I Hired The Best Person For Every Single Role. The Business Still Didn’t Grow.

At the 2016 Olympics, Japan won silver in the men’s 4x100 metres relay.

Not one of their four runners had ever broken ten seconds. The Americans had plenty who had. They crossed the line third and were disqualified, because the first baton was passed too early.

Japan had spent months practising one thing: The handover.

A relay isn’t only decided while someone is holding the baton. It is also decided in the two seconds when it is being passed.

I learned that in business long before I noticed it in sport. I had hired the best person I could find for every role. Every one of them was hitting their target. And the business wasn’t growing.

Where the baton drops

Think about how you hire.

You write a job description for one role. You look for the person who is best at that role. Then you give them a target that belongs to that role alone.

Each of those is a leg of the race. And everyone outperforms their role.

That is where things start to go wrong.

Here is how it usually looks.

Sales hits target every month, measured on deals signed. The account team hits theirs, measured on onboarding tickets closed. Both dashboards are green.

And new customers are quietly leaving before they ever get going.

The days between the signature and the first real conversation belong to neither team. That is the two seconds.

Nobody dropped the baton. Nobody was holding it either.

It works the same way with decisions. Finance raises a price to protect the margin. The quality of leads falls. Marketing gets the blame for a decision it never saw.

Everyone is putting their best work (which they are) yet things are falling apart.

A faster runner won’t fix it

Listen, the first instinct is always the same. Hire someone better. I need someone who can produce a better outcome on sales. That is a faster runner.

The second instinct is a new process. A form, a weekly meeting, a checklist. That would add more time to the task and not much value.

A handover takes two runners

Japan didn’t find faster runners. They practised the exchange until it was second nature.

Watch a good relay team closely. The runner waiting for the baton doesn’t stand still. They start running before it arrives. The runner bringing it doesn’t ease off at the end. They drive all the way through the zone. The pass happens at full speed, and both of them own it.

That is the person a growing business needs. Not someone who is brilliant at their own leg and stops at its edge. Someone who thinks about the leg before theirs and the leg after, and acts on it. That is a systems thinker.

You can’t win a relay with slow runners. But I’ve stopped believing that one more brilliant specialist is what a stuck business is missing.

If you are hiring

Ask candidates what their work changed for the business, not how well they did their part. Then ask who used it next.

Hire for range as well as depth. Look for the specialist who is curious about the rest of the business and willing to grow beyond their lane.

Give context, not control. Make sure everyone knows what the whole business is trying to do, so they can manage their own handovers.

And when one fails, review it without blame and ask the people involved what they would do differently, before you reach for a new process.

If you are starting out

Learn the leg on either side of yours. Who hands you work, and who receives it?

Every now and then, step back one level and ask what the work is for. Then ask how you could make your manager’s job easier, not just your own.

Japan proved it in 2016. Four runners who were slower on paper crossed the line ahead of the team that was faster on paper.

Because races aren’t won by the fastest runner alone. They are won by what happens when one runner lets go and another takes over.

The same is true in business.

Don’t just build great runners. Build great handovers.

Because the baton still has to make it to the finish line.