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Over the summer I read A Sense of Where You Are by John McPhee, the renowned author and longtime writing professor at Princeton.

It was McPhee’s first book, published in 1965, and it focuses on Bill Bradley, who at the time was the best basketball player Princeton had ever seen.

Bradley played multiple notches above typical Ivy League talent. During Princeton’s legendary 1965 run to the NCAA Final Four, he helped knock off Penn State, NC State, and fourth-ranked Providence, routinely putting up 40 burgers.

It was kinda amazing that he picked Princeton in the first place. Bradley had scholarship offers from basically every basketball powerhouse in the country, but chose a school that didn’t offer athletic scholarships and gave him a much smaller probability of playing on a great team.

His magnetism extended well beyond the court. He was active in politics on campus, an elite student, and after graduating Princeton went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He eventually played ten years for the Knicks, won two championships, and then charged headlong into politics, winning a seat in the U.S. Senate.

i feel a bit like a caveman saying this - the title was the most memorable part of the book for me.

It comes from a scene where McPhee is watching Bradley demonstrate a shot near the basket where he throws the ball over his shoulder without looking at the rim.

Swish.

Bradley explains:

Bradley had internalized the geometry of the court. He knew where he was in relation to the rim, the backboard, his teammates, and the defenders without having to consciously process all of it.

What looked magical from the outside was really accumulated experience… instinct.

The metaphor extends past basketball. I talk to a lot of candidates through Mostly Talent who have a really good sense of where they are.

I get stories every day that demonstrate both the short term and long term awareness candidates have.

Just last week someone told me their company was in market for a sale.

As the current Director of Strategic Finance, they were excited about the experience they’d get going through an acquisition. That’s a great feather to have in your hat.

But they were also pretty clear-eyed about what would probably happen afterward.

There was already a strong VP above them who had too good of a remote, well-paying gig to leave. There wasn’t an obvious path to CFO if the current CFO eventually left, which this person also didn’t expect anytime soon. And based on what they were seeing in the process, they thought the buyer was more likely to be a financial sponsor than a strategic.

Yea, they could stick around after the deal, print above-market W2 money, and find some skunk works projects to fill the time. Or they could find a steeper hill to climb and play for another meaningful chunk of equity.

This person wasn’t unhappy, per say. And they weren’t even really “in the market.” They just had a pretty good sense of where they were.

When you play the finance game long enough, you can sense when the hill is going to start to flatten out. You don’t even need to “see” it.

More often than not, I think we get two camps of people.

The first is the person who wants to jump in with 2 feet and just FITFO (figure it the f*** out). It doesn’t matter if the company is small or it sells brake pads (like moi). Gimme the ball, coach.

And the second is someone who knows they need a little more experience in places they haven’t had exposure to ensure they’re going to do the job well. They are long term greedy, and patiently checking boxes on their CFO passports.

Wait, there’s a third!

We’ve even had a few people who have earned the CFO seat at smaller companies (sub 50 people) and now want to take a step back into a VP role at a larger company with an experienced leader to learn from before leveling back up. They value the mentorship and are willing to be the right hand to an ace before shouldering the load again. Talk about awareness…

I feel fortunate that we get access to these types of candidates before they officially start applying for jobs. In many ways they look to us for advice on what to do next, but it goes both ways. I’m always learning what great candidates actually want from their next role.

Regardless of which direction they’re moving on the court, they crave the opportunity to step into something that isn’t fully built yet and put their fingerprints on it.

I would say that’s the defining characteristic of the ambitious finance people I speak to, regardless of which play they are on.

Which is an excellent data point for hiring managers - you need to build an environment that allows for builders to build. Regardless of if they are stepping up, down, or over, they need to be able to call some of their own plays as they bring the ball up the court.

And for all the candidates - yes, you still have to make the current play. But it helps to have a sense of where you are.

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