The most important thing in management is finding the right people. With the right people, everything will work out. With the wrong kind of people, no matter how hard you try, it is still going to be very difficult.
But it is not easy to find out whether someone will be a good fit or not. So we conduct interviews. Think about it as a marriage, how long do people spend together on average before they decide to get married. Then there’re still a substantial percentage of marriages fall apart, some after many years. This sounds totally hopeless.
The good news is that it is not entirely clueless. Good managers are sort of like good marriage counselors. They hone their skills in listening, probing, and obsverving. They pick up thin slices of clues that may indicate potential red-flags. They trust their “gut feelings”. It is not easy.