Monday. 9:00. Manolo walks in puffed up. Chest out. The smile of a man who has just signed a superstar.
—Jose, we've got him. We've closed Andersson.
—Who is Andersson?
—A phenom. Swedish. Scaled two companies in northern Europe, one of them sold for 300 million. Speaks five languages. He's joining as Director General of Expansion. We're paying him triple anyone on the committee, but he's worth it.
—And what exactly is he going to do?
—Transform the company. Bring international best practices. Professionalize us.
—Manolo, does Andersson know the Spanish market?
Pause.
—Well, he'll learn fast. He's brilliant.
—I didn't ask if he's brilliant. I asked if he knows the market.
—He'll learn it.
—Right. We're off to a bad start.
Manolo sits down, slightly deflated.
—Manolo, so you don't misunderstand me: Andersson is probably as good as you say. The problem isn't Andersson. It's you, and what you've decided Andersson should do.
—What have I decided wrong? I've hired the best.
—You've hired an outside star to solve an inside problem. Andersson is brilliant at scaling companies in his own context. His market, his culture, his customers, his rules, which he's spent twenty years learning. And you've just taken all that brilliance, which is real, and put it in charge of decisions about terrain he doesn't know at all. The Spanish market. How deals get closed here, how you negotiate, how trust gets built. None of that is on his CV. It's in the heads of the people you've had beside you for years and pay a third as much.
—But he brings best practices.
—From somewhere else, Manolo. And a best practice outside its context isn't a best practice. It's a hunch with an accent. In his market he closed sales by email, fast, transactional. Here, half the country closes deals over lunch, across three meetings, building trust for months. If Andersson arrives and imposes his model "because it's the international one", he doesn't modernize your sales. He sinks them. He applies the right answer to the wrong question.
—He'll adapt to the market.
—When? You've given him decision-making power from day one. He's going to make structural decisions about a market he'll take two years to understand. And during those two years, while he learns, he'll break things that worked. Not because they were wrong, but because they look strange to him, because it's not how it's done in Sweden. And by the time he understands why they were done that way, he'll have already destroyed them.
—That's very pessimistic.
—It's what happens eighty percent of the time. Everything in your company that worked and that nobody ever wrote down in any manual, because it was simply known. Why that client needs a phone call before you send him anything. Why nothing closes in August in this sector. None of that is documented. It lives in your local team. And Andersson, with all his brilliance, doesn't see it. So he steps on it. And he'll only notice once it's already broken.
Silence.
—So I've made a mistake hiring him?
—You've made a mistake in the role, not in the person. Andersson should come in with a clear mandate: contribute, don't impose. Bring perspective, challenge, ask the questions nobody on the inside asks. He's perfect for that. But every decision that touches the local market has to go through someone who knows that market in their gut. Andersson proposes, your local people validate or correct. You combine his outside vision with the inside context. Neither works alone. Together they're unbeatable.
—But if I put someone local above him, he'll feel slighted. With what he earns.
—There's your second mistake. By paying him triple, you've given him automatic authority over people who know more than he does about the terrain. You've confused price with judgment. Andersson costs more because his global experience is scarce and expensive. But in the Spanish market, the junior who's spent three years calling those clients knows more than he does. And you've just told her that her knowledge is worth a third of what you pay a gentleman who doesn't yet know how invoicing works here.
Long silence.
—Wow. When you put it that way.
—Outside talent gets hired for what it knows, not for what it doesn't. Andersson knows scaling, structure, vision. Let him pour that in by the bucketload. What he doesn't know is this market. So on this market, he doesn't decide alone. He listens first.
Boris Groysberg proved it with data in Chasing Stars: he studied hundreds of star performers who switched companies, and found that their performance dropped as soon as they changed context. The reason is that a good part of their brilliance was never entirely their own: it depended on the environment they left behind, the team, the resources, the shared knowledge. The star, outside its ecosystem, shines less. Not because it got worse, but because its talent was intertwined with a context that doesn't travel in the suitcase.
—So what do I do now? I've already signed him.
—You redesign his landing. For the first three months, he decides nothing structural about the market. He listens. He shadows your best local people. He learns why things are done the way they're done before proposing to change them. And you tell him clearly that this is the job. If he's as good as you say, he'll get it immediately. The truly good ones know that arriving somewhere new and bulldozing on day one is junior-with-ego behavior, not senior-with-judgment behavior.
—And if he doesn't get it?
—Then he wasn't as good as his CV. Because real intelligence includes knowing what you don't know. An executive who arrives in a new market believing he already knows everything because things went well for him somewhere else isn't a phenom. He's an accident waiting to happen. With an accent, granted. And a very expensive one.
Manolo closes his notebook. Gets up. Before leaving, he turns around.
—Jose. The local people. The ones I've put below Andersson. Do you think they've noticed what I've done?
—They noticed the day you announced the hire and the salary. They always notice before you do. The question isn't whether they've noticed. It's whether you're still in time to fix it before they start leaving. And yes, you are. But barely.
He leaves.
And I'm left thinking that Manolo has made the classic mistake of confusing brilliant with right for the job. He's bought the best engine in the world and dropped it into the wrong chassis.
The engine is good, Manolo. Very good.
But a Formula 1 engine in a delivery truck doesn't make you go faster.
It breaks the truck.
And you had a truck that worked perfectly.
Thanks for reading.