What’s Missing in Your Leadership Development Program

Companies are investing millions in leadership development right now.

Programs on AI integration.  Workshops on avoiding burnout.  Training on navigating disruption and uncertainty.  Courses on emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, and change management.

All valuable.  Possibly all necessary.

But there's one critical leadership skill most organizations completely ignore - the skill that determines whether every other capability actually matters.

How to hire exceptional people.

Think about it:  A leader can master AI fluency, maintain perfect work-life balance, and navigate uncertainty with grace.  But if they consistently hire the wrong people, none of those skills will save their team from underperformance.

The math is brutal.  

One leader making average hiring decisions over 20 years will cost your organization millions in bad hires, lost productivity, and cultural erosion.  Multiply that across every manager in your company, and the impact is staggering.

Yet most leadership development programs treat hiring as an HR function, not a core leadership competency.

The best organizations understand differently.  They teach every leader - from team leads to executives - the systematic discipline of hiring.  Not posting jobs and hoping.  Not relying on gut instinct.  But a proven process that consistently delivers top performers.

We call it the 3 A's:  How you Attract, Assess, and Add exceptional talent.

1.     Attract means knowing how to find and inspire top performers to want to join your team, not just fill open seats with whoever applies.

2.     Assess means fully extracting the facts about how candidates have performed in the past, how they'll mesh with your culture, and whether they'll advance your organization to the next level - not just conducting pleasant conversations that reveal nothing.

3.     Add means onboarding new hires in ways that exceed the expectations you set during interviews, not disappointing them within the first 90 days and watching them quietly disengage or leave.

When leaders master these three phases, everything else in leadership becomes exponentially easier.  They build stronger teams.  Reduce turnover.  Elevate culture.  And free themselves to focus on strategy instead of constantly fixing people problems.

This is the first of the 4 Management Disciplines every leader needs:  How to Hire, Manage, Develop, and Retain top talent.

Your leadership development program can teach AI fluency and burnout prevention all day long.  But if your leaders can't hire right, those investments won't deliver the returns you're expecting.

Ready to close the gap?

Work with a Hire the Best coach to build hiring discipline into your leadership development program.

Teach your leaders to Attract, Assess, and Add top talent - and watch every other leadership capability multiply in impact.

Abraham Lincoln Saved the Union by Hiring His Enemies

When Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office on March 4, 1861, the United States of America was dying.

Seven states had already seceded.  The Confederacy had formed its own government.  Federal forts and arsenals across the South had been seized.  Armed rebellion was imminent.  Within six weeks, Confederate forces would fire on Fort Sumter and plunge the nation into civil war.

Lincoln inherited a country literally tearing itself apart - a constitutional crisis unprecedented in American history. T he Union faced extinction.

And Lincoln himself?  He was widely dismissed as unqualified.  A one-term congressman from Illinois.  A prairie lawyer with zero executive experience.  He'd lost his Senate race just two years earlier.  Political insiders were shocked this backwoods politician had somehow captured the Republican nomination.

But Lincoln had something his critics didn't understand:  An extraordinary ability to recognize talent and put aside personal ego for the mission at hand.

His solution?  He did the unthinkable.

Lincoln appointed his three fiercest rivals for the presidency - men who had publicly ridiculed him, questioned his qualifications, and considered him beneath them - to the most powerful positions in his cabinet.

• William Seward, the presumed front-runner who thought the nomination had been stolen from him, became Secretary of State.

• Salmon Chase, who privately called Lincoln incompetent, became Secretary of the Treasury.

• Edward Bates, the distinguished elder statesman, became Attorney General.

• Later, Edwin Stanton - who had openly mocked Lincoln as a "long-armed ape" - became Secretary of War.

These men were accomplished, nationally known, and considered far more presidential than Lincoln.  They were shocked and humiliated at losing to this obscure Illinois lawyer.  Initially, they barely spoke to each other.  The cabinet was plagued by rivalry, jealousy, and contempt.

Lincoln's philosophy was unprecedented:  Surround yourself with the strongest minds available, even if they hate you, and channel their talents toward the mission that matters.

As Lincoln explained:  "We need the strongest men of the party in the Cabinet.  I had looked the party over and concluded that these were the very strongest men.  Then I had no right to deprive the country of their services."

Lincoln gave each man authority over his department, listened to their conflicting advice, mediated their feuds, and ultimately made the decisions himself.  His emotional intelligence transformed bitter rivals into a functional team.

Seward became Lincoln's closest friend and advisor.  Even Chase, who undermined Lincoln for years, was later appointed to the Supreme Court because Lincoln recognized his abilities were too valuable to waste.

The result?  

The Union was preserved.  Slavery was abolished.  The United States survived its darkest hour.

Lincoln proved that in a crisis requiring unprecedented leadership, the willingness to hire people smarter than you, more accomplished than you, even those who despise you, can save everything that matters.

Great leaders have powerful visions and strategies.  But they achieve significance by hiring people who bring strengths they lack, challenge their thinking, and share their commitment to a mission larger than personal ambition.

Want a stronger organization?

Work with one of our Hire the Best coaches to master the hiring discipline that separates good companies from great ones.

Learn how to Attract, Assess, and Add top talent who'll help you achieve your vision.

Bill Belichick Built the Patriots Dynasty on Hiring Discipline

When Bill Belichick became the Patriots head coach in 2000, the franchise was coming off another disappointing season.

Belichick himself arrived with his own baggage - fired by Cleveland after five mediocre years, then infamously resigning as Jets head coach after just one day on the job.

His first season in New England went 5-11.  Critics said he was overrated.

But Belichick had something other coaches didn't:  Complete control over personnel decisions and an unmatched talent for evaluating players everyone else overlooked.

While other NFL teams chased high-priced free agents and first-round superstars, Belichick obsessed over something different:  Finding the right 53 players, not the best 53 players.

His solution?  He built a system that turned castoffs, late-round picks, and undrafted players into champions.

In his first draft, with the 199th pick, Belichick selected a quarterback from Michigan named Tom Brady as his fourth string quarterback - arguably the greatest draft steal in NFL history.  

But Brady was just the beginning.  Belichick found Pro Bowlers in the seventh round, signed All-Pros other teams had discarded, and turned practice squad players into Super Bowl heroes.  Wes Welker, Mike Vrabel, Rodney Harrison, Malcolm Butler, Julian Edelman - the list of overlooked talent Belichick transformed is legendary.

His philosophy was brutally simple:  Attract players others overlooked, Assess them for character and role fit, Add only those who bought into the culture, define each player's job precisely, hold everyone accountable to "Do Your Job," and move on from anyone - no matter how gifted - who doesn't fit the system.

The numbers prove the success of his hiring and other management disciplines.  Under Belichick, the Patriots won six Super Bowls in nine appearances, 17 AFC East titles, and compiled a 266-121 regular season record.  His 31 playoff wins are the most by any coach in NFL history.

Belichick proved that in professional football's ultimate team sport, superior talent evaluation and cultural discipline beats star power every time.

Great leaders have powerful visions and strategies.  But they achieve significance by hiring people who passionately share their vision, match their culture, and exceed the needs of the role.

Want a stronger organization?

Work with one of our Hire the Best coaches to master the hiring discipline that separates good companies from great ones.

Learn how to Attract, Assess, and Add top talent who'll help you achieve your vision.

The ROI of Teaching One Manager to Hire

You just promoted Sarah to team lead.  She's smart, hardworking, respected by her peers.  You're confident she'll succeed.

Then you watch her hire three people over the next six months.

One quits after four months.  Another requires constant supervision and then is fired for poor performance.  The third is solid - but nothing special.

Sarah didn't fail because she lacks leadership ability.  She failed because nobody taught her how to hire.

Here's the math most leaders miss:  When you promote someone into a management role without training them hiring skills, you don't just risk one bad hire.  

You risk every hire they'll make for the next 20 years.

Let's just focus on the next five years.  Let’s estimate Sarah manages a team of 8 people with 25% annual turnover…

• That's 10 failed hires over the next 5 years.

• Estimated loss is $50,000 per hire.

• That's over $500,000 in losses - from one untrained manager.

Now imagine you invest in teaching Sarah how to Hire the Best, and avoid the rest who are not a good fit for your company or the role - before she makes her first hire.

You teach her how to:

1.     Attract people who align with company values and role requirements, not just fill seats quickly.

2.     Assess candidates systematically for both capability and cultural fit, not simply make assumptions.

3.     Add them strategically to elevate team performance, not hope they figure it out.

The difference compounds exponentially.

When Sarah hires right, she gets team members who think like owners, take responsibility for results, build cohesion, and increase effectiveness.  They require less training, fewer accountability conversations, make fewer mistakes, and free Sarah to focus on strategy instead of fixing problems.

More importantly, those high performers stay.  They attract other high performers.  Turnover drops.  Culture strengthens.  And Sarah's team advances to levels that average players could never reach.

As Jim Collins wrote in Good to Great, when you get the right people on the bus, they fuel organizational success.  But most leaders never teach their managers how to identify who the right people actually are.

The best ROI in leadership development isn't teaching managers how to give feedback or run meetings.  It's teaching them the first of the 4 Management Disciplines: How to Hire with precision.

Get hiring right, and managing, developing, and retaining talent becomes exponentially easier.

Get it wrong, and even your best managers will struggle forever.

Ready to multiply your leadership impact?

Work with a Hire the Best coach to train your managers in the discipline of Attracting, Assessing, and Adding top talent.

One trained manager.  Decades of better decisions.

Truett Cathy Built Chick-fil-A on Hiring Discipline

When Truett Cathy opened the Dwarf Grill in 1946, he was just trying to make a living in a tiny diner with ten stools and four tables.  

By 1967, when he opened the first Chick-fil-A, he'd learned something that would separate his company from every competitor:  Hiring wasn't just important - it was everything.

While competitors chased customers with bigger menus and flashier marketing, Cathy obsessed over one thing:  Finding the right people.

His solution?  He made hiring the hardest thing to do in fast food.

Cathy personally interviewed every prospective franchise operator - called "Operators" at Chick-fil-A.  The process took 12 to 24 months.  He asked about their families, their community involvement, their character.  And he had a famous 16-word test:  "I want to know that you and I can work together until one of us dies."

Think about that.  While other franchises looked for people with money, Cathy looked for people with commitment, values, and character who would build something that lasted.

The numbers prove his discipline.  Chick-fil-A receives 20,000+ applications annually for operators, but accepts only 75-80 - a 0.4% acceptance rate.  That's more selective than Harvard.

The results?  

• Chick-fil-A operator turnover is less than 5% versus the industry average of 35%.  

• Hourly worker turnover is 60% versus the industry average of 107%.

• Average store sales hit $9.3 million - with some locations exceeding $19 million - while being closed every Sunday.

• Chick-fil-A generates the highest sales per square foot in fast food and legendary customer service that competitors can't replicate.

Cathy proved that in a "regular" business like fast food, superior hiring discipline creates extraordinary results.

Great leaders have powerful visions and strategies.  But they achieve significance by hiring people who passionately share their vision, match their culture, and exceed the needs of the role.

Want a stronger organization?

Work with one of our Hire the Best coaches to master the hiring discipline that separates good companies from great ones.

Learn how to attract, assess, and add top talent who'll help you achieve your vision.

Angela Ahrendts Transformed Apple Retail

When Angela Ahrendts joined Apple in 2014, she inherited a retail operation in crisis. 

Despite launching in 2001 with Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson's revolutionary store concept, Apple Retail was struggling with leadership instability, warring online and retail divisions, and no integrated customer experience.

Ahrendts inherited 50,000+ employees and three major problems.

Her solution?   She didn't focus on technology or merchandising strategies.

She focused on hiring.

Ahrendts completely transformed Apple's retail by finding people who could create human connections - hiring for empathy, emotional intelligence, and problem-solving skills rather than just technical expertise. 

She also built a leadership team that elevated Apple Stores from transactional spaces into experiential destinations.

The results?  Apple Stores became vibrant community hubs while competitors' stores sat empty.  Apple Retail became the most profitable retail operation per square foot in the world.

Ahrendts proved that a leader who masters hiring can transform any organization.

Great leaders have powerful visions and strategies.  But they achieve significance by hiring people who passionately share their vision, match their culture, and exceed the needs of the role.

Want a stronger organization?

Work with one of our Hire the Best coaches to master the hiring discipline that separates good companies from great ones.

Learn how to attract, assess, and add top talent who'll help you achieve your vision.

Hiring Acumen: The Leadership Skill Nobody Teaches

71% of leaders are burning out.  77% of CHROs lack confidence in their leadership bench.  Organizations everywhere face a talent pipeline crisis.

And yet most leaders have never been trained in the one skill that could solve it: How to hire exceptional people.

Think about it.  You can have a brilliant strategy, cutting-edge technology, and massive market opportunity.  But if you hire the wrong people, none of it matters.

Bad hires don't just underperform - they drain your best people, derail your culture, and consume management time you'll never get back.  The average cost of a single bad hire?

$240,000 in lost productivity, recruitment costs, and cultural damage.

Great leaders understand this:  Hiring isn't an HR function.  It's the most strategic decision you make.

Yet most leaders approach hiring with outdated methods - posting jobs and hoping the right people apply, relying on gut instinct in interviews, making offers to whoever seems "good enough" because they need to fill the seat.

The best leaders do something different.  They master what we call hiring acumen - the systematic ability to Attract top talent to their team, Assess whether candidates truly match both the role and culture, and Add them in ways that accelerate team performance.

When leaders develop hiring acumen, everything changes.  They build stronger benches.  Reduce turnover.  Elevate culture.  And free themselves from the constant cycle of hiring, managing disappointment, and replacing underperformers.

This is the first of the 4 Management Disciplines every leader needs to master:  How you Hire, Manage, Develop, and Retain top talent.

Get hiring wrong, and you'll struggle with the other three forever.

Get it right, and leadership becomes exponentially easier.

Ready to develop hiring acumen on your team?

Work with a Hire the Best coach to master the systematic approach to Attracting, Assessing, and Adding top talent.

Stop guessing.  Start hiring with discipline.

The Recruiter Was Working Hard. The Hiring Managers Were Getting Garbage.

The recruiter was drowning candidates in interviews - but few of them were getting hired.

I watched four hiring managers reject candidate after candidate.  Same complaints every time:

"Wrong culture fit."  "Doesn't have the technical skills."  "Won't work well with the team."

The recruiter wasn't lazy.  He was checking every box on his list, conducting phone screens, and sending notes.

He just didn't know what he was looking for.

Nobody had taught him how to assess culture fit.  How to really read a resume.  How to lead an interview.  How to evaluate whether a candidate would complement - or clash with  an existing team.

He was training himself.  It wasn’t fair to him, the candidates, the managers relying on him, or his employer. 

I became his hiring coach.

Within weeks, his recommendations improved dramatically.  More culture matches.  Better interviewing skills.  Less wasted time.

Also, the recruiter never mastered whether the company was a good fit for the candidate.  How to put himself in their shoes and evaluate fit from their perspective.

The lesson?  Recruiting titles don't equal hiring expertise.

Just because someone has "recruiting" in their title doesn't mean they know how to identify top performers, assess cultural alignment, or prevent costly mismatches.

Hire the Best coaching develops your leaders' ability to attract, assess, and add top players who advance your team - while avoiding the hiring mistakes that drain your resources and kill momentum.

Does your recruiting team know how to hire, or are they just checking boxes?

They Tested After Hiring. It Was Already Too Late.

The frustrated email hit my inbox and sparked my curiosity:

"Two recent hires just left.  One for performance issues, the other returned to their former employer.  Can you review their Talent Assessments and tell us if we missed any warning signs?"

I pulled their profiles.  The warning signs were there - not glaring red flags, but clear indicators of risk.

Here's the problem:  The Client - a very good one - ran the assessments AFTER the hire.

By then, the company had already committed salary, benefits, onboarding time, and team disruption.  The assessments confirmed what they should have known before extending an offer.

This is like getting a home inspection after you've already moved in.  Sure, you'll learn about the problems - but now you own them.

Prevention costs pennies.  Fixing mistakes costs thousands.

After reviewing their situation, I recommended three changes:

1. Run Manage 2 Win Talent Assessments BEFORE the final decision.

2. Require scrimmages for every hire.

3. Complete background checks before day one.

4. Make all offers conditional on passing these three requirements.

Why this matters:

Talent Assessments reveal whether candidates match your culture, complement your existing team, and fit the specific demands of the role.  They uncover communication styles, work preferences, and potential friction points - while you still have the power to choose differently.

Done before hiring, they prevent costly mistakes.  Done after hiring, they just document them.

Hire the Best coaching teaches you exactly when and how to use assessments, scrimmages, and other tools to make confident decisions before you commit - not after you regret.

Are you assessing candidates before you hire them, or just confirming your mistakes afterward?

She Took 3 Months Off. I Paid Her. She's Never Leaving.

My superstar team member just returned from three months in Europe.

She worked remotely 20 hours a week, traveled to 7 countries, and came back more loyal than ever.

How did I make this happen without breaking our PTO policy or creating resentment on the team?

I helped her achieve a personal dream instead of making her choose between her career and her life.

Here's what most companies do:  Offer standard PTO (maybe 15 days), add some paid holidays, call it competitive, and wonder why top performers leave for slightly better offers elsewhere.

Here's what I did differently.

She's trustworthy.  She delivers exceptional work.  And she loves extended travel - not weekend trips, but multi-month adventures.

So… I created a flex-time bank.  Work extra hours during busy periods?  Bank them as additional PTO.  No cap.  No expiration within reason.  Just one requirement:  Deliver exceptional results during regular hours first.

Last year, she banked 66 hours on top of her standard PTO.  Combined with strategic planning, she took three months off.  The trip of a lifetime.  Memories she'll treasure forever.

The cost to me?  Zero.  The return?  Unbreakable loyalty.

She's not just an employee anymore.  She's someone whose dreams I helped make real - right now, not "someday when you retire."  And I loved doing it!

This is how you lock in superstars.

Not with ping pong tables or free snacks.  With genuine support that shows you value their whole life, not just their productivity.

Hire the Best coaching helps you create cultures and compensation plans that inspire top talent to choose you - and stay with you - over every other opportunity.

What dream could you help your best employee achieve this year?

The Silent Killer of Every Hire: Unspoken Expectations

Bob expected Sally to deliver the report on time.  The deadline passed.  No report.  No update.  No communication.

What happened?  Both made assumptions.  Both had different expectations.  Neither spoke up.

This scenario plays out thousands of times a day in organizations everywhere - with devastating results.

Unmet expectations destroy trust, kill productivity, and turn good hires into regrettable ones.

The root cause?  Fear.

Fear of conflict.  Fear of looking incompetent.  Fear of disappointing others.  So, people stay silent, make assumptions, and let expectations drift until something breaks.

Here's how to fix it.

Leadership consultant Jud Boies developed a powerful solution over 20 years ago:  Written Expectations.

It's simple.  Before work begins, two people explicitly define:

• How they'll communicate.

• What success looks like.

• When and how they'll review progress.

• How they'll handle problems.

Written expectations remove assumptions.  They create clarity.  They give both parties permission to speak up when something isn't working.

This works everywhere:

• Manager and direct report

• Team members working together

• Contractors and clients

• Even personal relationships

In Hire the Best coaching, we teach you how to use Written Expectations with every new hire - and throughout your organization.  When expectations are clear from day one, trust builds faster, performance improves, and costly misunderstandings vanish.

The best part?  This same discipline prevents you from making assumptions during hiring, too.

What expectations have you been assuming instead of confirming?

Do the Hard Thing Once. Benefit For Life.

Entrepreneur Jesse Itzler has a philosophy that transforms how people approach their year.

He calls it a Misogi—one epic challenge so hard, so memorable, that decades later you'll remember: "That was the year I ___________."

On Ryan Holiday's Daily Stoic podcast, Jesse explained it this way:  "Do something so hard one time a year that it has an impact on the other 364 days of your year."

For Jesse, that's meant running 100-mile races, biking across America, and completing Ultramarathons.  But a Misogi doesn't have to be physical.  It can be quitting a destructive habit, learning a new skill, or repairing a broken relationship.

The power isn't in what you do - it's in building the capacity, resilience, and confidence that carries into everything else.

Great hiring works the same way.

Most leaders avoid the hard work upfront.  They rush the hiring process.  They make assumptions.  They skip the scrimmage.

Then they spend the next year - or longer - managing the consequences of a bad hire.

The Misogi mindset flips this: Do the hard thing once.  Benefit all year, and for years to come.  There’s a compounding positive effect to your legacy.

When you invest in a disciplined hiring process - Attracting the right people, Assessing them carefully, and Adding them systematically - you build something that impacts your organization for years.  You avoid costly mistakes.  You demonstrate better judgment.  You create a culture of accountability.

Hire the Best coaching teaches leaders to embrace these disciplines.  We help you build leadership and hiring systems that can feel challenging at first, but become the foundation for amazing outcomes that define your legacy - just like a Misogi.

You can learn more about Jesse's Misogi philosophy here: https://youtube.com/shorts/-2QtXSl7tfY?si=mJyHd2cA6kVOjsRF

What's the hard thing in your hiring process you've been avoiding?

If They Cheat at Golf, They'll Cheat at Work

Zig Ziglar's boss made a costly mistake:  He hired first, then tested.

After the new salesperson was already on payroll, the boss asked Zig to play golf with him for approval.

Zig's verdict?  "He won't last.

His boss asked why.  Zig’s reply started with, “He cheats at golf.”

He was right.  The guy failed - wasting time, money, and team morale.

The lesson?  Always scrimmage BEFORE you hire.

A scrimmage puts candidates in real or simulated work conditions so you can observe their behavior, skills, and character under pressure.

For Zig, it was golf.  For you, it might be:

• A salesperson pitching your product.

• A developer solving a real coding problem.

• A manager leading a team exercise.

Done right, scrimmages are effective, fair, and legally sound—and they reveal what interviews can't.

We make scrimmages mandatory for our clients - along with background checks.  These are the only two non-negotiables in Hire the Best.  (We also strongly recommend Manage 2 Win Talent Assessments before start date.)

Why?  Because hundreds of hires have proven that scrimmages replace assumptions with facts.  You see how candidates work with your team, handle pressure, and deliver quality - before you commit.

Interviews tell you what people say.  Scrimmages show you what they do.

Hire the Best coaching teaches you how to design effective scrimmages for any role.

What would a scrimmage look like for your next hire?

The $80K Promotion That Outperformed a $150K Hire

Before you spend $150K+ on an external hire, look at who's already proving themselves on your team.

A manufacturing company asked me to recruit a high-priced GM for their 15-person operation.

But their executive assistant kept coming up in our conversations.  They kept mentioning how she goes above and beyond every expectation.

I asked the obvious question they hadn't:  "Why not promote her?"

She was trustworthy, competent, knew the operation, and had the team's respect.  Everything you'd want in a GM – already validated through performance, not promised in interviews.

They promoted her.  She excelled for four years and helped transform the business before relocating.

The cost difference?  Roughly $80K in salary savings, zero onboarding risk, and months of productivity gained.

Your best hire might not need hiring at all.  They might just need recognition and opportunity.

Hire the Best coaching helps leaders master all 4 Management Disciplines:  Hiring, managing, developing, and retaining top talent.

Who on your team is ready for more responsibility?

You'd Never Let an Untrained Pilot Fly Your Plane. So Why This?

Would you expect someone to...

• Close new business without sales training?

• Code software without coding training?

• Fly your airplane without flight training?

Of course not.

So why are you letting people make hiring decisions - including yourself - when they've never been fully trained to hire for culture fit and role match?

Hiring is the foundation of every great team.

You wouldn't trust an amateur with your life.  Don't trust one with your company's future.

Get a hiring coach.  Consider our unique Hiring Coach programs.

"This Is Our Best Candidate?" (It Wasn't.)

Our client was excited.  They'd found their ideal salesperson… or so they thought.

"Let's review the resume," I said.

At the top, under "Objective," the candidate listed career goals.  All related to marketing.  Nothing about sales.

Me:  "Are you looking for a hunter or a farmer?"

Client:  "Hunter."

Me:  "Not a match.  This person wants to be a marketer, not the sales professional you need."

There are hundreds of little details like this that separate good hires from disasters.

You already think you know how to hire.  That's the problem.

Work with one of our Hiring Coaches to develop true hiring mastery.  Learn more on or click here to schedule a free conversation.

My Worst Hire Cost Me $1.5 Million

You might not have made a single hiring mistake that expensive.

But add them up.  Over time, bad hires have probably cost you $1.5 million.  Maybe more.

Find out for certain.  Use our Bad Hire Calculator.  (It’s free.)

Then subscribe to Hiring Insights and start your journey to master how to hire the best and avoid the rest (who aren’t a good fit).

I Failed at Goals for Decades. Then I Learned to SCORE.

For years, I wrote goals I didn't achieve.  Late.  Incomplete.  Or abandoned entirely.

Then I stopped writing goals and started setting TARGETs.

Now?  I consistently SCORE - for my team and myself.

Not flawless.  But consistent in the areas that matter most.

Goals that SCORE meet these criteria:

Strategic
Clear and measurable
Objective
Relevant (team priorities/your role)
End date (specific time and date)

Are you and your team on track to win this quarter?

Stop Chasing Goals. Build Systems Instead.

James Clear dropped this truth bomb on Ryan Holiday's podcast (12/31):

"Being outcome-focused will help you achieve a goal one time, but if you want to keep winning again and again, you have to be focused on the system."

This changes everything.

Most companies have a goal to "fill the opening."  But their hiring system is broken, so they keep hiring people who underperform.

Stop hiring to fill seats.  Start building a system that attracts excellence.

That's what Hire the Best does - the only hiring coach program built on a proven system for entrepreneurial-minded leaders.

‍ Want to stop making the same hiring mistakes?  Let's talk.

The $500K Resume That Almost Destroyed My Client

He thought this candidate was "a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10."

Then we ran the background check.

Multiple felony arrests.  Sexual predator.  DUI.  The list went on.

One simple background check - which my California client had never done before - saved him from a catastrophic hire that could have cost him everything.

The lesson:  There are two things that must happen before a new hire's first day.  A proper background check is one of them, and it’s non-negotiable.

Confirm the facts.  Every time.  Sometimes you'll discuss past issues and move forward.  But you need to know what you're dealing with.

Background checks aren't optional.  They're mandatory.