Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

by Rory Sutherland

The same applies to hiring – we are much more likely to take risks when hiring ten people than when hiring one. If you hire ten people, you might expect one or two of them not to work out: you won’t risk your reputation if a couple of them leave after two years, or if one starts stealing staplers and photocopying his bottom at the Christmas party. But if you hire one person and they go rogue, you have visibly failed. So individuals who are hiring individuals may be needlessly risk averse; they are hiring potatoes. When hiring, we should understand that unconscious motivation and rational good sense overlap, but they do not completely coincide. A person engaged in recruitment may think they are trying to hire the best person for the job, but their subconscious motivation is subtly different. Yes, they want to hire a candidate who is likely to be good, but they are also frightened of hiring someone who might turn out to be bad – a low variance will be as appealing to them as a high average performance. If you want low variance, it pays to hire conventionally and adhere to the status quo, while people hiring a group of employees are much more likely to take a risk on some less conventional candidates. We can see this diversity mechanism clearly in house hunting. If I were to give you a budget to choose your perfect house, you would have a clear idea of what to buy, but it would typically be a bit boring. That’s because when you have one house, it cannot be too weak in any one...