Narrator: Nate Thompson, the CEO of Spectra Logic, was on a ski trip in Vail, Colorado with his family. But for the first four hours of every day, he wasn't on the slopes. He was in his hotel room, on the phone, putting out fires. A sales VP he’d hired was caught embezzling over $90,000. Other hires were underperforming, creating constant crises that followed him even on vacation. Thompson had meticulously reviewed their resumes and conducted what he thought were thorough interviews, yet his company was bleeding money and his life was consumed by stress. He later estimated these early hiring mistakes cost his company as much as $100 million in value. This costly, all-consuming problem isn't unique to Thompson; it's what authors Geoff Smart and Randy Street identify as the single biggest problem in business. In their book, Who: The A Method for Hiring, they argue that the most important decisions are not about 'what'—not strategy, products, or processes—but about 'who' you bring onto your team.

Narrator: The foundational argument of the book is that most business problems are, at their core, people problems. Leaders often misdiagnose issues, trying to fix a strategy or a process when the real issue is having the wrong person in a role. This is illustrated perfectly by the classic "I Love Lucy" episode where Lucy and Ethel are tasked with wrapping chocolates on a conveyor belt. As the belt speeds up, they can't keep up and start stuffing chocolates in their mouths and clothes. Their supervisor, seeing an empty belt, assumes they are doing a great job and speeds it up even more, leading to chaos. The problem wasn't the speed of the belt—the 'what'—it was that Lucy and Ethel were the wrong people for the job—the 'who'.

The authors contend that managers fall into this trap constantly. They use what they call "voodoo hiring" methods—relying on gut instinct, asking trick questions, or being swayed by a polished resume. George Buckley, the former CEO of 3M, noted that a resume is often just "a record of a person’s career with all of the accomplishments embellished and all the failures removed." This leads to a dismal 50% hiring success rate for the average manager, with each mistake costing a company an estimated fifteen times the employee's salary. The first step to solving this is to stop focusing on the 'what' and recognize that getting the 'who' right is the most critical business priority.

Narrator: To stop making hiring mistakes, one must first define what success in a role actually looks like. The book dismisses traditional job descriptions, which are often a laundry list of experiences and responsibilities, in favor of a "scorecard." A scorecard is a blueprint for success that outlines the specific, measurable outcomes a person must achieve. It has three parts: a mission, outcomes, and competencies.

The mission is a short, plain-language summary of the role's core purpose. The outcomes are a list of three to five specific, measurable results the person must accomplish, usually within a set timeframe. For example, instead of "manage the sales team," an outcome would be "Increase enterprise sales from $10 million to $14 million by the end of the fiscal year." Finally, competencies are the behavioral traits, or "how," someone will achieve those outcomes, which must align with the company culture.

The power of the scorecard was demonstrated when Sewickley Academy, a private school, needed a new Head of School. Their scorecard prioritized improving the curriculum, strengthening faculty, and fixing finances. One candidate, Kolia O'Connor, initially seemed too "corporate." However, when the board compared his track record against the scorecard, he was the clear winner. Five years later, O'Connor had reversed a budget deficit, overhauled the curriculum, and hired nine A-Player faculty members, hitting every outcome on his scorecard.

Narrator: Once the scorecard is set, the next step is to generate a flow of high-quality candidates, or "A-Players"—defined as someone with a 90% chance of achieving the scorecard's outcomes. The book argues that passively posting a job and waiting for applications is a recipe for mediocrity. Instead, sourcing must be a constant, proactive effort.

The single most effective method is generating referrals from one's professional and personal network. Patrick Ryan, the founder of Aon Corporation, made this his personal mission. He set a goal to personally recruit 30 people a year and constantly asked everyone he met, "Who are the most talented people you know that I should hire?" He kept a running list, nurtured relationships for years, and ultimately hired his own successor through this relentless networking.

Employee referrals are another powerful tool. At Middleby Corporation, CEO Selim Bassoul encouraged his staff to be on the lookout for talent at customers, suppliers, or even competitors. This program was so successful that 85 percent of their new hires came from employee referrals, based on the principle that "it takes A-Players to know A-Players."

Narrator: With a pool of promising candidates, the A Method employs a structured, four-part interview process designed to gather facts and data, not just feelings. The first is a short Screening Interview over the phone to quickly weed out candidates who are not a fit. The second, and most critical, is the Who Interview. This is a chronological deep-dive into a candidate's entire career history. For every single job, the interviewer asks the same five questions: What were you hired to do? What accomplishments are you most proud of? What were some of your low points? Who were the people you worked with? and Why did you leave that job? This structured questioning reveals patterns of behavior and performance over time.

The third is the Focused Interview, where other team members conduct shorter interviews to gather specific data related to the scorecard's outcomes and competencies. Finally, the process culminates in Reference Interviews. The candidate is asked to arrange calls with former bosses, peers, and subordinates. The importance of this step was learned the hard way by Robert Hurst, a former vice chairman at Goldman Sachs. The firm once hired a CFO without conducting reference checks because she wanted to keep her candidacy secret. She turned out to be a disaster, unable to handle the high-stress environment. Hurst has personally conducted reference calls for almost every hire he has made since.

Narrator: Identifying an A-Player is only half the battle; you still have to convince them to join. The book outlines five key areas candidates care about, called the "Five F's of Selling."

• Fit: This is about connecting the role to the company’s vision and the candidate’s own career goals. A-Players want to be part of something meaningful. * Family: A job change impacts the entire family. Acknowledging and addressing their concerns, especially around relocation, is critical. When recruiting Greg Maffei to Liberty Media, chairman John Malone spent significant time addressing the concerns of Maffei's wife and children about moving from Seattle to Denver, which was key to closing the deal. * Freedom: A-Players want autonomy. They need to know they won't be micromanaged and will have the freedom to execute. * Fortune: While not the only motivator, compensation matters. The financial package should be fair and tied to the performance outcomes defined in the scorecard. * Fun: Top candidates want to work with people they respect and in an environment they enjoy.

Selling isn't a one-time event at the offer stage; it's a continuous process that happens at every touchpoint, from the first call to the final negotiation.

Narrator: The central, undeniable takeaway from Who is that talent is not a support function—it is the core function of leadership. The success of any organization, team, or career is a direct result of the people involved. By abandoning "voodoo" hiring and adopting a disciplined, systematic approach like the A Method—defining success with a Scorecard, proactively Sourcing talent, methodically Selecting with structured interviews, and persuasively Selling the opportunity—leaders can transform their biggest source of pain into their greatest competitive advantage.

The most challenging idea in the book is that this process requires immense discipline and should be a leader's top priority, consuming a significant portion of their time. It's not something to be delegated and forgotten. So, the question isn't whether you have time to implement this method, but rather, can you afford not to? How many more hours will you spend on a ski trip, stuck in your room, dealing with the consequences of your last bad hire?