Consider scheduling a daily meeting with your new executive. Require them to bring a comprehensive set of questions about everything they heard that day but did not completely understand.

It all depends on the new employee... maybe patience is key.

Follow these five decision steps when hiring someone: Understand the job, consider three to five people, study candidates performance records to find their strengths, talk to the candidates’ colleagues about them, and once hired, explain the assignment to the new employee.

you need to start doing something people want. You don’t need to join a company to do that. All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want. It’s doing something people want that matters, not joining the group.6

Assign each new hire to read a book and write a one-page report so you can see how serious they are about working there.

On the flip side, it’s brutal trying to pull together the right people if you have someone around early on who doesn’t generate a high degree of confidence, enthusiasm, and respect. Cultures get built from the beginning, and whoever joins a company takes cues from whoever’s already there.

However, even a great mission is not enough. The kind of recruit who would be most engaged as an employee will also wonder: “Are these the kind of people I want to work with?” You should be able to explain why your company is a unique match for him personally. And if you can’t do that, he’s probably not the right match.

Hire for judgement - eventually you’ll run out of bandwidth, and the early hires make the decisions and set the DNA of the company.

Your first day, your first week in an organization is when you’re observing each detail, figuring out where you stand. That’s when your sense of the culture gets seared in — especially if someone gets stabbed in the neck. That’s when you diagnose the power structure: Who can get things done, and why? What did they do to get in that position? Can you replicate it?

The way a new leader acts early in his or her job will show what kind of person he or she is. During that time frame, everyone develops their own long-lasting perception. And those perceptions—hard to change—determine how they respond to the new leadership long into the future.

The goal is for each individual to work for a company in which they fit the culture, share the values, believe in the vision and work on a team in which they feel like they are valued and valuable.

A similar approach is helpful when considering hiring someone. I try to look at their résumé and background and ask: Where might they want their career to be heading, and how might that coincide with our needs? What kinds of incentives would encourage them to do their best? I try to consider their interests, concerns, and perspectives just as I consider ours. Taking a few moments to think about the hopes and aspirations of others — trying to put yourself in their shoes — is well worth the time and effort.

Someone graduating from college thinks, and is told, that he needs to get a job, as if the important thing were becoming a member of an institution. A more direct way to put it would be: you need to start doing something people want. You don’t need to join a company to do that. All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want. It’s doing something people want that matters, not joining the group.

When you take a job take a long look at the people you’re going to be working with — because the odds are you’re going to become like them; they are not going to become like you. You can’t change them. If it doesn’t fit who you are, it’s not going to work.