My Experience of Hiring someone Smarter than me at VietnamWorks

When I was just getting started as a CTO, I had a stupid way of thinking about employees. I thought that I was pretty good at doing a large number of things and I could do most of my employees' jobs better than they could. Of course, I didn't have time to do everything, so I would let people do their jobs even though I thought the results would probably be better if I did them. I would look at a programmer and think, "I could write that system faster, but I don't have the time." I would look at a sales guy and think, "I'm better at selling our product than he is, but I don't have time to go on every sales call." I'd look at the receptionist and think about my excellent phone manners.

And I was probably right. After all, why would anyone really great want to work for that kind of boss? When I became head of IT at VietnamWorks.com and also in charge of running our products (vietnamworks.com, ERP, CRM and Analytics systems); I made a new rule:

Everyone who reports to me has to be much better at doing his or her job than I could ever be.

I am pretty good in leading and being creative product developments. I even wrote an article "How to get a realistic product roadmap" which became quite viral. However I hired Eduardo Mora. Eduardo, Head of Products at VietnamWorks, is great at planning, and running, a dozen complex product teams at the same time. After a while, I strongly believe in what I said.

 Everyone who reports to me has to be much better at doing his or her job than I could ever be.