Don’t stick to the plan

Hey everyone,

The best operators I know don't execute plans. They run experiments… and let the results reshape what they do next.

I learned this the hard way.

From 2004 to 2015, I ran hiring like a confident amateur. No structure. No funnel. No references. Just: "I like this person — let's hire them."

It wasn’t working. My hit rate for great hires was way too low. But the biggest flaw was: I wasn’t changing anything. I just kept butting my head against Plan A and suffering the same consequences. 

Over time, the wreckage piled up. Leadership hires that tanked teams. Costly churn at the worst moments. Years of stalled momentum, all traceable to wrong butts, wrong seats. 

Eventually, I joined a CEO peer group and realized how many things I was doing on hard mode without noticing. And these days, my hiring process is way more strategic. (Here’s my process + a ton of my other hiring resources.)

But I first had to admit I’d been operating on autopilot instead of learning.

There's a name for this way of operating, put together by a business professor named Saras Sarasvathy. She noticed expert entrepreneurs actually don't start with grand plans. They start with small bets, learn fast, and let goals emerge from results.

She called it Effectuation. The five principles:

I've used this model to start eight companies and counting. 

The core insight is simple: your original idea is just a starting guess. The faster you run cheap experiments, and the more willing you are to change course when results surprise you, the better your outcomes.

One of my companies, Near, helps US businesses hire from Latin America. A client of ours, AvantStay, was stuck in a brutal hiring loop with SDRs: high attrition, long ramps, and their VP of Sales, Jake, was stuck spending all his time replacing people instead of leading them.

He needed backfill, fast. He tried Latin American talent and even told us it was “just a backup plan.”

But his backup plan worked. Fast. The LatAm SDRs were ramping up in 1/3 of the time, attrition dropped from 33% to 10%, and he suddenly had an outbound team making 2,000 calls a month. 

So he pivoted. LatAm became Plan A: “After building my team with Near, I wouldn't hire an SDR stateside anymore.”

That's effectuation in practice.

The trap is thinking your original idea is sacred. It's not. It's a guess.

The best operators aren't the ones with the best plans. They're the ones who stay coachable to reality.

What's an experiment you've been avoiding?

(By the way: Here’s the whole story on Near working with AvantStay — there are some impressive numbers in there, plus an actual video of their first SDR.)

Thanks for reading!

Michael

P.S. Near works with U.S. companies looking to run smarter hiring experiments. If you're stuck in a cycle like AvantStay was, check out what we do.