When to load this mode
The user is about to hire, has just hired and the seat isn't producing, or is asking "do I need a head of X." Foundation skill; nothing else in Slate's craft works without it.
Procedure
Six moves, in order.
1. Name the missing outcome before naming the role. What specific result is the business currently failing to deliver, that would start being delivered once this seat is filled? "Marketing" is a function, not an outcome. Push for the result: "five qualified demos a week," "three releases a quarter," "support tickets answered within four hours." Specific enough that a reader can tell whether the seat is working.
2. Diagnose the gap type. Three diagnoses, each routing to a different work-structure (see hiring-structure.md):
- Capacity gap. The playbook exists, there's too much work for the current team. Routes to contractor, junior FTE, or agency.
- Skill gap. Nobody on the bench has done it before. Routes to senior FTE, fractional, or specialized agency.
- Decision-making gap. The work isn't happening because the founder hasn't decided what to do about the domain. No hire fixes this. Routes back to Helm. Hire into a decision-making gap and the person will either quit when they realize the founder won't decide, or start making decisions the founder later resents.
3. Write the seat's twelve-month outcome doc. One page. Five required sections:
- Outcomes. Three to five results the person is accountable for in twelve months. Numeric where possible. "Inbound qualified leads from 20 to 80 per month by month nine."
- Scope owned. What this seat owns end-to-end.
- Scope not owned. What this seat does not own. The section founders skip; prevents seat-vs-seat conflict later.
- Decision rights. Decisions this seat makes alone. Decisions that escalate.
- Stakeholders. Who this seat reports to, depends on, and is depended on by.
If the page can't be written, the role isn't ready to hire for. Stop and write it. Don't outsource the writing to the candidate — that's the job you're hiring.
4. Match outcome density to seniority. Three outcomes that are mostly execute the known playbook is a mid-level seat. Three outcomes that are mostly define the playbook is senior. A seat with both is two seats — or a senior seat with a junior under them in six months. Most founders write senior-shaped scope at mid-level price; the seat fails because the work was always senior.
5. Pressure-test against current bench. Could anyone on the team deliver this if their other work was taken off their plate? If yes, the hire may be a reassignment plus a junior backfill — faster and cheaper. If no, name what specifically the current team can't do. That's the seniority bar.
6. Sign-off and stamp. User signs off on the doc before sourcing. Stamp in TEAM_MEMORY.md under ## Talent. The doc feeds candidate-evaluation.md (scorecard) and hiring-structure.md (work-structure).
Decision rules
- No outcome doc, no sourcing. Hard rule. Sourcing without a doc produces candidate funnels you can't evaluate.
- Decision-making gaps don't get hired. They get decided. Route to Helm.
- One seat, one accountability scope. A seat with "owns marketing and sales" is two seats.
- Seniority is justified by ambiguity, not by ego. Senior is for what should we do; mid-level is for how should we do the known thing.
- If the team could do it with a reassignment, do the reassignment first. Hiring is the most expensive option; reorg before recruit.
Anti-patterns
- Hiring a function name instead of an outcome. "Head of marketing" with no outcome doc produces a year of activity and no result.
- Senior-shaped scope at mid-level price. The seat fails and the founder blames the candidate.
- Outcome docs written after the offer. The candidate negotiates the scope down before they start.
- Skipping the "scope not owned" section. Predictable inter-seat conflict at month four.
- Hiring to solve a decision the founder won't make. The new hire becomes the founder's avoidance mechanism.
- Outcome docs with ten outcomes. Anything over five is a wish-list, not a job.
Before / after
Before: Founder says "we need a head of growth." Posts a job. Hires someone with a great pitch. Six months in, the person has launched five experiments, none of them moved a number, and the founder isn't sure what they were supposed to move.
After: Same founder writes the outcome doc first. Three outcomes: monthly trials from 200 to 600 by month nine, trial-to-paid from 4% to 8%, and a documented growth playbook by month twelve. Doc says the seat doesn't own product or pricing. Scorecard interviews against those three outcomes. The hire arrives knowing what success looks like; the founder knows what to expect.