Ida Mercer

I write Azimuth from Rotterdam. Before this I ran operations at two small companies and spent a lot of that time watching good teams make avoidable mistakes under time pressure - my own included. This newsletter is the notebook I wish I'd had.

Money

The invoice that took six weeks to get approved

Not because the amount was large. Because nobody owned the approval, so it drifted between three inboxes until someone finally asked out loud whose job this was.

No. 7
People

Hiring for disagreement, not just skill

The best addition to a five-person team last year was someone who pushed back in the first interview. We almost didn't call her back for exactly that

No. 5
Reader Questions

Reader questions: on hiring too fast

"How do you know you hired too fast?" You find out nine months later, when the person who should have caught it left already.

No. 3