Not every personality, especially the “creative types,” fits in a business that has to make payroll every Friday. I run a company rather than an art collective. After watching team after team over the years, I’ve learned one truth: ideas are cheap, and execution is rare.
The 80/20 reality
Pareto’s principle plays out in many workplaces. Roughly 20 percent of employees generate 80 percent of the real output. The rest keep things moving but aren’t the drivers. That is math, and I do not mean it as cruel. When you understand that, you start looking for the traits that separate the few producers from the many passengers.
Price’s law and output concentration
Derek J. de Solla Price took Pareto a step further. He found that productivity in creative and research fields scales with the square root of the number of contributors. If you have 100 people, about 10 of them create half the results. For this reason, hiring has to focus on identifying and keeping those consistent performers instead of adding more “idea people.”
The Big Five filter
That’s where personality data helps. The Big Five model does not judge anyone. It measures traits that predict job behavior. I hire for high conscientiousness, emotional stability, and dependability. These traits correlate with finishing projects, meeting deadlines, and staying calm when clients change the brief. People who score low in those areas usually mean well but struggle with structure and follow-through.
Creativity vs. consistency
I’m not anti-creativity. Every business needs new ideas. I oppose undisciplined creativity, the kind that generates ten new directions before lunch and forgets them by Tuesday. Good innovations come from people who can imagine something and then grind through the boring steps to make it real.
When people ask why I don’t hire many “creative types,” I answer that I hire finishers instead of starters. The market rewards delivery over daydreams.
I call that capitalism rather than censorship.
Casey’s final thought
It’s frustrating that business owners can’t talk honestly about performance anymore (without being sued for “classism”). What I want is reliability, focus, and follow-through, and labels or diagnoses play no part in that.
I’ve learned over the years that some people thrive in structure while others don’t. That has nothing to do with anyone’s condition. It depends on whether their habits match what clients expect. When customers are paying, they don’t care how “creative” or “inspired” someone feels. They care about results that arrive on time.
Instead of trying to categorize people (even though I believe they are on the ADHD spectrum), I look for consistency, accountability, and the ability to stay on task. The traits we test for are what make a business succeed. We say “creative types” so we don’t get sued for being honest, and what we mean is ADHD. We have found success by choosing tests that filter out “letdowns.”