Kan: Hiring someone to solve unknown problems is wishful thinking
Daniel Kan · 20VC: Cruise's Daniel Kan on Lessons From Scaling The Team From 40 To 1,500 People, How Daniel Thinks About Continuous Learning & Self-Development and Why CEOs Hiring Themselves Out Of Roles Is Wrong · Aug 16, 2019 · at 18:23
Daniel Kan is co-founder and CPO of Cruise. He warns founders against relying on hires to solve core challenges before leadership gains baseline clarity on the domain.
0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.0s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Hiring people to solve a problem that you don't know how to solve yourself is a little bit of a red herring. I think it is wishful thinking that you will be able to find the right person if you don't know what you're looking for.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Daniel Kan
Kan: Hiring executives who have already done the job limits their growth
“If you hire someone who's already done the job, then they're not necessarily growing in the role. You're not fulfilling their personal goals of like learning or, you know, becoming a better manager or otherwise.”
Kan: Micromanagement stems from leadership failing to set clear expectations
“Micromanagement is really a sign that you have not necessarily set clear expectations, or potentially that they don't necessarily know how to do the work, but you can offer guidance, but if you tell them exactly what to do, in a lot of cases, they'll just be p…”
Kan: Sam Altman brought whiskey to celebrate GM acquisition, found team working
“I always think about the time when we announced that we were being acquired by General Motors, which by all means is, you know, a great feat for such a small company at the time. And Sam Altman came into our office to celebrate and he brought a bottle of whisk…”
Kan: Asking candidates to summarize their experience tests their communication skills
“I always ask people to summarize their work experience. I obviously have their resume in front of me, but what they highlight, how much detail they go into reveals a lot about the type of Person they are, and if they are good at clear communication, and that's…”
Kan: Exec prematurely hired growth leaders before understanding its own strategy
“So we did this a lot early at exec. We tried to hire someone who knew more about growth and customer acquisition, which ultimately we needed, but we should have spent more time, in my opinion, learning what we needed, figuring out how to make it work, then fin…”