ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT Your goal is not to hire people who exhibit your values, but who are not incapable of living your values. As your company grows and you hire, give consideration to those who have the capacity to live your values, not just candidates who exhibit them. “They may not live them today and that’s ifne, because again, we are tribal creatures who want to ift in,” Lawson says, “When they come in to your company, if they are not incapable of it, they will likely try really hard to adopt the values of your culture. With candidates, you’re identifying direction and momentum toward company values, not a bullseye.” The challenge with searching for a candidate who’s a complete relfection of your company values is that you run the risk of hiring people who look and sound exactly like you. “That’s not the right way to build a company. Your job is to weed out people who are incompatible with your values and train those who are to integrate into your culture,” says Lawson. “One of the hard things is when someone who is capable of living the values doesn’t do it. The way you get somebody back to living the values is by correcting them immediately when you can.” Lawson’s favorite illustrative example comes from a world beyond Twilio and technology: the foodservice industry. In Setting the Table, New York restaurateur Danny Meyer relfects on when he ifrst learned about how to make a service business work. When Meyer was green and relatively unknown, he once asked a more seasoned restaurateur how he learned to get all of his employees to do exactly the right thing to be hospitable to their guests. The man cleared the table and asked Meyer to put the salt shaker in the middle of the table. As soon as Meyer puts it in the middle, the restaurateur moves it off center and asks him where it is. Meyer points to it and the restaurateur asks him to put it in the middle. This pattern repeats ifve or six times until Meyer is about to throw in the towel. The restaurateur stops moving the shaker and catches his eye. “Here’s the point. Your staff and your guests are always moving your salt shaker off center. That is what they do. That’s their job. It’s the job of life. It’s the law of entropy,” paraphrases Lawson. “Until you understand that truth, you’re going to get pissed off every time someone moves the salt shaker off center. It is not your job to get upset, you just need to understand that’s what they do. Your job is just to move the salt shaker back each time and let them know exactly what you stand for, let them know what excellence looks like.” 103