Love this quote from Gregory Northcraft: "The difference between experience and expertise is that with expertise, you have a predictive model that works." Sort of adds a new layer to 'you can either have five years of experience, or one year of experience five times.'
There are lots of non obvious implications from this single quote.
For instance: want to hire a good generalist for your startup? The best indicator: they have a history of finding ‘predictive models that work’ in all their previous domains. You can test for this.
For instance: want to hire a good generalist for your startup? The best indicator: they have a history of finding ‘predictive models that work’ in all their previous domains. You can test for this.
When you say “that person might not be the smartest person in the room, but boy are they effective” what you’re essentially saying is that they have a history of systematically looking for predictive models that work. This quality is orthogonal to intelligence.
When you’re hiring a good individual contributor, you might not require them to have a legible explanation of their predictive model.
But if you’re hiring a manager, they damn well better be able to explain their approach, because that’s table stakes for being a good teacher.
But if you’re hiring a manager, they damn well better be able to explain their approach, because that’s table stakes for being a good teacher.
(Good managers must be able to teach, because training is the prerequisite for delegation. managementforstartups.com/articles/how-t…)
