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- One of the differences between

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a passionate employee and an obsessed employee

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is the way that they approach the work that they're doing.

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An obsessed employee cares a lot about

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the output of the work

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and they're very, very focused on making sure

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that the thing that they're doing

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and the thing that they're working on

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is done extremely well

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and relevant for the context of the business.

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A passionate employee generally is somebody

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who's fun to be around,

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is enthusiastic about what's going on,

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but isn't that focused on

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the actual underlying work product.

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And the best employees are the ones who are both

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passionate and obsessed,

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but the difference between that

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if you had to choose between somebody who is

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really obsessed about the work that they were doing

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and sort of emotionally neutral,

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at least in the external sense,

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and somebody who is extremely passionate

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about what they were doing,

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but wasn't very focused on the what the work product,

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who would you choose?

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I think you'd generally choose the obsessed one.

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There's another dimension that's really useful

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to think about,

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which is this graph where on the Y axis

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you have Competence

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and on the X axis you have what often is called

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Culture Fit, but I'll call Culture Add.

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In this context, you have sort of low to high

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and low to high.

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So somebody that you're looking to add

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that is high on the Culture Add characteristic

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and high on the Competence characteristic

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for the role that they're looking for

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is somebody that you should absolutely hire.

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Somebody who's low on both of those

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is someone you shouldn't hire.

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The challenge are not those two boxes,

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it's the other two boxes.

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What if the person is high

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on the Culture Add characteristic,

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but is low on the Competence?

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You probably won't hire them.

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In fact I would argue, you shouldn't hire them.

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Even if you think that they might be able

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to evolve into a role that makes sense for them,

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as a startup you don't have the resources to do that.

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You're just too constrained.

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How 'about the opposite?

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Somebody who's really competent and, you know,

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you look at him and you're like,

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"Wow, this person would be great"

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"for this particular activity,"

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but you think about them in the context of

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your cultural norms and you think to yourself,

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"Man, they're just going to be toxic."

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"They're going to argue with everybody."

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"Nobody's going to like 'em."

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"They have a completely different style."

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"Their value system is different."

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"What their aspirational goals are are different."

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That fit and that dynamic is also one

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where you shouldn't hire the person,

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especially when you're really young

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because that person will beget other people

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and that'll start to affect your cultural norms.

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Now again, this notion of Cultural Add

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is an important one versus Cultural Fit.

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If you use the idea of Cultural Fit as the container

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you're going to have a lot of people that are going to be

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really additive to what you're doing,

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but you're going to count as not being part of it

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because they're not going to be part of your Cultural Fit.

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They don't look like you do.

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They don't have the same background that you do.

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They don't necessarily have, sort of,

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the same way of talking about things,

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but if they're Culture Add

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none of those things are part of your evaluative criteria.

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Right?

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You're looking for diversity.

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You're looking for people with different backgrounds

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and frames of reference.

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You're looking for people with different experience.

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What you're looking for though is that they subscribe

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to your cultural norms.

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So whatever that underlying value system

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that you're establishing in the context of your company

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is one that they conform to.

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So if you think about those different frames of reference,

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right, you're really looking for people

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in that top right box,

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which are people that have high Competence

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and have high Cultural Add,

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which is a subscription to your cultural norms

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but allow you to extend the business.

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They're people who really care about

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what the outcome of what they're doing is and,

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while it's bonus points if they're super enthusiastic

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everyday about what they're doing,

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it doesn't mean that that's the requirement

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in terms of how they express themselves.