> ...long term view of where the company is going...
IBGYBG
I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone.
Currently, shareholders of large and even medium companies do not recognize that there is so much embedded capital of all sorts in these organizations that all sorts of business anti-patterns can get away with gaming the incentivization metrics so much and for so long before it becomes apparent at the shareholder level, even if someone were scrutinizing every SEC filing by the organization assuming it is a publicly-held company.
As much as business and engineering types fetishize data-driven decisions (and younger me was definitely guilty of that!), above a certain complexity level it really comes down to a judgement of character. The only reliable formula to find good candidates I have found for that is one-on-one interaction over a long period (7+ years) of time, and knowing yourself really well.
> As much as business and engineering types fetishize data-driven decisions
My counter argument to data driven decisions is Microsoft in 2007.
Microsoft had a large number of user studies, done by Very Professional Firms, that American customers would never pay for phones, everyone in America was too addicted to free phones through 2 year plan lock-ins. Making consumer smart phones was a silly idea!
So anyway iPhone comes out, and internal memos are sent out reminding us all that we have Really Good Data showing how foolish the iPhone is.
Turns out data does an excellent job of repressing innovation. If the data says "don't bother making an amazing product people want to buy", your data might suck. I mean, you may be making the wrong product sure, wrong price point, too small an audience, but if the data just flat out says "don't do cool shit", throw the data away.
> ...you may be making the wrong product sure, wrong price point, too small an audience...
Interestingly, the original iPhone had various small degrees of those factors. Wrong product: no app store. Wrong price point: debuted at a high-end price point. Too small an audience: function of the high-end positioning. But it was still amazing.
Even amazing products need rapid iteration to stay amazing.
IBGYBG
I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone.
Currently, shareholders of large and even medium companies do not recognize that there is so much embedded capital of all sorts in these organizations that all sorts of business anti-patterns can get away with gaming the incentivization metrics so much and for so long before it becomes apparent at the shareholder level, even if someone were scrutinizing every SEC filing by the organization assuming it is a publicly-held company.
As much as business and engineering types fetishize data-driven decisions (and younger me was definitely guilty of that!), above a certain complexity level it really comes down to a judgement of character. The only reliable formula to find good candidates I have found for that is one-on-one interaction over a long period (7+ years) of time, and knowing yourself really well.