In 2023 a business came to us doing about $15M a year, stuck on the most common set of constraints there is: the founders were doing everyone's job, and nothing got done without them. (the perpetual problem)

Many jump to the strategy, however the issue with doing that is even if you have a 10/10 strategy, if you have even 6/10 execution, you’ll truly never know what’s wrong - the strategy or the execution.

This is where many founders and leaders get caught up in constantly changing projects, products, objectives and processes and blaming everything except themselves.

So, we didn't give them a new strategy. We didn't even TOUCH the product first.

We changed the people. Reoriented the founders into CEO and CPO. Pulled their COO up from existing leadership. Brought in a real Head of Sales, a 10/10 Marketing Director, a solid controller, a Head of Dev, a head of people.

Three years later: $15M to $70M, a backend product making up majority of the profit, and roughly $170M in enterprise value created.

Here's the lesson: people trump strategy. The right people select the strategy, manage the cash flow, and design the products, so being able to spot them is the single highest-leverage skill you can build.

I would argue picking people well is worth more than being the person who gets picked.

You want to be an exceptional PEOPLE PICKER.

So what am I actually looking for in a person?

A high-potential player is someone with the capacity, character, and motivation to become a future leader.

Capacity is how much room they have left to grow.

Character is what their behavior shows about their mental and moral qualities.

Motivation is how badly they want it.

And three principles for spotting them:

1. Rate of progress beats rate of performance. Today's numbers tell you who's good TODAY. Rate of progress tells you who'll be great LATER. Promote purely on current performance and you'll promote people to their level of incompetence (hello, Peter Principle) and an organization that consistently over-promotes consistently underperforms.

Hire and promote for the FUTURE.

2. Humility beats arrogance. Most people genuinely believe they're better than they are. The unskilled can't see their own faults and the exceptionally competent often can't see how rare their abilities are, because it doesn't feel hard to them. So the loudest self-promoter is usually not your highest-potential person. The real HPPs frequently don't know they are one. Look for the person subtly outgrowing their role, not the one constantly boasting about their achievements.

3. Embrace extremes. Extreme gifts usually come packaged with extreme weaknesses. The better someone is at one or two things, the less well-rounded they tend to be at first. If you screen out everyone with glaring flaws, you'll screen out everyone with glaring brilliance too and end up with a team of perfectly AVERAGE MEDIOCRE ‘MID’ people.

Don't spend your energy working on people’s weaknesses. Spend it magnifying strengths.

Once you've spotted your HPPs, your job as a leader is simple to say and hard to do: identify them, invest in training them, let them go, and then get out of their way.

Here's the interesting part. The talent is already around you.

Most leaders (even VERY experienced ones) are sitting on a goldmine and can't see it, because the daily demands of the job eat the time it takes to develop people. Look at your calendar. Is it full of managing tasks, checking work, and approving decisions?

Every hour you spend on that stuff is an hour you didn't spend finding and coaching the person who would take it off your plate permanently.

And if your answer is "I don't have time" I promise you will never have it. You don't lack time. You lack priorities.

If you only remember one thing from this letter, remember this: the only way to relieve yourself, nourish talent, and grow the business is to make finding and growing your people priority #1.

Does your calendar reflect that?

So here's my question for you this week: who on your team is a high-potential player you haven't fully invested in magnifying?

- Leila

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