Part 3: Execution Excellence

Most companies hire for where someone is. We hire for where they're going.

Potential times passion beats experience every time.

When evaluating candidates, ask:
• What's their learning velocity?
• How fast are they improving?
• What's their ceiling?
• How hungry are they?
• Will they raise our bar in 12 months?

We'd rather hire someone 70% ready with a steep growth curve than someone 100% ready who's plateaued.

Story: The Intern Who Became CTO
We hired an intern with minimal experience but exceptional curiosity. They asked more questions in their interview than most senior candidates. They'd built side projects to learn technologies they'd never used professionally.

Fast forward five years: they're our CTO. Not because we planned it, but because their trajectory was undeniable. Each year, they learned faster, contributed more, and lifted others higher.

Along the way, we passed on "perfect" candidates with decades of experience. They would have done the job well. But they wouldn't have redefined it.

Hiring for trajectory requires:
1. Looking for learning agility: How quickly do they pick up new concepts?
2. Testing for curiosity: What questions do they ask?
3. Checking for hunger: What have they taught themselves?
4. Evaluating growth mindset: How do they talk about failures?
5. Projecting forward: Where will they be in 2 years?

Remember: You're not hiring for today's role. You're hiring tomorrow's leader.

Psychological safety without high standards creates mediocrity. High standards without safety creates fear. We need both.

Make it safe to fail. Make it unsafe to not try.

Creating safety means:
• Failures are learning opportunities, not career limiters
• Questions are welcomed, especially "dumb" ones
• Mistakes are discussed openly, without blame
• Vulnerability is modelled from the top
• Help is always available

Demanding excellence means:
• Standards are clear and non-negotiable
• Mediocrity is challenged directly
• Excellence is expected, not hoped for
• Accountability is individual and specific
• Results matter, excuses don't

Story: The Failed Launch That Made Us Stronger
A major feature launch failed spectacularly. The team was devastated. In many companies, heads would roll.

Instead, we held a public retrospective. The team presented their failures to the entire company. They owned every mistake. They shared every lesson. They proposed fixes.

Then came the twist: leadership promoted the team lead. Why? Because they'd shown courage, accountability, and learning. The message was clear: we value growth over perfection.

Six months later, that same team delivered our most successful launch ever. They'd learned to fail fast, learn faster, and execute flawlessly.

Balance safety and excellence by:
1. Celebrating learning from failure: Share your own failures publicly
2. Setting stretch goals: Safe to miss, unsafe not to aim high
3. Giving feedback immediately: Both positive and constructive
4. Creating practice spaces: Where people can fail without customer impact
5. Measuring both effort and results: Reward the attempt, celebrate the outcome

Heroes save the day. Systems save the company.

If your team's success depends on heroics, you've already failed as a leader.

Heroes are seductive. They swoop in, work miracles, save projects. We celebrate them. We promote them. We burn them out. Then we wonder why nothing scales.

Systems are boring. They prevent fires instead of fighting them. They make success repeatable. They turn ordinary people into extraordinary teams.

Story: The Engineer Who Automated Herself Out of a Job
Our best infrastructure engineer was constantly fire-fighting. She was a hero - always available, always fixing, always saving the day. She was also exhausted.

She made a radical decision: automate everything she did. Every script. Every runbook. Every decision tree. She documented every piece of tribal knowledge.

Within six months, she'd eliminated 90% of emergencies. Junior engineers could handle what once required her expertise. She'd worked herself out of her hero role.

Did we fire her? We promoted her to Chief Architect. She'd shown the ultimate leadership: making herself replaceable to become invaluable. She now builds systems that prevent problems across all teams.

Build systems by:
1. Documenting everything: If it's not written, it doesn't exist
2. Automating repetitive tasks: Humans for judgment, machines for repetition
3. Creating playbooks: Turn emergencies into procedures
4. Distributing knowledge: No single points of failure
5. Measuring prevention: Celebrate problems that didn't happen

Remember: Heroes are addictive. Systems are sustainable. Choose wisely.