After eight years of running Loudcloud and Opsware, I had learned so many hard lessons that building the team was easy. I understood the importance o… - Ben Horowitz

Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform.

One interview technique that I’d used to sort the good from the bad was to ask a series of questions about hiring, training, and managing sales reps. Typically, it would go like this: Ben: “What do you look for in a sales rep?” Candidate: “They need to be smart, aggressive, and competitive. They need to know how to do complex deals and navigate organizations.” Ben: “How do you test for those things in an interview?” Candidate: “Umm, well, I hire everybody out of my network.” Ben: “Okay, once you get them on board, what do you expect from them?” Candidate: “I expect them to understand and follow the sales process, I expect them to master the product, I expect them to be accurate in their forecasting. . . .” Ben: “Tell me about the training program that you designed to achieve this.” Candidate: “Umm.” They would then proceed to make something up as they went along.

Even if you know what you are doing, things go wrong. Things go wrong because building a multifaceted human organization to compete and win in a dynamic, highly competitive market turns out to be really hard.