265 - The Sports Analogy - Hiring

Imbued with Intensity

We’re doing a lot of hiring at Mayday at the moment. It feels like a great time to write about the subject, both to share my learnings, as well as organise my thinking for practical application.

I’ve written about the sports analogy before. The concept comes from Andy Grove’s phenomenal book High Output Management. It poses the question: What if we could endow work with the same esteem as pro sports; what if we respected someone who throws themself into work in the same way as someone who throws themself into a sport?

In hiring, you are looking for people for whom their work is a form of sport. They are imbued with an intensity that drives great work. I was interviewing a candidate recently. They talked about being ambitious and results-driven. Anyone can say that. In explaining their point, this candidate talked about how they “wear a KPI on their back”. It was unthinking, no hint of affectation. That is the sports analogy.

Whether it is competing against a metric (as above), others, some internal yardstick for performance and improvement, or anything else, doesn’t matter. The point of the sports analogy is that you get a clear sense that this is a person who is not going to let an opportunity lie, who’s going to suffer from an unresolved itch if they’ve knowingly fallen short of great work.

This is something all great hires share.