6.
HIRE ONLY PEOPLE YOU LIKE

No matter what their resumes say; no matter how many degrees or honors or awards they have; no matter their parents, their teachers, their mentors, their education, their job experiences, their contacts, their business associates; no matter how good their previous work; no matter how much they know, or how well they talk or write or present or handle themselves; no matter how glowing their references and accomplishments; no matter how perfectly they seem to fit the jobs you have to fill; no matter where they went to school, or what they’ve done, or who they know, or where they’ve worked, or who they’ve worked with, or what they’ve worked on — if you don’t like them, if you don’t feel comfortable and at ease with them, if you don’t think you could drive across the country with them in a Volkswagen Beetle, don’t hire them.

If you do, you will eventually have a problem. Guaranteed.

They will not be fun for you or other people to work with. They will not add to the camaraderie that is essential when people work closely with things as fragile as ideas.

Instead, they will eventually poison the most important thing you can create if you want ideas to flow — the environment of your company.

This is not to say that everybody you like will work out. Of course they won’t. It is only to say that nobody you dislike will. Guaranteed.37

Having found someone you like, what else must you look for?

Look for curious people, people who are interested in all sorts of things, people whose knowledge is horizontal rather than vertical.

Look for people who can get along with the people they will be working with. Remember that in any team activity, chemistry is more important than talent. So have a number of people interview (or at least talk to) them too. If some of them don’t like the new person, beware.

Look for people who are up, who laugh, who like to play, who have a sense of humor. “Serious people have few ideas,” wrote Paul Valéry. “People with ideas are never serious.”

Look for fire. Look for pride. Look for the desire to make a mark. Look for the willingness to give in order to get.

Look for people who break rules, people who frighten you with the audacity and originality of their ideas.

Look for a sense of dis-ease with the way things are, and an urge, even a compulsion, to change them. For neither your business nor the world is ever changed by people who are content with the status quo.

People who accept instead of question, who smooth instead of rock — these people seldom make creative breakthroughs, because they follow and imitate.

And your job is to restore to people the belief in their own guidance and their own creativity, and thus have people who lead themselves.