Ben: “Well, then why shouldn’t I hire him?” Joe: “He’ll be a terrible cultural fit.” Ben: “Please explain.” Joe: “Well, when I was teaching new-hire … - Ben Horowitz

We would have won, but the other guys gave the deal away.” “The customer selected us technically and thinks we are the better company, but our competitor just gave the product away. We would never sell so cheaply as it would hurt our reputation.” Anybody who has ever run an enterprise sales force has heard this lie before. You go into an account, you fight hard, and you lose. The sales rep, not wanting to shine the light on himself, blames the “used car dealer” rep from the other company. The CEO, not wanting to believe that she’s losing product competitiveness, believes the rep. If you hear this lie, try to validate the claim with the actual customer. I’ll bet you can’t.

One good test for determining whether to go with outside experience versus internal promotion is to figure out whether you value inside knowledge or outside knowledge more for the position.

Perhaps most important, set a high and clear standard for performance. If you want to have a world-class company, you must make sure that the people on your staff — be they young or old — are world-class.