Playing For Winners

Sometimes, You Just Need To Be Around The Right People

Is your NCAA bracket broken? Of course, it is. If it isn’t, St. Peter’s took care of it. Do you know what is interesting about the Final Four? The coaches.

Three have won national championships. Hubert Davis is a first-year coach but he’s at a program that has historically competed for the national championship every year. He has been around and worked for great coaches his entire life. So, you have to assume since he was hired at North Carolina he is a pretty good coach with the potential to become a great one.

Coaches need great players to make great teams. But, great coaches can take good players and make them great players.

It’s the same in building a company. At seed, the question is always “Do you bet on the jockey or the horse?” That means the people or the idea. The answer is at seed, you always bet on people. Always.

Maybe the same should be true for the NCAA bracket challenges. Bet on people. Sure there will be surprises every year. But, every year the same top programs with the same great coach seem to be in the mix.

In an interview talking about the famous shot against Kentucky, Coach Mike Krzyzewski said to former player Grant Hill, “ I could say that, and do that because the people that played for me were people of character.”

Coach K made sure he not only recruited players who were talented athletically but people of character. Sure, he made mistakes. Grayson Allen is one example.

As the CEO of your company, I think the same is true. Hire people with good character. Conversely, if you are looking for a job, sometimes it is the best alternative to take a job to work with the best people.

By the way, those people of character often don’t fit the traditional mold. My favorite anecdote about that is in Ben Horowitz's book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”. He needed a top salesperson and hired a graduate of Southern Utah, not the traditional Ivy Leaguer that the typical start-up Silicon Valley firm would hire.

Two people I know recently took new jobs. One moved to work with a person they had worked with before. They have a great relationship, and it should grow and flourish in the new job. It is a classic mentor-mentee relationship. If you can develop this sort of relationship in your job it can work out wonderfully for you. Jamie Dimon is an example. Sandy Weill mentored him and he rose his coattails until he didn’t.

The other move was interesting because they had retired. They were approached to come out of retirement to go to work for a company that could become iconic. One of the driving reasons to do it was to work for the CEO of that company. It wasn’t about the money. Even at this late stage of a career, it is sometimes worth it to get exposure to people like that.

If an iconic company or person offered you a job for less pay than you are getting today, would you take it? I think I would.