How to find and hire good leaders

Oren Harari is professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of San Francisco, and author of “How To Compete in a Copycat Economy”. He says leaders must develop a sense of curiosity.

“Curiosity. I look for leaders who demonstrate curiosity. By curiosity I mean they are constantly restless with the status quo. They’re always looking into the horizon at emerging trends. Trends that may not impact either top line or bottom line right now, but trends in new types of technologies, changes in demographics, changes in trade patterns, changes in sources of capital, changes in supply chain and so forth and say: ‘How can I capitalise on this?’ ‘How can I build new unexpected sort of value around that?’ ‘How can I cannibalise what I’m currently doing and move ahead to the next wave?’ That’s what curiosity’s about.”

“And the best leaders are not only themselves curious, they hire curious people. And that’s easier said than done, because a lot of times we like to hire folks who basically will say ‘yes sir, yes ma’am’ to us, and curious people are often a royal pain in the ass.”

Read more about Oren Harari and leadership.