Evaluate unfamiliar roles via output metrics or aggressive deep-dive learning
Peter Reinhardt · 20VC: Segment Founder Peter Reinhardt on His Learning Process, How Great Leaders Listen and Encourage Debate within Their Organisation & How To Use Data Intelligently To Improve Decision-Making · Apr 22, 2021 · at 8:49
Peter Reinhardt, co-founder and former CEO of Segment, explains how founders can evaluate talent and performance in functions where they lack domain expertise.
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“Yeah, one way is to black box it and basically say, what is the outcome of great marketing? What's the outcome of great engineering? And measure the black box and not bother to inspect inside as to whether the box isn't, like, being done well internally, right? And that, I think, is a useful skill in its own right, is to, like, figure out how to set those kind of black boxy metrics. Because you can't always have the time to go deeply inspect. The other way is to find creative ways to go depth first, like find a creative way to go actually learn what a marketer does. If you're a founder doing interesting things, like a lot of people want to talk to you. And like, you can just leverage that into conversations to learn and share. I think if you just ask a lot of like, honestly, pretty aggressive questions to understand what a marketer does say, I think you'll find people are like willing to share that. I don't know. Those are the two ways of doing it is either like Sort of honey badger your way into the information and go deep or black box it and measure it around the outside and don't bother.”
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