199: How to Find and Hire a Simplifier ft. Paul Stansik

In this episode, we bring back Paul Stansik, Partner at ParkerGale Capital, to explore the critical distinction between what he calls Simplifiers and Complicators.

Throughout the conversation, Paul and Sam discuss how to identify Simplifiers, the challenges of being a Simplifier (and what makes them truly special), and effective interview techniques to find candidates who embody this mindset. Paul dives into the nuances of hiring, focusing on the importance of enthusiasm, the right metrics for assessing business health, and the balance between micromanagement and excellence.

We're not exaggerating when we say this is an episode that had both our audio and video editors picking up their pens to take notes. So don't be a Complicator — just give it a listen.Want to listen to Paul's first guest appearance on Becoming a Hiring Machine? Check that out here. You can also follow him on LinkedIn or subscribe to his newsletter, Hello Operator.

Transcript

Sam (00:01.917)
Hey everyone, it's Sam Keenly and welcome back to Becoming a Hiring Machine. This is the show dedicated to fixing recruitment by going beyond saying what needs to change and instead teaches you how to make that change. Today we've got a great interview ahead of us, but before we get into that, I want to tell you a little bit about the show. Essentially we have shows within the show here. Some days like today, we have interviews with industry thought leaders and others who are shaking up the space. While other days we cover things like trending topics. Stop by every Tuesday for a Tactical Tuesday episode where we go deep on how to do something that's going to help you drive better results in your day to day.

And occasionally you get a mic drop episode from Matt, where he shares something that he's been thinking about within the recruitment space and wants you to know. As a reminder, if you like the content that we share here on the show, make sure that you subscribe for more. All right. Today's interview. I'm to kick this one off with a quote. The world is full of complicators. Be a simplifier, then shut up. These two sentences were posted on LinkedIn in 2024 by Mike Troiano and are ultimately what's led to the conversation you're about to listen here with a return guest, Paul Stancik.

Operating partner at Parker Gale. So Paul took these two sentences and created two articles that I've honestly gone back and read countless times at this point over the past few months. The first article breaks down simplifiers versus complicators. Well, the second article and exactly what we're to be getting into today breaks down. How do you find and hire these simplifiers? So without further ado, let's get into this topic today with Paul. Paul, welcome back.

Paul Stansik (01:22.7)
Sam, thanks for having me man for this. I think it's the second time now, right?

Sam (01:25.115)
Yeah.

second time there's only, I think I can count on two hands, a number of repeat guests that have made it back on the show. So you're in the, you're in the lucky few. Yeah. So if you haven't listened to it yet, go back to episode 92, never make a bad hire. Um, that's the, that's the first intro to Paul, but Paul, you're a friend. I consider you a business growth sparring partner. We do some texting back and forth, consider your mentor and so much more. how, how would you describe yourself and what you do at Parker Gale?

Paul Stansik (01:34.072)
Appreciate that.

Paul Stansik (01:54.05)
Yeah, mean, my business card says partner and operating partner. But I've got a friend down the street who has the same job as me, and he describes his role as being a white collar handyman. And I like that for a couple reasons. Like one, it usually gets a laugh. But two, I think it reflects what our culture is here at ParkerGale and what our approach is to.

value creation, portfolio operations, whatever you want to call it. I will say if you want to talk about us this for a much longer period of time and go way deeper on what this looks like for us inside our portfolio of B2B software companies, Jim Millbury, who's our other operating partner and I have a workshop on YouTube called

think it's getting real about value creation on YouTube. And if there's nothing good on Netflix, you can hear us talk about the problem with the more traditional private equity value creation playbook and how we roll up our sleeves with our portfolio companies. But it's a weird mix of coach, therapist, consultant, augmented executive, and kind of whatever it takes to help our companies get from here to there.

Sam (03:09.221)
Okay. I love it. Well, I'll grab that link from you after this. We'll get that tossed on the show notes as well. So, all right, before we get into what hiring a simplifier even means, like, let's go back to the article that started this all off simplifiers and complicators. So in your words that start, I think it's almost easier to start with like the, the complicator, like how would you describe a complicator?

Paul Stansik (03:14.414)
Great.

Paul Stansik (03:30.798)
Yeah, think, look, everything you gotta figure out to help a business break through the level that they're at, beat that level of video game and get to where they know they wanna go, none of that is easy. But you can make it as difficult as you want. And...

I think complicators are the people that do that. They make the problem seem bigger than it is. They point out the obstacles and not the solution. They stir up dust. And in general, they make what is typically a difficult but linear process anything but linear.

And so I think the reason this article got the pick up that it did and the reason it resonates with so many people is you kind of know what I mean when I talk about simplifiers and complicators without even defining it. Like when I even say that phrase, all of us have a person in mind that we've worked with that they're not a bad person, they're not unintelligent, they might be very valuable to the company that they're in, but

Sam (04:24.017)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (04:37.442)
They make things harder than they need to be. And I think that's the defining mark of someone that you would give that label to.

Sam (04:46.915)
Mm-hmm. And it's not always bad, but it's when you put them next to a simplifier that you just see this gap and it's not necessarily like they're a bad, bad person to work with, but how do I just work with more of this type of person? So let's get into the simplifier side.

Paul Stansik (04:57.934)
Totally.

Yeah, I think these are the people that do the opposite. Like there's a straight line in most cases between the challenge or the opportunity that you're dealing with and where you want to get to. And these people, they straighten that line out as straight as it can possibly be. And then they take action. They don't just talk about or admire the problem. They don't just talk about all the ways that this is going to be hard. But, you know, in the first article, I think I laid this out in terms of three behaviors. Like these are the people that answer

the question, find the problem, and then do the work. And before we got on, you and me, Sam, were talking about the board meeting experience and what that's like and all the things that come with that. And I noticed this when I'm sitting in board meetings. When I ask a question about how the business is doing or what's going on or how things are going, I can usually tell who's a simplifier versus complicated by how they answer that question.

Sam (05:34.557)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (05:58.446)
If I get a straight answer with a period at the end of it, there's a pretty good chance that person's a simplifier. And if I get an answer that is usually accompanied by hand-waving choreography that takes longer than 30 seconds and never really delivers on what I was really trying to get to, that's maybe the mark of a complicator. But I think the benefit of being one versus the other is pretty obvious.

In my job when I'm sitting in a board meeting, and thankfully I'm much more involved in my companies than once a quarter, but the board meeting is an especially important forum for us as investors. I really appreciate being able to answer a question, or being able to ask a question and get the answer straight away without having to wade through a bunch of...

decorative language because ultimately like we all want the same thing. We all want to figure out what the challenges and the opportunities are and we want to build a plan that we could work on together to either take advantage of those or get those out of the way and getting a straight answer really helps in both those situations.

Sam (06:50.596)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (07:05.529)
So why do you think it's harder to be a simplifier than a complicator?

Paul Stansik (07:10.808)
Clear thinking is hard, man. Like, what was the old Mark Twain quote? Like, if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. Like, I think that same principle applies in a lot of life. It's very difficult to build a product that is simple and streamlined. It's very difficult to chip away at a piece of writing until it's down to its most aerodynamic form. And it's pretty difficult to think through a problem to a level where you can identify, like...

Hey, here's my diagnosis. Here's our options. Here's what we should do. And here's the reasoning why. Like all of that stuff seems really clear in our own heads. But when you try to get it out there, either in verbal form or written form, what you usually find is that delivery is harder than what's conking around in your brain. I think one of the things that's hard about it is like it takes time to be a simplifier. And it takes extra effort to...

take a description of what's going on, take a product, take a problem, and strip it down to its most streamlined form. I think the other reason it's hard is there's a lot of environments in the world and in companies that are bigger than the ones that we invest in where being a complicate is kind of rewarded. So if you can...

figure out how to make a problem look big enough and position yourself as the solution to that problem without fully ever solving it. That's not a bad recipe for success in some of the, I would say, lesser effective corporate environments out there. It's also exactly the opposite of what you need in an emerging technology business.

Sam (08:43.996)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (08:58.092)
So this is the classic trap of when you go and hire someone from a big Fortune 100 logo and you focus on their pedigree versus how they think or what they've actually accomplished. There's a lot of complicators inside of big companies. And in a lot of cases, your ascension up the ranks at a big company is dependent on your ability to make your impact and to make the problems that you solve bigger than they actually are.

Sam (09:07.675)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (09:25.82)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (09:27.498)
If I'm thinking about who's going to be on the management team of one of my portfolio companies, that's something I test for explicitly is, can you give me that clear thinking? Can you give me that simplifier mindset? We're going to put a lot of obstacles in front of you. Like no job is easy inside our portfolio, but that's why it's fun. I want to know that you can.

strip that stuff down and get it out of the way and not make it bigger than it needs to be.

Sam (09:54.738)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I started my career at big company and I was the, you would have hated me early in my career because I was, I was that person. learned the lesson though was, I mean, I was, I was managing a million dollar per month ad budget. And I remember just going to these meetings and just showing data, data, data, data. Look at all this data. Look at all this stuff. And at one point it was, it was in front of the leadership team. And I just remember a few minutes into it, they were just like, I would, I could almost see fingernails digging into like the desk in front of them and they

Paul Stansik (10:03.835)
Hahaha!

Paul Stansik (10:26.132)
Like so what man, so what? Yeah.

Sam (10:27.695)
Yeah, that was exactly a thing. They were just like, get to the point. What are you doing about this? And I couldn't have answered that question to be completely honest, like looking back on it. And that's why I was, that was the moment I was just like, they're operating at a different level. It's not about like, what do you have access to? But what, what do you know? Why should I care? What are you doing about it? Gets out as quickly as you possibly can. That's the, that's the secret formula. That's it's simple. Right. But we like to complicate things.

Paul Stansik (10:51.66)
Yeah, and look, everybody, it's fun to pop wheelies every once in a while, right? But ultimately, this is another way to think about the simplifier thing. Like, if it doesn't end up as a change to the product, or it doesn't end up as something in front of a customer in some ways, like you really didn't do anything. You could come up with the slickest dashboard, the best looking deck, the best presentation.

But if it doesn't move the product forward or it doesn't influence how a customer thinks about you or the action that they take, you really didn't do anything.

Sam (11:31.421)
Yeah, yeah, harsh truth, but it's true. So as a follow-up to that first article, you got people coming and be like, well, how do I find, how do I find these mythical simplifiers and recruiting? It's the purple squirrel, right? So where...

Paul Stansik (11:43.448)
Where are they at though? Yeah.

Sam (11:50.462)
trying to think of the best way to phrase this for you. Recruiters are, they want to find simplifiers. They're not going out of their way to try to find complicators. But to your point, if they're at a big fortune 100 company, you can be lured by that big logo, look at this experience that they probably have. But meanwhile, it's like, do they have critical thinking ability? Do they know how to cut to the meat of it? So you referenced in your article, a dock reverse quote. I've got it in front of me. If you want me to read it, unless you know it off the top of your head. yeah. So.

Paul Stansik (12:14.976)
Yeah, let it rip.

Sam (12:17.541)
Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players just want to be told the truth. So one of your first red flags that you see in interviewing is around most complicators just wanting to be left alone. So tell me a little bit more about

Paul Stansik (12:34.626)
Yeah, I I think the complicator mindset comes with, in a lot of cases, like a lack of introspection, right? Because if someone is telling you,

you're making it too complicated, you're not identifying the most important challenge or opportunity, you're not making progress as efficiently as you should be, everybody has one or two reactions to that. You either listen to it and adjust your behavior or you stiff arm and say like, no man, I got this, I'm having too much fun admiring the problem, letting it spin out of control. So even up to the CEO level or the board level, I think the highest performance

people out there. They take advantage of every feedback loop that's out there, both internally and outside their own body, and they're coachable. And the people that get stuck, or the people that can't help navigate a business out of the level that it's at or a challenge that it's dealing with,

More often than not, those people are not good at taking advantage of feedback loops. And they stop paying attention to their own spidey senses about whether they are taking the most linear path out of where they're at. And they stop listening to other people that might be able to show them a better way. I think, when I think about the highest performing people in our portfolio from CEO on down,

Sam (13:59.474)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (14:06.818)
The phrase that I sometimes use is productively paranoid. So they have a lot of confidence in their abilities. They believe they are the right person for their role up to the very top leadership position.

but they are definitely afraid of what they might be missing. And they pay attention to the signals that are out there that tell them, hey, where's the next broken window that I need to go fix? Where's the next pissed off customer that needs a little extra TLC? Where's the thing in the product that we're missing that might put us behind competitively a year from now? And where is our technique falling behind? And if you use your own five senses, and you only use your own five senses to answer those questions,

you're going to miss a lot. And I think if you're willing to listen to it and you're willing to tap into it, there's a lot of other signals out there that can tell you what you might be missing and what can make you and your business better. you know, when you're talking about basketball players like Doc is, you're talking about executives like we are, yeah, the best people out there, they want honesty.

like about themselves and about their business and they want to do something with that honesty. And I think that's an extremely attractive quality.

Sam (15:21.49)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (15:26.35)
both from like a character perspective and from a recruiting perspective. And I think where most recruiting processes fall down is one, they don't explicitly test for it. And two, they allow other signals to take the place of that like coachability and growth mindset factor. And they like lean on the pedigree instead of asking for concrete examples of like, no, talk about when you've tapped into an outside signal and use that to change something for the better.

Sam (15:55.196)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (15:56.582)
And a lot of people have those stories, you have to, have gone through that. Two, you have to have that mindset. And three, you have to have prepared those stories for it to come out in an interview. But what I found is when all three of those things are present, you're usually talking with somebody that can get the job done.

Sam (16:18.173)
And we'll get into a couple of these questions. I'm trying to figure out, we want to do this now? Yeah. I think we do it now. I think we just go straight to it. Where, what are you like, what are you asking? Whether it's, you, are you vetting this out first interview? Are you waiting to just kind of check a couple of culture boxes, everything else beforehand? Like how quickly are you getting into this process?

Paul Stansik (16:27.416)
Kind of sounds like you want to do it now. Let it rip.

Paul Stansik (16:45.158)
I mean, I'm listening for it. think below the surface all the time, right? Like if, somebody can answer the question, lay out the structure of their thinking and tell me about the result that they created. And that is reasonably aerodynamic. My, my ears start to perk up because the things that we are dealing with inside our portfolio, again, they're difficult. They're usually.

complicated and not complex. Like the simplest version of our value creation playbook is we like to say we put stuff where it isn't. Right? There's a lot of things out there that if you nail them, they make a difference, but a lot of founders out there have never gotten around to it. They know they need it, but they've never gotten around to it. Classic example, you know, we have a sales process, we've never written it down.

Sam (17:16.029)
Mm.

Paul Stansik (17:39.214)
We listen to customer calls every week, but we've never used that in our positioning. We know our homepage doesn't convert at the rate that it should, but we haven't changed a copy in a while. And these are problems usually of clarity and momentum and not of like higher level strategic epiphanies that need to be created. And so if I'm talking to an executive for the first time, let's call it a phone screen. I'm in a couple of recruiting processes right now.

I am listening for two things. One is do they have high standards? So do they have a reasonably high expectation of what good looks like in their domain of expertise, usually in their functions of sales, marketing, finance, customer success, whatever. And do they have the means to detect if those standards are being met?

which is just a fancy way of saying, are they paying attention and are they noticing where the gaps are? And can they talk about the work that they've done to close those gaps? So if I notice that in an initial phone screen, that usually means it's a passing grade for me.

If they can talk about what their framework is for assessing what's going on, what the gaps are they typically see, and some actual videotape evidence of a time that they've closed one of those gaps. Cool. I want to know more about you. If you stay at the level of conceptual and well, typically this is what I see and I'm never going below 30,000 feet.

Sam (19:05.532)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (19:08.833)
Doesn't mean I don't like the person, doesn't mean they don't advance, but it's harder for me to get comfortable with the evidence that I like to see that they can find and close the gaps, which I think is a hallmark signal of somebody who's a simplifier. It's everywhere that they go, they find and close the gaps. Because in a lot of cases, if all you do is close the gaps, you do great.

Sam (19:34.302)
simple as that. And yeah, to your point, just because you like someone doesn't mean you don't advance them. But there are those people that they're talking, they're just that hell yes person. Right. And you got a couple of people like, I can't wait to get them talking to the next person to the CEO of the company. They're going to be working with the hiring manager versus like, yeah, I think they could be good. I want to get, you know, a little bit of a range in here so people can understand, you know, what's the, what's the opportunity to look like in terms of skills levels, what you could get, but

It's almost like in, in marketing, where I was talking about, like, how do you make the first list, that consideration set, because more people are going to buy from that than not. Like you usually have that pretty quickly with a lot of the candidates that you get through. So. All right, before we get into the two questions you ask. You all do, especially for your executives, you practically source a lot of your candidates. You're not just waiting and trying to get these people in. So is there anything that you're looking at from an experience, a skill, LinkedIn profile, anything, because it's again, they're not submitting resumes and covered letters to you. can't put screening questions in front of them.

Is there anything that you're picking up on at that level or trying to spot that usually has some type of correlation to being a simplifier?

Paul Stansik (20:38.294)
Yeah, this all becomes part of the mosaic. It's not a pass fail test. I do look for what I call the achiever pattern. So does somebody have a history of getting more responsibility thrown at them, special projects thrown at them, a pattern of upward ascension in the teams that they choose to be a part of? I think that is a reasonably good predictor of future success. And yeah, I think, I think.

Sam (20:44.081)
Okay.

Paul Stansik (21:07.658)
no good deed goes unpunished. And I like people that have done a decent enough job where the leaders of their company says this person can do more. So that can show up in like, you can see them working their way up the corporate ladder across companies. And it can also show up in more nuanced ways of.

Sam (21:15.943)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (21:27.606)
you know, did this person get a special side project thrown at them and are they willing to brag about that in an externally facing way? I'd say, I'd say that's the biggest one.

Sam (21:34.385)
Yeah.

Paul Stansik (21:41.516)
and probably the most important from the outside in because I place a big emphasis on just really solid behavioral interviewing. Tell me about a time, give me the evidence I need to know, one, you can do this and two, you can translate it to the handwriting of the situation that we're talking about here and three, are you excited about it? Because even if they have the skill, like the will is often a big part of this because like we talked about, this is...

Sam (22:04.455)
Yeah.

Paul Stansik (22:07.244)
this is hard stuff and I want people that wake up excited to go wrestle the problem to the ground. And if you don't have that, but you have the ability, you're never going to be as good as the person that has both.

Sam (22:12.774)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (22:22.117)
Yeah, I agree. That's especially early on in my interviews. I use a very basic scorecard, but energy enthusiasm. That's very much something that I look for is just like, are you communicating? Very droning on like, yeah, I do this. You know, I've, I've, I've helped to do this versus just like, can you tell they just love solving this stuff? And like, it's what gets them up and going that small thing early on that to me is one of the biggest correlators as well for these types of people. It's like, are they hungry to solve it? Take off the next bite.

growing up that versus just not, I just want to send out email campaigns guys. That's it. Like just let me do my thing. I'll figure out email deliverability. We're good. So.

Paul Stansik (22:57.9)
Yeah, I want to see both. I want to see evidence of ability and I want to see evidence of enthusiasm. So you talked about the hell yes thing before. We have a phrase we use here. If it's not a hell yes, it's a no. And that's the bar that we try to apply to our hiring process.

whether it's an individual contributor or a CEO or anybody in between. And to me, although it's not explicitly in the math of our scorecard, if you don't have that enthusiasm, it's really hard for me to lead that conversation as a hell yes if you're the candidate.

Sam (23:27.205)
Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. So let's get to the questions. The first question revolves around just, you simplify pretty straightforward? So you wrote out, tell me about the three to five metrics you look at every week to gauge the health of your part of the business. So why are you asking this question? And then we'll get into like, what's a good answer. What's a bad answer.

Paul Stansik (23:46.606)
Because there's probably 75 metrics that you could choose for any part of any business, no matter how big or how small it is, right? And so this to me is a question about stance taking. So can you take a stance on what actually matters? And have you thought about the questions if you answered them honestly, which means with numbers. If you answered those, would you be describing 90 % of what's going on in your corner?

Sam (23:51.004)
Yeah.

Sam (23:57.169)
Okay.

Paul Stansik (24:13.792)
of the business. So I want to hear this person has a finite list.

And they're not just chat GP team. Tell me all the KPIs that could possibly be relevant to this, you know, demand gen marketer job. And I also want to hear the way in which they talk about them. Like are these numbers what I call, are they, they industrially created or artisanally created? Industrially created means it is coming off the factory line each and every week. And it is woven to the fabric of the conversation that they have with their team every week.

Sam (24:23.12)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (24:49.69)
I to say data is only as good as the conversation it creates. I want to hear how this shows up in the conversations this person has with their team. I also want to hear if they're artisanally created, which is, shit, we've got a board meeting next week. I better go get the numbers and get them ready because that's when we need the numbers ready to talk to the board. So yeah, it's a really simple question, but.

people that have a finite list of metrics, people that have logic behind why they've selected those metrics, and people that can make me believe they are using those as an early warning system for where they have to focus next, that is like the data-driven simplifier litmus test. And the cool thing is, it's also a very difficult question to fake.

Sam (25:37.062)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (25:42.45)
Yeah. Yeah. So let's go, let's go one level deeper on this. You interview a whole range of seniorities. Like give me an example of a couple of metrics. Someone in the C-suite might answer. can pick the type of role and then let's go, I don't know, a couple of layers lower with I see someone that's executing in the day to day, but would make a big impact. It might be a founding role for when your port Co's whatever that is, but let's start the leadership level. Like what are a couple of metrics that you're just like, this person knows what they're talking about and they've got a pulse.

on exactly how they're impacting the company.

Paul Stansik (26:14.84)
Yeah, I got a good framework for this. think it works for almost any role. Like somebody who is truly data driven to me has taken advantage of three kinds of KPIs or data points or metrics. It's kind of the results KPI, which is just how well did we do versus some target ideally tied to like a whole company budget number.

Sam (26:34.95)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (26:41.742)
There's a leading indicator metric of how well are we going to do, which for a marketing or sales role is usually top of funnel, whether it's leads or opportunities created or readings or something like that. And then there's also a quality metric, which is how well are we doing it?

I like to hear people at the executive level and people at the individual contributor level take advantage of all three of those kinds of numbers. I think the easiest one, because it most naturally flows out of kind of like the typical company hierarchy, is the results question. Because results always get reported to somebody. Like, you have a budget, you have financial filings, you have investors. They care most and first about the results question.

Sam (27:21.894)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (27:30.464)
So to me, if a sales leader isn't talking about their bookings performance, if a marketing leader isn't talking about the pipeline they create, like that's a red flag. And like, I'm probably finding a way to end that, that interview gracefully early. I think the leading indicator is more difficult in the sense that it requires some annoying work around definitions.

Like we've all been part of companies where pipeline doesn't really mean anything and you kind of throw placeholders in there or MQLs have never really been well defined or you know, a first meeting can be anybody who fogs a mirror. So I want to hear that somebody has set a target for their leading indicators and that they have a clear definition of what is and what isn't one of those things that they're counting. And then the quality thing I think is most subjective, but

Sam (27:56.604)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (28:21.768)
I want to hear that this person is measuring something that tells them where the balls are being dropped. And for a sales leader, that could be as simple as win rate. For marketing leader, it could be a lead conversion rate. It could be measuring the funnel and trying to figure out where things fall out. But the best executives, I think, look for sources of waste in the systems that they're building.

It's very difficult to tell yourself honestly that you are looking as hard as you can for all those sources of waste if you're not using numbers to identify where you're dropping the ball. So I answered your question in a different way than you asked it, so maybe I'm being a complicator here. But I think that framework of

Sam (29:05.191)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (29:13.952)
Are you paying attention to how well you did, how well you're gonna do, and how well you're doing it? I don't ask people to fill in those numbers for me explicitly, but I am listening.

Sam (29:29.436)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (29:30.838)
in the back of my mind for like, you covering all of those bases? And the thing I might be listening the most for, especially in a tiebreaker scenario where we have two executives that we think could potentially both be hell yeses, is that quality metric. So.

Sam (29:44.21)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (29:45.922)
Do you really care about the technique that your team is using? And do you really care about how the execution that is happening inside the business reflects on you? To me, the clearest signal that that is there is if this person has a quality metric in place and if they're actively paying attention to it.

Sam (30:09.309)
I know Steve jobs is overplayed in business, but it's because I think he's, he's set some great examples. So like the inside of an iPod and how that's designed, the box that it gets shipped in the copy, he would review the ad copy and every single thing that went out. it's, yes, you can see data leaks, but there's also, he had a bar internally, which is very, you know, it's, it's, can't measure that, but he wouldn't let anything go under that. So I think that's another thing that you can usually get a gauge on, those types of people.

And complicators call them micromanagers, but I think people that also crave feedback and are simplifiers that want to have that growth mindset, they seek the feedback. They appreciate it because they're just like, this is what they care about. I should care about. Why do they care about it? And start to think about what's the, they're, doing this for a reason. They're not just doing it because they want to pick it like, there's a typo on the website. Well, if that's on a conversion page, does that matter? If that's on a lead form, does that matter with what gets input to it? So

Yeah, I don't know. There's, there's things like that where I always like to look at that and translate too. It's like, you know, he might be over, over talked about a little bit, but for good reason.

Paul Stansik (31:12.078)
Well, let me hit on that for a second, because I think the line between micromanagement and excellence is pretty gray and hard to see sometimes. mean, to me, the litmus test is, I think both of those things, the hallmark of both of those situations, micromanagement and excellence, is like, wow, this person's paying a lot of attention to what's going on. To me,

In a situation where you could call it micromanagement, it's coming from a place of authority. Like, hey, I want to exercise my muscles as the boss and make sure my fingerprints are all over every piece of work product. So I could point to it later and say, look at everything I was involved in. To me, it's this weirdly insecure exercise of exercising your authority and expanding your fiefdom.

Sam (31:50.482)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (32:04.626)
And on the excellent side of things, it doesn't come from a place of authority. It comes from a place of quality. Like I have a bar. I have the means to detect if it's being met. And if I see something that isn't up to that bar, I'm going to step in and let my team know. And I'm going to coach or correct it. And that may seem like a woo woo difference, but I think anybody who's worked for a micromanager and anybody who's worked for somebody who you know really cares

about excellence, those team environments are very different. The end result is very different. And you just win more if you're willing to step in and make adjustments in the pursuit of quality. So we're getting way more philosophical here than you probably geared up for. But from a leadership perspective,

Sam (32:48.285)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (32:52.797)
Hey.

Paul Stansik (32:57.44)
I think that really matters because if all I did as somebody who invests in 100 person software companies, if all I did was hire people who have a really high standard for their work and who really cares if it's being met, I would probably do just fine.

Sam (33:12.433)
Yeah. And simple as that. I know. Yeah. You, you joke philosophical, but this is just like, I don't know. This is a difference between a good hire and a great hire. Someone's going to drive business, especially if you're helping to grow a small company that's trying to make a name for themselves, growing a very crowded space. So

Let's get into the execution side. So this is the second question that you look at. That's really understanding. It's like, okay, you've got that now. Can you execute? So a question that you like to ask here is, okay, now tell me about a time you noticed something in those numbers. You dug into what you saw and you made a change as a result. Be specific about what you noticed, what you dug into and what you did. There's a lot in this question. Unpack it.

Paul Stansik (33:55.212)
Yeah, I mean, you can be a simplifier and stop short of taking action. But what I want to hear is, are you just good at framing things? Which a lot of recovery consultants are good at just framing things. Totally, totally. But can you like...

Sam (34:09.117)
For those listening, he's pointing at himself.

Paul Stansik (34:15.532)
get things moving in that direction? Or are you just good at being the brilliant, arrogant doctor who can diagnose the problem but not do anything about it? So I'm listening for a couple things here. One, are they getting specific? Can they clearly point out what they observed, not only what they observed, but what triggered their curiosity? Why are they even willing to dig into this? And

Sam (34:26.129)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (34:43.054)
Like that's really important. So simplifiers aren't just clear. They're curious So another way to say, you know, you're productively paranoid is your kind of weapons great curiosity about what's going on and and what it means, but If I can hear the problem that you noticed

Sam (34:49.244)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (35:03.948)
the method that you use to dig into it and the changes you decided to make and the role that you played in making those changes happen, which usually involves some extra effort to make the change actually stick because being a chief reminding officer is definitely a thing in all these situations, I start to get excited because...

Look, it's great if you can give me a 10-point assessment and tell me where my sales process or marketing process or month event close or strategy is screwed up. But if you can't remove the thing that's in our way and you can't play a big part in rolling up the sleeves and getting that thing out of the way through your own manual labor, you're only going to be half as effective as you could be.

Sam (35:52.317)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (35:55.316)
Every business has challenges. Every business has problems. Every business has gaps versus some utopian version of what the best practice looks like. That's how consultants stay in business is they compare you versus that standard. And when you know it, there's always gaps. But again, if you can't fill the gaps, I don't think you can claim you're a true simplifier. And you're always going to be behind somebody who can both diagnose the issue and do something about it.

Sam (36:21.165)
Mm-hmm. I've noticed a trend with simplifiers.

they don't like to only operate in the clouds. Like they are always finding something where their hands are in their dirt, they're executing. And I don't know if that's just, you know, they're keeping their knives sharp, so to speak, but that's something where I think when you ask this type of question, if they can immediately go to a point of, know, what have they done about it? How are they doing it tactically from executing whatever part of the business they're operating in, but especially for a port Co.

How do you, especially when you start to get to leadership levels, you need a lot of player coaches. You know, it might be a founding member. might be someone that's got a small team where it's going to be a VP of sales. also carries a bag. How do you start to vet for people that are climbing up the ladder? They only want to operate its strategy. They kind of want to get their hands out of the dirt, but is there anything in there that you're asking for that you're listening to that you're seeing to differentiate the two?

Paul Stansik (37:17.794)
Yeah, I might be giving away too much of my hiring process here, but I'm actually okay if people hear this and then prepare because that tends to be a good leading indicator as people who over prepare. I will usually ask a question in a final round interview for senior executive roles, especially to test for this, what I would call altitude control about firsthand observation. So really great if you set up a Tableau dashboard that tells you everything about the business. But again,

If you're not taking advantage of the powers of metric-driven observation and the powers of first-hand observation, you're like missing half the story. So the question that I will ask is something like, I want you to tell me about something surprising that you discovered firsthand in a conversation with a customer and a change you made as a result of discovering that thing.

Sam (37:54.972)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (38:13.932)
And then I'll shut up because I want to leave it somewhat open-ended. But what I'm listening for there is one, do you spend time with customers? And there is a reason not to spend time with customers in every single function of a company. CEO, you're too busy. Product, you're too busy. In the code base, marketing, you're too busy putting the demand gen program together. Sales, you're too busy closing the deals. There's always something in between you and the person who benefits from the thing that you sell.

Sam (38:16.946)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (38:21.724)
Yeah.

Paul Stansik (38:44.532)
I want to know that you spend time with those people anyway and that you want first-hand knowledge of what that person wants from you, how well you're delivering, and the next opportunity to give a little bit more. So I love when I hear about...

sales leaders that tell me about the most important piece of content that made a difference in that sales process and bring it back to the CMO so they can do more about that stuff. I love when product people get out there in the wild and get skin-to-skin contact with customers and figure out like, that thing we're prioritizing the roadmap, like customers don't really care about it and this much more basic job to be done is way more important.

And I love it when CEOs get close enough to the people that they serve to figure out like, Hey, our strategy can be a lot more simple. can be either doubling down on the thing that we already do really well, or just closing a really obvious gap that if I never went and talked to that customer, I never would have known about it. So I think that again,

Sam (39:38.661)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (39:50.926)
I don't think it's explicitly in the article, but I think most simplifiers intuitively know this, that if you listen to your customers, they'll tell you what to do. But listening requires making the time to talk to them. Listening requires getting the commercial conversation off the table every once in a while and just asking, how are we doing and what's most valuable? And it's about reflecting on that and doing something about it. And there's so much stuff that goes on in the day to day of an executive

that it's the easiest thing not to make time for. But there's definitely some recency bias, because I'm on a huge kick right now where I'm doing voice the customer sprints for multiple companies in the portfolio. And when you talk to 10 happy customers that are getting value out of what you sell, you just know what to do next. You just do. And all you got to do is make the time for it. And if I know this person naturally does that,

Sam (40:25.319)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (40:44.87)
Yep.

Paul Stansik (40:50.592)
I start selling and interviewing at the same time, which is how know you're doing pretty well.

Sam (40:54.659)
Mm-hmm, and you've written about this. So for those who don't follow you, you've got hello operator. That's your blog. I know you've written customer interview questions. You're also getting a lot into the AI world right now and how you're leveraging LLM's GPT to help you. I mean, you just did. I've, I've got how to put AI to work right in front of me. The, the deck you presented yesterday. so a lot of goodness and how you think about this, you know, it's not, it doesn't have to be this daunting task, but.

Paul Stansik (41:12.632)
Yeah, there you go.

Sam (41:20.925)
Definitely recommend people go and check out your blog to get a sense for this versus just emailing Paul and saying like, Hey, what five questions should I ask? Like, like I always tell anyone, like don't just reach out to someone that you can Google, go Google something first. If that's not answered, then ask them. but yeah, I guess that's a, that's kind of a good spot to wrap any, any parting thoughts before we tie a bow on this one.

Paul Stansik (41:26.166)
Hahaha

Paul Stansik (41:40.59)
No, I think this is a, it's a helpful hiring framework. Like if you're not asking a question that helps you divine whether someone's a simplifier or a complicator, you're not coming up with your own scorecard. think you're, you're putting yourself in a position to get duped, especially in a sales or marketing interview because sales and marketing people were good at positioning products and we're good at positioning ourselves and you have to get behind.

the dance and the sales process that you gotta acknowledge that you're in, in an interview process. But yeah, I think this is...

Sam (42:06.118)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Stansik (42:15.368)
I give credit to Mike because he put that quote out there and he got me thinking and got two articles out of it and I talk about this a lot when we set up new recruiting processes. if all you did was set up a process that figures out who's a simplifier and who's a complicator, not just in hiring but in performance management and your promotion and whatever it is, you'd probably do okay. This is one of those things that really makes a difference.

Sam (42:39.183)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love it. Well, Paul, second time. Appreciate you joining, sharing this stuff. Yeah, it's unreal how much you just share. You give away for free from your experience. So I think a lot of people benefit. I personally benefit from it. So just a genuine thank you for being willing to put that out there.

Paul Stansik (42:59.502)
Thanks for having me, and in case it doesn't come through, I like this stuff and I appreciate everybody who reads it. I appreciate even more people who use it. So if you read it, something resonates and you're figuring out how to put it to work, whether it's AI or the customer interview stuff or the simplified or complicated thing, I love hearing from people that use my stuff. So please read it, yes, but reach out, especially if you're trying to put it to work.

Sam (43:03.389)
you

Sam (43:26.29)
Alright, Paul. Thanks again for joining.

Paul Stansik (43:28.718)
Thanks, everyone.

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