Something I think about a lot in hiring is: What does this person naturally do? Left on their own, where do they gravitate? What would they produce with near-zero direction, compounded over a year?

One of the cutest videos on the internet is this beaver building a dam inside a house. Beavers will just naturally try to build dams, no matter where you put them or what you ask of them. Similarly, squirrels will stockpile nuts, even when they have far more than they need to survive winter. It's just what they do.

Humans are much the same way. We have habits we fall into, regardless of whether they make sense. But our inclinations vary enormously. Some of us build dams, some of us stash nuts, some of us organize nuts, and some of us obsess over the aesthetics of dams.

I find that management is much, much easier when the thing someone naturally does is the thing you need them to do in their job. “What someone naturally does” isn't the same as “what they're skilled at,” though the two are often highly correlated.

If you want a dam and you put a beaver in a swamp, you're going to get a dam. You don't have to spend any brain cells managing the beaver. Put a raccoon in the swamp, and even if it has all the skills needed, you'll have to micromanage it to get your dam.

The limiting factor in management is time and attention, so it's worth building systems that require as little of either as possible.

The challenge is figuring out someone's natural tendencies. They're not always obvious, and most people don't really know their own. Keep trying to triangulate what people naturally do, then put them somewhere that doing it is useful.