Issue 171, Part Time CEO Newsletter

Hey, it's Dhiren 👋,

I came into my first triathlon confident.

A half marathon and a full marathon were already behind me. I knew what hard felt like. I knew how to train, how to hurt, how to keep going when motivation had long since disappeared. By any measure, I was qualified.

Then I hit the open water.

No lanes. No walls to sight off. Other swimmers around me, the current doing whatever it wanted, and my body doing something I hadn't felt before. Panic. Disorientation. A kind of effort that had nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with a demand I simply hadn't trained for.

I had the capability. I did not have the capacity for that moment.

The marathon medals were real. The fitness was real. I wasn't wrong about what I could do. I just didn't know what I couldn't sustain until the environment changed and exposed it.

That's the thing about capability. It shows up when conditions are right. Capacity shows up when they aren't.​
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🧠 What the swim taught me about hiring

I thought about that open water last week when a founder I work with called me mid-week. He never does that.

Someone on his team had resigned. Salary, they said.

He felt conflicted. Not devastated. Not relieved. Conflicted.

Salary wasn't the door. It was the exit line. Clean, unarguable, easy to say. What it was really telling him was this: something wasn't working, and neither of them had named it clearly enough.

Here's the distinction that matters.

Capability means someone can do the work. Capacity means they can do it consistently, without breaking, without you stepping back in, without the output depending on conditions being just right.

Most founders hire for capability. They look at the receipts. Portfolio, past experience, interview performance. All of it is pool evidence. Controlled environment, clear lanes, known distance.

None of it tells you how someone performs when the conditions shift. When two demands hit simultaneously. When the environment gets hard and there's no lane to follow and no one watching.

He'd hired someone who looked strong in the pool. He found out in open water.

The capability was real. There were weeks this person was exactly who he needed. But there were other weeks where things slipped quietly. Where he found himself covering ground he thought he'd handed over. Where the output depended entirely on which week it happened to be.

He knew. He just didn't say it.

And right now, a lot of founders are doing the same thing. The regional uncertainty has a weight to it. In that weight, the good weeks feel more precious than they are. Almost-good-enough starts to feel like enough. You hold on longer than the data warrants because letting go feels like one more loss in a season that already has too many.
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🧠 Here's what to do with it.

Picture two columns.

Left: Capability moments. The weeks they nailed it. The projects that landed. The times you thought, this is exactly why I hired them.

Right: Capacity pattern. How often those weeks happened. What occurred in between. Whether you were more involved than the role required. Whether you were quietly absorbing the gaps so the client never saw them.

Most founders find the left column is memorable and the right column is more revealing.

This isn't about judging the person who left. It's about getting clear before you hire the next one.

Because the next hire shouldn't be evaluated on what they can do at their best. They should be evaluated on what they can sustain at their most ordinary.

Their Tuesday. Their heavy month. The week two projects collide and a client is difficult and they have to hold quality without you holding them.

That's capacity. And it's what you're actually hiring for.

One question changes the whole process:

"Can you do this every week, without me?"

Build your probation period around that. Give new hires real ownership early, not tasks, outcomes. Watch what happens when you're not in the room. That's your data.

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Your Turn

I finished the triathlon. The swim didn't beat me. But it taught me something the marathons never could - that past performance in one environment tells you very little about what someone can sustain in another.

Your team is in open water right now.

Do the two-column exercise before you post the next role.

Capability moments on the left. Capacity pattern on the right.

Be honest about the pattern. Not just the peaks.

🧭 Know a founder who needs to hear this?
Forward this. Especially if they're about to make their next hire.​
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📢 Dhiren’s Updates

Open Floor is happening on the 14th of April. Our fourth one.

Given everything going on in the region right now, I wanted to keep this space going. No agenda, no slides, no pitch. Just founders talking honestly about what's actually happening in their businesses and how they're navigating it.

If that sounds useful, grab your spot here: lu.ma/js86ffzt​

📌 Dhiren’s Pick of the Week

Antinote.

It's been a while since I recommended an app. This one earned it.Its simplicity made me smile.

It's a $5 Mac app and it's become one of my most used tools. Hit Option + A from anywhere and a clean scratchpad appears instantly. No folders. No formatting. No decisions about where to save it. Type your thought, do a quick calculation, set a timer, then export to Obsidian or Apple Notes when it actually matters.

Fair warning — this one's for Mac users only. But if that's you, in a world where every app wants $12 a month, $5 once feels almost rebellious.

​antinote.io​

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ps: did someone forward this to you?​
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Cheers,