version of "qualified" and excluding candidates who did not match the historical mold.  

Your next superstar may not look like your last one.  Harvard Business Review

Also, you may want to scan discarded resumes by AI.  Sometimes a person with an aptitude, background, skillset, or achievements outside of your “ideal candidate profile” may be a positive tipping point to your team.  An Aladdin - a diamond in the rough.

HUMAN MANDATORY:  A leader reviews the AI shortlist before anyone is contacted.  You are looking for candidates the algorithm may have ranked lower - but whose background signals potential your criteria did not capture. 

Is your AI sourcing tool surfacing candidates - or making decisions you should be making?

Sources:  Eightfold AI, AI Screening Benchmarks, 2025 (eightfold.ai).  Harvard Business Review, "New Research on AI and Fairness in Hiring," December 2025 (hbr.org/2025/12/new-research-on-ai-and-fairness-in-hiring).

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PLAY #2

AI CAN DEFINE A ROLE.  LEADERS DEFINE GREATNESS

AI can draft the structure of what a solid role player looks like in a position.  However, only the leader who owns the position can define what great actually means on their team.

OBJECTIVE:  Most leaders waste hours writing job descriptions that attract the wrong candidates - because a job description only describes tasks.

Our approach is better - an Employee Strategic Plan ("SP") - a document that defines the role, the qualifications, the time allocation by activity, the cultural expectations, and the career path.

Based on the same role, or a similar one - AI can draft the Culture, Role, and Qualifications sections of an SP faster than a human. 

There are two other areas of an SP that AI can draft based on the same position or a similar one:

• Game Plan (first page):  The Goals, Fundamentals, and Career Path.

• Expectations (second page):  The behavioral expectations of the manager for the employee - but it should never draft the future employee’s expectations of the manager.  That is for the new hire to do.

EXAMPLE:  You give AI the SP for the role or a similar role.  It creates the draft.

If you do not have an example SP to provide, you can give the AI this information and it can provide a draft SP to be edited:

• Content sections of the SP.

• Your industry.

• Role title - option:  You can list 2-3 similar titles and encourage it to search the web to consider content from similar roles in your industry.

• A job description you have used in the past for the role.

• Draft goals for the role.

• Draft career path for the role.

• 3 Fundamentals (tasks) where the person in the role must excel.

• Your company’s mission, vision, and values.

• The manager’s behavioral expectations for a person in the role.

Your hiring manager then edits for accuracy.   Total time to a better hiring document:  A fraction of what it took before.

AVOID:  Publishing any AI-generated hiring document without a leader's complete review of every section.  AI writes to patterns in existing data.  It will describe the industry standard for this role - not the specific standard your team requires.  Those are rarely the same thing.

Today, AI often writes AI-slop.  Long narratives and generalizations.  Impersonal.  Uninspiring.

HUMAN MANDATORY:  Job descriptions are static documents that die after someone is hired.  Never viewed again.

In contrast, an SP is a living plan for the individual’s success.  The Game Plan is reviewed weekly with the manager, and possibly daily by the team member to confirm they are on track.

AI cannot emotionally connect the career opportunity you are offering with the individuals trying out for your team.  Only a trained, mentored, systematic leader can do that.

When is the last time you created a strategic plan for someone’s success in a role - and consistently supported them to success again and again - instead of a shortcut job description or generic job ad?

Sources:  Manage 2 Win Employee Strategic Plan (“SP”) framework (www.manage2win.com).  LinkedIn, Future of Recruiting 2025 - skills-based hiring and quality of hire as primary AI-era differentiators (business.linkedin.com).

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PLAY #3

AI CAN MANAGE YOUR PROCESS.  NOT INTERVIEW

AI can eliminate scheduling friction and keep players moving through your hiring process at a Goldilocks pace - not too fast, not too slow - just right.  

However, only trained, coached humans lead interviews.  No exceptions.

OBJECTIVE:  AI scheduling tools, candidate communication bots, and automated reminders remove the back-and-forth that slows most hiring processes.  

AI-assisted messaging correlates with a +9% likelihood of quality hire, according to LinkedIn's Future of Recruiting 2025 report.  

Faster, more consistent communication improves the candidate experience and reduces drop-off.  Truffle

EXAMPLE:  Someone applies Monday.  Your AI sends a confirmation, schedules a phone screen, and delivers a pre-interview questionnaire - all before your team arrives Tuesday morning.  

Your first human touchpoint is the conversation that matters.  But the process to connect the potential superstar and your hiring coach is streamlined, effective, and lower cost.

AVOID:  Never allow an AI to conduct an interview. 

Nearly 20 million video interviews and assessments were conducted on HireVue's platform in just the first quarter of 2024 - demonstrating scale, not wisdom.  Volume is not validation.

An AI scoring of a candidate's word choice and facial expressions is not an interview.  It is more of a liability.  HeroHunt

HUMAN MANDATORY:  Every player interview for your team is conducted by a trained hiring coach, who is often the hiring manager or a member of the team with the open position.

AI schedules it.  You run it.  The goal is to see how this person thinks, communicates, and handles pressure - in real time, with real humans across the table.

Are you using AI to free up time for better interviews - or to replace the interview itself?

Sources:  LinkedIn, Future of Recruiting 2025 (business.linkedin.com).  HireVue/Spark Hire, Interview Summaries ROI, 2024-2025 (hirevue.com).

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PLAY #4

AI REPORTS METRICS.  HUMANS DEFINE PERSONAS

AI identifies patterns in your hiring data in much less time than you would manually. 

What those patterns mean - and what to do about them - requires a wise team lead.

OBJECTIVE:  AI can track which sourcing channels produce your best hires, interview answers indicate higher retention, and where your process breaks down.

AI can identify which sourcing channels produce your best hires, which interview answers correlate with retention, and where your process consistently breaks down.  The data is real and useful. 

But the World Economic Forum notes that 90% of employers are already using automated systems to rank or deselect candidates - and Harvard Business Review warns that accuracy and trust in those AI decisions are being widely questioned. 

Patterns are not conclusions.  Be discerning where data may be missing or biased.

EXAMPLE:  After 12 months of hiring data, your AI tool reveals that candidates sourced from one specific job board have a 40% higher 90-day retention rate than those from another.  That’s time-consuming to identify that pattern in a spreadsheet.

AVOID:  AI can provide metric-related insights about people, but its data set is too small to allow it to make final conclusions.

AI data can tell you what happened.  It cannot tell you why - and it cannot tell you what to do next.

The talent war is intensifying - in part due to AI.  Do not jump to conclusions because signals are getting harder to read, not easier.  HeroHunt

HUMAN MANDATORY:  Schedule a post-mortem after every hire.  Bring your data.  Ask your team what the process revealed and what it missed. 

AI gives you the numbers. 

But having multiple people on the hiring team to fill a role provides additional insights that lead to more complete, fair, and accurate hiring decisions.

When is the last time you used your hiring data and lessons learned to improve your hiring system - not just have casual conversations and check the box that you had a post hire review with your hiring team?

Sources:  Harvard Business Review, SAI Has Made Hiring Worse - But It Can Still Help 2026 (hbr.org).  HeroHunt.ai, AI Adoption in Recruiting: 2025 Year in Review (herohunt.ai).

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Want more?

The full HBR research draws on a three-year field study of a global consumer-goods company processing more than 10,000 job applicants per year - and is worth reading before your next hire.  Find it at hbr.org/2025/12/new-research-on-ai-and-fairness-in-hiring.

Email us your questions at info@manage2win.com.

Learn more at www.manage2win.com/htb-home.

Every play above improves your game plan - apply them to make better hiring decisions.  

See you next week!

- David

P.S. Help a friend - share this game plan.

Your Free Soft Skills Library + A Calculator That Might Shock You

GAME PLAN

FREE Resource #1 of 2

THE TRAINING MOVED.  THE PRICE DISAPPEARED

We closed our paid soft skills training platform - Habitly.  

All 14 full courses and 17 short, animated episodes are now FREE on YouTube. 

This is foundational soft skills - hiring, managing, developing, retaining - written specifically for MSPs and any leader serious about building a stronger team.

I encourage you to use these free resources to:

1. Onboard new hires - establish soft skill standards.

2. Develop your leaders.

3. Increase collaboration.

Watch and subscribe: youtube.com/@Manage2Win/playlists

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START WITH GOLDILOCKS

The episodes are quick hits - conversation starters you can watch in minutes and use the same day.  A personal favorite: Goldilocks Documentation | Why Poor Documentation Is Costing You Time, Money, and Clients.

Tech documentation problems don't fix themselves.  This episode breaks down exactly why - and what to do about it.  Share it with your team.  Leave a comment.  I‘ll reply.

THEN GO DEEPER WITH THE COURSES.

Two courses consistently get the most requests.  Solving NOT Selling gives your techs the confidence to recommend upgrades and expansions - without feeling like sales vermin.  They're not selling.  They're solving.

The second, #118 – Assessing Talent, teaches your people how to better understand themselves and work more effectively with others.  It's built on the same insights behind our Manage 2 Win Talent Assessments.  

Both can improve how your team operates.

View the full playlist:  youtube.com/@Manage2Win/playlists

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FREE Resource #2 of 2

BAD HIRE CALCULATOR

When was the last time you calculated the full cost of a bad hire?

Or all your bad hiring decisions over the past year or more?

Probably never.

Most leaders feel the pain of a bad hiring decision - wasted time, lost money, team friction, lost productivity, damaged client relationships.  Few ever stop to calculate the actual dollar amount.

Once you do, you can't un-see it.

Our Bad Hire Calculator at www.badhire.app does it for you in 3-5 minutes.

Enter your data.  Click Send Results.  You have a complete report.  Free without limits.

NOTE:  Your data is kept confidential.  In the future, we may aggregate data entered on the site - but never by company.  If we do, you’ll be emailed a copy of the aggregate report.

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NOW MAKE IT ABOUT YOU

‍You don't have to go back years.  Pick one person - a recent hire who never quite hit their stride, missed deadlines, caused client complaints, created team friction.  Or a superstar who got recruited away, or quietly left because something wasn't working.

One person.  One timeframe.  Then go to www.badhire.app and run the numbers.

For the most accurate results, fill in every field with every cost - including staff hours for each hiring task and third-party costs.  Don't leave any blank.

Most people are surprised by how much money has been lost on one bad hire.  Not because the calculator invents costs - it’s your data - but because it confirms losses you’ve disregarded.

Now confirm your number.

P.S.  Start with one hire.  Then assess turnover costs on one team or your entire company.  Come back to run your numbers as often as you like.

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Want more?

Email us at info@manage2win.com.

Visit www.manage2win.com.

‍The training is there.  Go use it - and share it with a leader who needs it.

See you next week!

‍- David

Great leaders develop great people. Help a friend - share this game plan.

J.W. Marriott’s 4 Hiring DisciplinesThat Separate Great Leaders from Average Ones

The habits that built the world's largest hotel company are the same habits that help you hire the best.  Shane Parrish documented 29 "Tiny Lessons" from J.W. Marriott on The Knowledge Project podcast. 

These four plays improve your hiring game plan.  Apply them directly to your hiring system to make better hiring decisions. 

These habits also improve your ability to manage, develop, and retain your current team.

GAME PLAN

PLAY #1

MANAGE YOUR TIME

Great leaders who hire great people treat candidate interviews the same way J.W. Marriott treated every conversation: short, prepared, and on point.

Most hiring managers run interviews the way they run bad meetings - late, unprepared, and over time.  That signals candidates how you run your team.  Great leaders start on time, end on time, stay on track, and when something warrants deeper exploration, they schedule a follow-up rather than let the meeting drift.

Do you arrive late, not fully prepared, or run long when interviewing candidates?

Credit:  J.W. Marriott Tiny Lesson #1

"Manage your time.  Short conversations to the point.  Make every minute count."

Source: The Knowledge Project, Shane Parrish, Outliers episode on J.W. Marriott.  

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PLAY #2

EVOLVE YOUR HABITS

Bad hiring habits destroy companies - and most leaders never get feedback on theirs.

Top leaders and recruiters never stop learning and adjusting how they hire.  When is the last time someone observed your interviews and gave you candid feedback? 

Great habits hire superstars.  Bad hiring habits compound - quietly, expensively, and usually without warning until it's too late.

Credit:  J.W. Marriott Tiny Lesson #3

"Guard your habits.  Bad ones will destroy you."

Source: The Knowledge Project, Shane Parrish, Outliers episode on J.W. Marriott.

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PLAY #3

DISCIPLINE REQUIRED

Hiring without discipline is not a process - it is guesswork dressed up as judgment.

Top leaders understand there are no shortcuts without risk in hiring.  Discipline means implementing a solid hiring system, training everyone involved in it, and having the fortitude to say no to a candidate you like when the evidence says no match. 

Without that discipline, there is no character in your hiring - just assumptions you tell yourself are facts. 

Could your hiring process be more disciplined - and the way you train everyone involved in it?

Credit:  J.W. Marriott Tiny Lesson #5

"Discipline is the greatest thing in the world.  Where there is no discipline, there is no character."

Source: The Knowledge Project, Shane Parrish, Outliers episode on J.W. Marriott.  

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PLAY #4

INSPECT FIRST.  THEN EXPECT

You cannot improve a hiring process you never study - and you cannot catch a bad hire before it costs you twice without a post-mortem.

Schedule a debrief after every hire.  What did your process reveal - strengths?  What did it miss - gaps?  What did each hiring team member do well, and how can they improve? 

When is the last time you studied your hiring process to build on its strengths and address its weaknesses?  This is how great teams get better.

Credit:  J.W. Marriott Tiny Lesson #7

"You can’t expect what you don’t inspect."

Source: The Knowledge Project, Shane Parrish, Outliers episode on J.W. Marriott.

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Want more?

You can listen to this podcast of The Knowledge Project on Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Web/Transcript | X -- or simply consider the Tiny Lessons from this episode.

Email us your questions at info@manage2win.com.

Learn more at www.manage2win.com/htb-home.

Every play above improves your game plan - apply them to make better hiring decisions.

See you next week!

- David

P.S. Help a friend - share this game plan.

How to establish, increase, and maintain trust with people applying for openings on your team

GAME PLAN

PLAY #1

BE A ROLE MODEL

"The most powerful leadership tool you have is your own personal example."

- John Wooden, legendary UCLA basketball coach and 10-time NCAA champion

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PLAY #2

BE ORGANIZED

Preparation is how you build trust before you meet, and sustain trust as the conversation evolves.

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PLAY #3

BE CANDID

Candor about your opportunity isn't a risk.  It's an invitation.  Share the good and the bad to motivate the candidate to do the same.

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PLAY #4

FOLLOW-UP ON TIME

Prove your team is their best, bold career move - follow up before they expect, every time.

---

Want more?

Email us at info@manage2win.com.

Visit www.manage2win.com.

This game plan works - run these plays to be your best and enable your team to win championships.

See you next week! ‍

- David

P.S. Help others - forward this game plan to them.

Are You a Poser When You Interview?

You know how to spot a weak candidate.

But who's watching you?

Every person you interview.  The way you behave is often the tipping point to whether the headlining superstar or solid role player speaking to you about joining your team - will be inspired, or keep looking for another career opportunity.

The problem?

Most hiring managers have never been coached on how to interview.  Never been fully trained.  Never given a full set of interview tools - from initial candidate contact through interview workouts then negotiations, and finally staying in contact, so your new player is excited about their first day on your team.

You’re told to just... interview.  Confidently.  Repeatedly.  And often, expensively wrong.

TRUTH CHECK

Interviewing is a skill.  Like every skill, it requires coaching, practice, and honest feedback to improve.

Here is how you should have been prepared to hire great people:

TOOLS:  Were you given a full set of interview scorecards, questions, exercises, scenarios, scrimmages to run with existing team members?

STANDARDS:  Did a hiring expert explain, demonstrate, and test your understanding of body language, tone of voice, how to set expectations, and how to be a role model for the team member you want the candidate to be?

3T:  Did anyone Teach you the basics, Test your understanding, then Train and mentor you until you mastered the skills?  The basics are your Standards (above), active listening skills, and how you communicate with candidates and your hiring team.

ROLEPLAY:  This is a key part of the second “T” of 3T:  Did anyone roleplay with you through one or more types of interviews?  Most people do not, and their interview skills show it.

COACH:  How often does someone sit in on your interviews or review recordings, and then help you expand your strengths and build your skills in areas where you can grow?

DEBRIEF:   Do you debrief with your hiring team after interviews, or just to make hiring decisions?  Sometimes the failure of a candidate is the interviewer’s fault - and not debriefing your process and interview skills is allowing good people to walk away, or motivating candidates to speak negatively of your company.

EXIT:  There’s a lot of key skills and processes to demonstrate at the end of each interview and how you communicate with candidates - who are a match or not.  One key checkpoint most people disregard:  Do you ask candidates how the interview went for them?  Was there anything they wanted to learn that was missing?  How could it have been better?

If your honest answer to most of these questions is no - you are making hiring mistakes.  You are checking the box - being irresponsible in some areas rather than your best.

The candidates across the table have often been coached, or at least they prepare and rehearse.  The good ones are their best.

Are you?

The best leaders hire great people.  But great hiring requires great interview skills and process - the result of creating a superior hiring process and mentoring program for everyone on your team involved in adding new people.

If you realize you and/or others involved in your hiring could be better, then let's talk.

#HiringStrategy #HiringManagers #LeadershipDevelopment #HiringMistakes #GreatLeadersHireGreatPeople

Should You Hire Someone With a Gap in Their Resume?

The hiring manager at Crestwood Terra - I'll call her Diane - met me in the lobby with the energy of someone who was excited about finishing an important task.

"You're going to love her," Diane said, handing me a resume in a manila folder as we walked to the conference room.  "Sharp.  Experienced.  Great references.  Tom did the technical screen last week and said she nailed it."

I opened the folder.  Strong background.  Solid progression.  Then a gap.  Two years, ending eight months ago when she landed a short contract role that had since concluded.

"What was the break?" I asked.

"Sabbatical," Diane said, waving her hand the way people wave at small dogs.  "She needed some time.  Who doesn't, right?"

She laughed.  I smiled.

The candidate - I'll call her Claire - was already seated when we walked in.  Mid-forties.  Polished.  Confident handshake.  The kind of person who has clearly interviewed before and knows how to open well.

We exchanged pleasantries.  I mentioned her commute.  She laughed about the parking.  Diane hovered near the door for a moment, gave me a thumbs-up Claire couldn't see, and quietly disappeared.

I took out my Remarkable tablet and stylus.

"Claire, before I ask you anything, I want to be upfront - I'm not here to pry into your personal life.  My primary objective is to understand who you are today, and why this role is a great career move for you.  If it is, then I want it to be the best one you've ever made.  If it's not, I'd rather we both know that now."

She nodded warmly.  "I appreciate that."

We talked for about twenty minutes.  This gave me an opportunity to confirm some of the notes from her prior interviews with the company.  This also helps build her confidence - in herself, and trust in me.  Then I shifted gears to my main agenda.

"I notice you made a decision to step away for a couple of years.  What can you tell me about it?"

A pause.  Not long.  But noticeable.

"I needed a reset," she said.  "I'd been going hard for twenty years.  I wanted to travel, decompress, figure out what I really wanted."

"Sounds great.  Where did you go?"

"Portugal.  Some of Italy.  A little time in Costa Rica."

"Sounds wonderful," I said sincerely.  "Tell me - was there a moment while traveling when you seriously considered not coming back to work at all?"

Another pause.  Longer this time.

"I mean…"  She smiled carefully.  "There were definitely mornings in Lisbon where I wondered what it would be like to no longer commute and work every day.  It was so amazing there."

I wrote nothing.  I waited.

"But I knew I'd come back," she added.  "I'm not someone who sits still."

"What specifically brought you back - and why now?"

"The timing felt right.  I'm ready."

I nodded.  "What have you done during the past three years to stay current in the field?"

She mentioned a few podcasts.  A webinar series she had started but - she admitted with a laugh - hadn't finished.  A book she was midway through.

I asked about the contract role that ended eight months ago.

"It just ran its course," she said.  "The project wrapped."

"Was there an opportunity to extend it or move into a permanent role?"

A beat.  "We discussed it.  It just wasn't the right fit."

I wrote something on my Remarkable.  She watched carefully.

We moved into the scrimmage portion.  I had asked Diane in advance to send in Marcus, one of the team's younger leads, to work through a real scenario with Claire.

Marcus was 29.  Enthusiastic.  Fast.

He laid out the scenario - a product launch with a compressed timeline, misaligned stakeholders, and a budget that had just been cut by fifteen percent.

"How do you want to approach it?" he asked her.

Claire sat back slightly.  "Well, the first thing I'd do is get everyone in a room and align on priorities."

"We've tried that," Marcus said pleasantly.  "They don't agree.  Sales wants speed, ops demands margin.  They've been going back and forth for six weeks."

"Then you need executive sponsorship to break the tie."

"Our CEO is hands-off on this one.  She wants the team to figure it out."

Claire smiled.  "Well, in my experience, someone always has to make the call."

Marcus waited to see if there was more.

There wasn't.

After Marcus left, I asked Claire one final question.

"When this role gets hard - and it will - what would make you consider stepping away from full-time work again?"

She looked at me for a moment with an expression I have seen before.  It is the expression of someone deciding how honest to be.

"I don't think that would happen," she said.

"I believe you," I said.  "Help me understand why."

The answer that followed was long.  It was not unconvincing.  But somewhere in the middle of it, she briefly mentioned something new.  The past two years had included "some personal things" she had needed to work through, and that she was "in a much better place now."

I thanked her sincerely.  I meant it.

In the hallway afterward, Diane was waiting with the energy of someone ready to pop a champagne cork.

"Well?"

"She's impressive," I said.  "And I don't think she's a fit."

Diane's face cycled through three emotions in about two seconds.

I walked her through it.  The technical currency gap that Tom's screen hadn't caught because he'd been evaluating past capability, not present readiness.  The contract role that ended ambiguously.  The sabbatical that wasn't quite a sabbatical.  The moment with Marcus where experience substituted for engagement.  

Plus, her final answer that was a little too long, too careful - and where she was finally candid about her time off - although still withholding details, which are probably none of my business.  I did not ask for more information on her “sabbatical.” 

"She might be a great hire for someone," I said.  "She's not ready for the pace of the role, the pressure, and the dysfunctions between your teams right now.  And she has something she's still working through that she isn't ready to name - which is fine.  But it could be something that affects her performance or tenure."

Diane leaned against the wall.  "Tom was so sure."

"Tom tested what she knew two years ago," I said.  "I tested who she is right now."

We stood there for a moment.

"I really thought this one was done," Diane said quietly.

"I know," I said.  "That's why you have me do these interviews.  Everyone has a bias - to find someone as quickly as possible.  My only bias is to confirm your hiring team’s conclusions and see what they missed - positive or negative."

What This Story Is Really About

A resume gap is not a disqualifier.  An unexamined resume gap is risky, possibly high risk.

Here is what the right questions reveal before you make an offer:

• Why someone left tells you about their judgment.  Why they came back tells you about their commitment.

• Vague answers to direct questions are data.  So is the pause before the answer.

•  Technical screens test past capability.  Hiring tryouts test present readiness.  Both are required.

• A player who has something unresolved is not automatically the wrong hire.  A person who won't acknowledge it - even a bit - carries hidden risk.

• The scrimmage reveals what the interview conceals.  Watch how they engage with your team, not just with you.

• The question most hiring managers never ask: What would bring you back to not working?  Ask it.  The answer will tell you everything.

• Body language and tone during discomfort are as important as the words.  Discern both.

• The final interviewer's job is not to confirm what earlier interviewers found.  It is to find what they missed.

If you want to know how to build a hiring tryout that catches what most people miss, then let's talk.

Note.  The names in this story are changed to retain confidentiality.

#HiringStrategy #HiringManagers #LeadershipDevelopment #HiringMistakes #GreatLeadersHireGreatPeople

Should You Hire a Player Who Shows Fear or Insecurity?

Not every candidate who walks into your hiring tryout arrives with confidence.

Some arrive with talent - and baggage.

Before you make an offer, you need to know the difference between healthy humility and insecurity that will quietly damage your team.

Researchers Jeffrey Yip and Dritjon Gruda put it plainly in an article posted in The Harvard Business Review:  

Insecure leaders "may appear confident and charismatic, but under pressure their unresolved fears of inadequacy and rejection quietly distort decision-making and can undermine collaboration."

They may micromanage.  Emotionally withdraw.  Resist feedback.  Seek excessive praise.

Sound like anyone you've hired before?

TRUTH CHECK

Insecurity in a candidate isn't automatically disqualifying.  But you must identify it clearly before you make an offer - not after.

Yip and Gruda describe two types.

Anxious insecurity.  These candidates light up with praise and spiral when they feel excluded or criticized.  They tend to read professional disagreements as personal rejection.  

In your hiring tryout, they may be warm, eager, and highly likable.  Watch what happens when you push back on one of their answers.  Do they engage - or do they deflate?

Avoidant insecurity.  These candidates appear calm, rational, and in control.  But they are self-reliant to a fault and allergic to vulnerability.  They shun open dialogue, reject criticism, and rarely show uncertainty.

In your hiring tryout, they may present exceptionally well.  Watch what happens when you ask them about a genuine failure.  Do they go deep - or do they stay behind the wall?

Both types can perform well under the right conditions.  Both can quietly wreck a team under the wrong ones.

If you consider hiring a person with fear or insecurity, here are ways to make the best decision.  Do this before offering them a position on your team.

Map the real scenarios they will face in the role.  Not hypotheticals.  Real situations your team has navigated in the last twelve months.

A client who pushes back hard on a recommendation.  A peer who challenges their approach in a team meeting.  A missed target that requires a candid conversation with their manager.  A team member who underperforms and needs direct feedback.

Walk them through each scenario in your hiring tryout.  Ask them specifically how they would handle it.  Then watch the pattern - not the individual answer.

Then scrimmage them with your existing players.

This is non-negotiable.  Put the candidate in a working session with two or three of your current team members.  Give them a real problem to solve together.

You are not just evaluating the candidate.  You are evaluating the effect of the candidate on your team's current balance and cohesion.

The question isn't only "Can this person perform?"

It's "Does this person make the people around them better - or do they quietly drain the room?"

An anxious candidate may seek constant validation from your strongest players, pulling focus away from the work.

An avoidant candidate may shut down collaborative energy and signal to your team that vulnerability isn't safe.

Both outcomes cost you more than the hire was worth.

If you decide to proceed, build your operating plan around Yip and Gruda’s 3R’s.

Regulate - steady the environment so they don’t spiral under pressure.

Relate - connect their work to outcomes they genuinely care about.

Reason - bring them back to logic and evidence when emotion or defensiveness takes over.

Know in advance which R you will need most.  Know which team members can deliver it.  And be honest with yourself about whether you have the capacity to lead this person well - or whether you are simply hoping the problem resolves itself.

It rarely does.

The right hire adds something positive to your team without costing you the cohesion you've already built.

Hold that standard.

QUESTION:  Have you ever hired someone with visible insecurity, and had it work out well?  What made the difference?  Share it in the comments.

If you want a hiring tryout process that reveals these dynamics BEFORE you make an offer, let's talk.

#HiringStrategy #HiringManagers #LeadershipDevelopment #HiringMistakes #GreatLeadersHireGreatPeople

How to Achieve Rapid Growth

A new Egon Zehnder study published in Harvard Business Review surveyed more than 500 senior revenue-driving leaders worldwide - CMOs, Chief Revenue Officers, Chief Commercial Officers - across every major industry.

Their finding?  Only 29% of companies surveyed achieved rapid growth, defined as top-line revenue increases exceeding 10%.

Twenty-nine percent.

‍The researchers found that growth accelerates when leaders are aligned, empowered, and equipped to collaborate across functions.  That's the formula.  Leadership alignment.  Real empowerment.  Cross-functional collaboration.

Here's what most hiring managers miss:  These are skills you must test in your hiring process.  If you're not testing for them before you hire, you are gambling with your growth.

The study identifies the capabilities that separate high-growth companies from those that stall.  ‍ ‍

Let me translate them into hiring terms - specifically, the "interview workouts" you should be running in your hiring tryout before you make an offer.

TRUTH CHECK

A hiring tryout isn't just an interview workout.  It's a scrimmage.  You don't offer an NBA contract after watching someone shoot free throws alone in an empty gym.  You watch them play defense under pressure.  You see how they talk to teammates when the score is close.

The same logic applies to your next leadership hire.  Here are five areas the research flags - and one example of how to test each one.

Building high-performing teams.  Ask the candidate to map the last team they built or inherited.  Who did they move into different roles?  Who did they let go?  Who did they develop into a leader?

Then ask them to role-play a performance conversation with a struggling team member - you play the employee.  Watch whether they can balance accountability with trust.

Wisely applying AI.  This isn't about whether they know the tools.  It's about judgment.  Give them a real business scenario from your company - a marketing campaign, a customer service bottleneck, a sales forecasting problem.

Ask them to walk you through exactly where they would use AI, where they wouldn't, and why.  The candidates who can't answer the "where I wouldn't" question are the ones who often create problems.

Collaborating efficiently and effectively.  Give them a cross-functional project scenario with competing priorities - sales wants speed, finance wants margin protection, and operations wants lead time.  

Put two or three of your team members in the room.  Watch how the candidate facilitates.  Do they dominate?  Do they defer?  Or do they actually move people toward the best decision?

Achieving a high marketing ROI.  Ask them to submit an example of their past results - but realize someone else may have done the core work.  More importantly, have them analyze a real campaign result from your company - or a sanitized one - and tell you what they would change and why.  

Then ask them to walk you through their process and specifically how they would achieve the results you require.

Building trust with prospects and clients that grow sales.  Role-play a first discovery call with a skeptical prospect.  Or a renewal conversation with a client who is considering leaving.  The 71% of companies that aren't growing rapidly often have leaders who are excellent at pitching and poor at listening.  Watch for which one shows up.

The hardest test of all:  Can they balance one or more of these with operational excellence?

Give them a "house on fire" scenario - revenue is down, a key client is at risk, and a critical team member just resigned.  All in the same week. Ask them to walk you through their first 72 hours.

You aren't looking for the perfect answer.  Observe how they think under pressure.

The research is clear.  Growth is a leadership problem.  Alignment, empowerment, and cross-functional collaboration don't happen by accident. They happen because someone hired the right leaders - you test them before making an offer - and keep developing them after they join your team.

Your interview workout process is your first management decision about every person you hire.

Make it count.

QUESTION:  What's one question you've used in an interview that successfully revealed whether a candidate could do the job?  Share it in the comments.

If you want to build a hiring system that tests for the capabilities your growth strategy actually requires, let's talk.  

If you prefer to better understand the cost of your bad hiring decisions first, then try our free Bad Hire Calculator to put a real number on it. 

#HiringStrategy #HiringManagers #LeadershipDevelopment #HiringMistakes #GreatLeadersHireGreatPeople

#HiringStrategy #Leadership #TalentAcquisition #HiringMistakes #CultureFit

Who Do You Admire - What’s That Say About You?

Charlie Munger identified Liking/Loving Tendency as the #2 psychological force in human misjudgment.

His point:  The people and ideas we admire shape us - for better or worse.  We tend to ignore the faults of those we love, favor people and ideas associated with them, and distort facts to protect our high opinion of them.

That's human nature and it can be a weakness.

But in a hiring tryout, it's also a window.

TRUTH CHECK

You may learn more about a candidate by asking who they admire than by asking what they've accomplished.  Accomplishments can be rehearsed.  Admiration can reveal character - and the answers are often unplanned.

Ask them about three people.  One at a time.

Person #1 - A leader they have never met.  Someone from business, history, or sports.  Ask them:

• What specific accomplishments do you admire?

• What do you admire about their personality or behaviors?

• How do you relate to their personal or professional beliefs?

• Why do you believe what you've heard about them is true?

That last question matters.  A candidate who has never questioned the source of their admiration may not question much else either.

Person #2 - A leader or peer with whom they have worked.  Ask them:

What are three ways this person was a great role model?

• Now flip it - what three ways could they have been better?

• What was their biggest accomplishment?

• Tell me a true story that demonstrates how they treated others.

• What do you remember most about how they communicated?

• Anything else worth noting?

The flip question is often where you learn the most, if you’re listening carefully.  Candidates who can't identify a single flaw in a former leader or mentor are showing you something important - and not something good.  Watch for idealization.  It's one of Munger's traps in plain sight.

Person #3 - Someone they have known personally.  Make it comfortable:  "I'm not asking for personal information, so you don't have to share their name."  Then ask:

• What impressed you most about their character?

• Why did you enjoy them?

• If you could work on any project with them, what would it be?

• If you could do anything fun together, what would it be?

• How did they serve others?

This third set of questions can provide treasure - because the player’s guard is often down and the admiration is most personal.

What you are listening for:

As they describe each person, you are listening for Munger's three traps.

Trap #1 - Do they ignore obvious faults in the people they admire?

Trap #2 - Do they uncritically favor ideas, products, or approaches simply because someone they love championed them?

Trap #3 - Do they shade the truth — even slightly — to protect their high opinion of a person?

None of these tendencies disqualify a candidate.  They are human universals.  But a player who demonstrates more than one across more than one person they admire, may struggle to give you honest assessments of team members, clients, or strategies when their personal loyalties are in play.

Munger noted the flip side as well:  A person constructed to love admirable people and ideas with genuine intensity has a huge advantage in life.  Buffett said the same.  

The goal isn't to find candidates who admire no one.  It's to find candidates whose admiration is grounded, discerning, and honest.

The best hires know why they admire someone - and appreciate people you’d want on your team - top performers who live by your values.

This combination of sincere admiration and clear-eyed judgment is rare.

Hire the player when you confirm it.

QUESTION:  What’s the best true story you have about a candidate explaining someone they admire?  Share your experience in the comments.

If you want to build a hiring tryout that reveals character, judgment, and self-awareness before you make an offer, let's talk.

#HiringStrategy #HiringManagers #LeadershipDevelopment #HiringMistakes #GreatLeadersHireGreatPeople

What Happens When They're Not Making Their Numbers?

Charlie Munger called it the #1 psychological force in human behavior.

Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency

His point: Almost everyone thinks they understand how powerfully incentives drive behavior. Almost everyone is wrong. Even Munger admitted he underestimated it his entire career.

Here's why this matters to your next hire.

Every candidate sitting across from you is motivated by incentives. They will tell you what they think you want to hear. They will describe their best months, their biggest wins, and their most heroic moments.

You need to know what happens when the incentives aren't landing.

TRUTH CHECK

The real character of a player doesn't show up when they're hitting their numbers. It shows up when they're not.

Here's how to find out BEFORE you make an offer.

Run pre-mortems. Not one. Three.

Give your candidate a realistic performance scenario - a sales target, a growth goal, a team objective - whatever the role requires. Then walk them through three outcomes.

Great result. Define a great result in their role that maximizes their potential incentive pay.

Ask them to walk you through exactly how they achieved it. What did they do first? What were their key processes? What did they do consistently? What did they do when it got hard?

Listen for specificity. Vague answers mean they were along for the ride when someone else drove the result on their resume.

Neutral result. Define an okay result in their role that earns half their potential incentive pay.

Ask them where the bottlenecks were and what they did to overcome them. Ask what they would do differently.

Watch whether they take ownership or explain how the market, the team, or the company blocked their ability to achieve - victimhood or reasonable answer? People who blame neutral results on external forces will do the same thing to you.

Poor result. Define a poor result in their role that disqualifies them for incentive pay.

This is the one that may matter most. Ask them: How often do you confirm your incentive pay is on track? What happened to your motivation when you knew your incentive pay was in jeopardy? What did you tell yourself? What did you change? How did you collaborate with others to overcome your challenges?

Munger's Federal Express example is instructive here. FedEx couldn't get their night shift to perform - until they changed the incentive structure. Pay by the hour, you get hours. Pay by the completed mission, you get the mission accomplished.

Your team responds to the incentive system you build.

To consistently win, you need to hire people who get creative and more cohesive as a team when there are challenges - not those who play the blame game.

Two Trip Lines - Posers or Top Performers?

#1 - Ask them directly: "Tell me about a stretch where you weren't making your incentives. How long did it last? What caused it? What did you do about it?"

Then stop talking.

Watch whether they get honest or get defensive. Listen for whether they describe a real recovery with real steps or give you a rehearsed story with a tidy ending. Watch whether they can sit with the discomfort of the question or rush to escape it.

The candidate who can walk you candidly through a failure - and show you specifically how they got out of it - is far more valuable than the one who has never had a bad quarter on paper.

#2 - Ask them: " If the market turns against you in your first year here - slower economy, increased competition, tighter budgets - what is your plan to hit your number anyway?"

You are not looking for optimism. You are looking for a realistic plan developed on-the-spot based on wisdom, experience, and skill. It won’t be perfect because they aren't in the role yet. Look for nuggets - assets you can develop.

Munger was right. Well-designed, equal opportunity, fairly administered incentives are superpowers.

But the best hires bring something the incentive structure alone cannot create: The discipline to perform before the reward arrives.

That's the player you want on your team.

QUESTION: How do you test a candidate's response to adversity in your hiring process? Share it in the comments.

If you want to build a hiring tryout that reveals how candidates perform under pressure - not just on their best day - let's talk.

#HiringStrategy #HiringManagers #LeadershipDevelopment #HiringMistakes #GreatLeadersHireGreatPeople

Discipline and Character in Hiring

Jim Collins is quoted in Shane Parrish’s book, Clear Thinking:

“There is no effectiveness without discipline,

and there is no discipline without character.”

Every leader knows this is true.

But how many apply it to hiring?

Collins isn't just describing personal virtues.  He's defining the standard every leader must meet when building a team.

Hiring is where discipline and character are tested most.

Discipline in hiring looks like this:

• A structured, consistent process for every role - not casual interviews and gut decisions.

• Hiring criteria defined before the search begins, not shaped by whoever impresses you in the moment.

• Every person involved in hiring decisions trained to expertly fulfill their responsibilities to attract, assess, or add amazing players to your team.

• A commitment to keep searching until the right person is found - not settling because the process feels like it is taking too long.

• Reviewing every hiring outcome - good and bad - to continuously improve your system and hiring skills.

Character in hiring looks like this:

• Acknowledging honestly when your hiring system is producing bad results instead of blaming candidates or the market.  And owning your part of the problem.

• Acting on what you know - fixing the system, coaching your team, investing in improvement.

• Treating every candidate with respect, regardless of their behavior or performance.

• Value every candidate’s time.  Recognize the risk they are taking spending time with you and betting your team is offering their best career move.

• Holding yourself to the same hiring standard you expect from everyone else on your team.

Here are the two tests every leader should apply:

DISCIPLINE TEST

Does your hiring system consistently attract, assess, and add people who meet or exceed your expectations?

Do not guess.  Check the data for the past year or another timeframe.  Add up the employee turnover, performance numbers per team member (past and present), and hiring costs - all of them.  Use our free Bad Hire Calculator.

If the results do not meet your expectations, then your system and your team's skills need work.

CHARACTER TEST

Do you know your hiring system could be better - and people involved in attracting, assessing, and adding new hires are making mistakes?

Then, what are you doing about it?

If you know there are problems and aren't acting, that's not primarily a process problem or something you can blame on others.  I kindly suggest it's a leadership problem with you.

Your lack of action is hurting others too.  Not just your team, clients, and bottom line.

Bad hiring decisions hurt the people you hire.  You took them away from other opportunities.  You wasted months of their career.  You caused them unnecessary emotional distress.

Great leaders care almost as much about the players trying out for their team, as they do for their existing team members.

The good news:  Both discipline and character can be developed.  That's exactly what we do at Hire the Best.

Drop a comment below or email info@hirethebest.co to schedule your free consultation.

Isn't it worth 15 minutes to stop making bad, costly hiring decisions?  To stop hurting your team, and others who sincerely want to join your team?

#HiringStrategy #Leadership #TalentAcquisition #HiringMistakes #HireTheBest

Inertia and Albert Einstein

Shane Parrish in his book, Clear Thinking, exposes the toxic power of what he calls the Inertia Default.  Here is one of the most powerful insights he gives that you need today:

“Inertia keeps us doing things that don't get us what we want.”

Sound familiar?

Your team struggles to attract enough qualified, high-caliber candidates to your job openings.

You keep hiring people who fail to meet your expectations.

Your new hires take too long to become productive and profitable.

And yet - nothing changes.

Parrish goes further, encouraging you to make a change - stop the pain:

"If you find yourself or your team resisting change or continuing to do something in one way

simply because that's how you've always done it in the past - be on your guard.  

The inertia default is likely at work."

It is at work.  And it is costing you far more than you realize.

Your hiring process and skills are not giving you the quality of people you want on your team.

You know this.  The evidence is sitting in your own hiring history.

Yet you follow the same process.  Make decisions the same way.  And quietly hope for different results.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I'll be more charitable than Einstein:  It's not insanity.  It's inertia.  It’s bad habits.  And unlike insanity, inertia can be fixed.

The fix doesn't require months of disruption or a massive budget.  

It requires you to commit to change:  “I’ve got to deal with this.  We could hire another employee (or many) if we hired right in the first place.”

Stop defending a process that isn't working.  Start building one that does.

Your commitment starts with a conversation.

Talk with me for 15 to 30 minutes.  I'll give you specific, actionable ideas to improve your hiring system immediately - at no cost, no obligation. At minimum, you'll walk away knowing what needs to change and why.

That's more progress than another bad hire will give you.

Drop a comment below or email info@hirethebest.co to schedule your free consultation.

Isn't it worth 15 minutes to stop making bad, costly hiring decisions?

#HiringStrategy #Leadership #TalentAcquisition #HiringMistakes #HireTheBest

Doubling Down When You Hire Wrong

Shane Parrish warns us in Clear Thinking:  “When circumstances change, we need to adapt.”

Your circumstances have changed.

You believe your hiring system was good enough to attract, assess, and add top performers to your team.  Maybe it was in the past, but today it's failing too often.  The people you hire are not meeting your expectations - or they quit too soon.

Yet you haven't changed a thing.

Parrish explains exactly why:  

"Inertia closes minds and stifles the motivation

to change how we've been doing things."

And then this:  

"The longer we avoid the hard thing we know we should do,

the harder it becomes to do."

Read that again.

The longer you delay fixing your hiring system, the more impossible it feels to fix.  What started as a manageable problem - a few bad hires, a flawed process, an untrained hiring team - has quietly grown in your mind into something overwhelming.

But here's the truth:  

Your hiring, management, employee development, and retention problems have grown in direction relation to the amount of time you have avoided fixing your hiring system and skills.

You know your hiring system is broken.  You know the people making your hiring decisions have never been formally trained.  You know this is costing you money, time, growth opportunities, and good people.

And yet you keep running the same broken process with limited skills and expecting different results.

That is the Inertia Default in its most expensive form.

The fix is still small.  It is not the monster your fear has misrepresented it to be.  A few hours and a modest investment are all it takes to start building a hiring system and improved hiring skills that actually work.

Saving the financial, time, and emotional losses caused by one more bad hire far exceeds the cost of fixing your hiring problems today.

Drop a comment below or email info@hirethebest.co to schedule your free consultation.

Isn't it worth 15 minutes to stop making bad, costly hiring decisions?

P.S.  The hard thing you know you should do is one conversation away.  Stop doubling down on a broken system.  Start building a better one.

#HiringStrategy #Leadership #TalentAcquisition #HiringMistakes #HireTheBest

You’re Delaying Because You Don’t Know the Real Cost

Of the last five people you hired, how many are exceeding your expectations?

How many are simply meeting your expectations?

The rest are falling short.  And that number may be all five.

That gap has a price tag.  And most leaders have never actually added it up.

Think about what a single bad hire costs you:

• Weeks of lost productivity.

• Management time consumed by performance issues.

• Team morale damaged.

• Customers underserved.

• A role reposted, re-interviewed, and re-onboarded.

Multiply that by every hire that didn't work out in the past two or three years.

The number is bigger than you want to know.  Which is exactly why most leaders don't calculate it.

But not knowing doesn't make the cost disappear.  It just makes it easier to delay fixing the problem.

Shane Parrish is right:  Inertia keeps us comfortable with processes that are quietly costing us far more than we realize.  And hiring is where that cost compounds fastest - because WHO you add to your team determines the success of your team more than any other single factor.

The fix doesn't require a complete overhaul overnight.  It first requires clarity.

Start here:  Use our free Bad Hire Calculator to see exactly what your current hiring decisions are costing you.

The number will motivate you in a way this post cannot.

Once you see it, let's talk.  One conversation with a Hire the Best coach will give you a clear path to stop losing that money for good.

Drop a comment below or email info@hirethebest.co to get started.

Isn't it worth 15 minutes to stop making bad, costly hiring decisions?

P.S. Great leaders act when the evidence is clear.  The evidence is waiting for you in your own hiring data.  Run the calculator.  Then contact us.

#HiringStrategy #Leadership #TalentAcquisition #HiringMistakes #CultureFit

Your Hiring Process Isn't as Good as You Think

You believe your hiring process is solid.  Maybe even really good.

But the data disagrees.

Answer this one question honestly:  How many people have you hired in the past 12 months who failed to meet your expectations?

If your answer is more than one, you have a problem.  

And your hiring process and skills are the reason.

Not bad luck.  Not a shallow talent pool.  Not the economy.  It’s your hiring process and skills.

Here's what makes this hard to see:  Familiarity masquerades as competence.  You've run your current hiring process enough times that it feels natural, even comfortable.  That comfort tricks you into believing it's working - even when the evidence says otherwise.

Shane Parrish calls this the Inertia Default in Clear Thinking.  He also says this:

"Time is the ultimate currency of life."

Think about what that means in hiring terms.

Every underperformer you manage.  Every role you repost.  Every replacement you onboard.  Every team member who quits because the wrong hire poisoned their environment.

That is lost time - your most valuable currency - being spent on consequences that a better hiring process would have prevented.

You don't have a bad luck problem.  You have a skills and systems problem.  And skills and systems can be fixed.

Here's the math that should make this an easy decision:

If you invest $1,500 in hiring coaching, I guarantee you will save a minimum of $12,000 - if you apply what you learn.

That's an 8X return.

And it’s conservative.  I expect to save you $25-$50,000 during the twelve months after we work together.  Depending on how many people you hire annually, the savings can compound to $100,000, $500,000, or more.  I've delivered these results before.  Repeatedly.

Pay $1,500 to get $12,000 back?

You should do that all day long.

The only thing standing between you and that result is the belief that your current hiring process and skills are good enough.

The data you have proves that’s not true.

Don't wait any longer.  The fix is closer than you think.   It starts with one conversation.

Drop a comment below, or email info@hirethebest.co to schedule your free consultation.

Isn't it worth 15 minutes to stop making bad, costly hiring decisions?

#HiringStrategy #Leadership #TalentAcquisition #HiringMistakes #HireTheBest

Is Fear Causing Your Bad Hires?

Let's be candid.  You are hiring people who do not meet your expectations.

And you are not making it a priority to fix it.

It’s not because you don't care.  Not because you think bad hires are acceptable.  But because improving your hiring process means taking time away from everything else demanding your attention right now.  And that feels like too high a price.

That instinct has a name.  Shane Parrish calls it the Inertia Default in his book, Clear Thinking.

Inertia isn't just physical laziness.  It's the quiet, persistent voice that says:  "I have more important things to do."

It steers you away from the work that matters most and toward the work that feels most urgent.  Hiring improvement rarely feels urgent - until another bad hire lands on your team and the real cost hits you.

Here's what Parrish says about breaking it:

"While we can't eliminate our defaults, we can reprogram them.  If we want to improve our behavior, accomplish more of our goals, and experience greater joy and meaning in our lives, we need to learn to manage our defaults."

And then this:

"The good news is that the same biological tendencies that make us react without reasoning can be reprogrammed into forces for good."

That reprogramming starts with one honest question:

Is protecting my schedule actually costing me more time and money than fixing my hiring problems would?

Think about the hours you spend managing underperformers.  Reposting roles.  Re-interviewing.  Onboarding replacements.  Repairing team morale.

The time you're "protecting" is already being consumed 10X or more - just on the back end after a bad hire - instead of on the front end preventing one.

The leaders I coach make one major shift:  They stop treating hiring improvement as a distraction from their real work and prioritize hiring as the highest-leverage work they can do.

Because it is.

The right people multiply everything else you accomplish.  The wrong people tax everything you build.

You don't need to overhaul your entire approach overnight.  You just need to start.

Drop a comment below, or email info@hirethebest.co to schedule your free consultation.

Isn't it worth 15 minutes to stop making bad, costly hiring decisions?

#HiringStrategy #Leadership #TalentAcquisition #HiringMistakes #HireTheBest

Your Hiring Process Fails. Inertia Is Why You Haven't Fixed It.

Shane Parrish gives us a “whack in the head” - major wisdom point in his book, Clear Thinking:

"Starting something is hard, but so too is stopping something.  

We resist change even when change is for the best."

Parrish calls this the Inertia Default.

The Latin root of "inertia" literally means laziness or idleness.  Physicist Leonard Mlodinow puts it bluntly:  "Once our minds are set in a direction, they tend to continue in that direction unless acted upon by some outside force."

So… here's the question you need to sit with:

What will be YOUR outside force?

Because right now, inertia is running your hiring decisions.  And it is costing you far more than you realize.

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

• The finalist candidate who chose your competitor instead of you.

• The new hire who no-showed on Day 1.

• The person who crushed it in every interview - then couldn't follow a basic process in Week 1.

• The solid team member who quit because your new hire was damaging the culture they believed in.

• The promising new hire who left after 90 days because they never felt set up to succeed.

Each of these is painful.  Expensive.  Yet, preventable.

Yet inertia whispers the same comfortable lie every time:  "It's not that bad.  I have more important things to do."

That lie is keeping your hiring system broken.

Jim Collins - leadership guru, author, and former Stanford professor - said it as clearly as it can be said:  "The right people are your most important asset.  The wrong people are your greatest liability."

Think about that for a moment.

Your most important asset.  Your greatest liability.  Both determined by the same decision:  Who you hire.

And yet, most companies have never once invested in formally training their hiring decision makers.  Never.  The people interviewing and selecting your next key hire are improvising - relying on gut feel, habit, and hope.

That is the inertia default in action.

Here's what breaking it looks like:

1.     New belief:  Our hiring system is not good enough, and our people need real training to make better decisions.

2.     New process:  A proven hiring system - like Hire the Best - that builds consistency and confidence into every hire you make.

3.     New habits:  Hiring decision makers who have been coached by professionals, not left to figure it out on their own.

The outside force you need doesn't have to be another bad hire.

It can be a conversation.

Talk with me for 15-30 minutes.  I'll give you free, specific ideas to start fixing your hiring system right now.  No pitch.  No pressure.  Just insight you can use immediately.

The cost of doing nothing keeps compounding.  The cost of one conversation is zero.

Drop a comment below, or email info@hirethebest.co to schedule your free consultation.

Isn’t it worth 15 minutes to stop making bad, costly hiring decisions?

#HiringStrategy #Leadership #TalentAcquisition #HiringMistakes #HireTheBest

Your Team Cannot Be Its Best Until You Fix Your Hiring

Championship teams are not built by accident.  They are built by leaders who understand that hiring great people is not a task on a checklist - hiring is the foundation of everything.

These leaders proved it:

"The right people are your most important asset.  The wrong people are your greatest liability." - Jim Collins, Leadership Guru, Author, and former Stanford professor

"Someone who is exceptional in their role is not just a little better than someone who is pretty good.  They are 100 times better." - Mark Zuckerberg, CEO & Founder, Meta

"It's not about collecting talent.  It's about building a team.  Some players fit better into one system or style of play than they do in another." - Bill Belichick, former Head Coach, New England Patriots

"A great employee is worth three good ones in a typical role - but in a creative or complex role, the gap grows to ten times or more." - Reed Hastings, CEO & Founder, Netflix

"You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality." - Walt Disney, Founder of Disney

"The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world." - Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple

"The cost of a bad hire is always more than the cost of taking your time to find the right one." - Unknown

"I'd rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person." - Jeff Bezos, CEO & Founder of Amazon

"The strength of an army lies not in its weapons, but in the character of the men who carry them." - Sun Tzu, ancient Chinese General

"I can easily predict a company's success by reviewing their system to attract, assess, and add new talent - and how they coach everyone involved in hiring." - David Russell, CEO & Founder, Manage 2 Win and Hire the Best

STOP PROCRASTINATING

Every week you delay fixing your hiring process is another week your team operates below its potential.

The leaders above did not build championship organizations by winging it.  They built systems - first, to hire wisely - then, to manage, develop, and retain the top talent they hired.

The best in the world ALWAYS make hiring a priority.

You can too.

Our Hire the Best coaches are ready to help you build the system and develop the skills to attract, assess, and add top performers - starting now.

Ready to build your championship team?  Let's talk.

Email us for a free consultation - info@hirethebest.co

#HiringStrategy #Leadership #HiringManagers #LeadershipDevelopment