6:47 pm firedrill. Who moves, who hides in your team?

Hey lawyer,

Can you build resourcefulness into a team, or do some people just come wired differently?

Friday. 5:47 pm. Project about to collapse.

Half the team is frozen. The other half is writing emails to cover themselves.

And then there's that one person.

Picks up the phone. Finds a workaround. Gets it across the line.

No extra information. No extra authority. They just… moved… and came to you with the solution.

Every GC has someone like this.

Every GC wishes they had three more.

Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross wrote Talent, quietly the best hiring book of the decade.

Their point: most organisations screen for the wrong things. Credentials. Pedigree. Safe answers in safe interviews.

What they should screen for is messier. Drive. Judgment. Perseverance. Energy under real constraints.

The British call it resourcefulness. Stubborn ingenuity that finds a path where others see a wall.

Legal departments are full of smart people. Intelligence is not the bottleneck.

The bottleneck is what happens when the playbook runs out.

And here's the uncomfortable bit: you can't install drive into someone who doesn't have it. But you can kill it in someone who does.

Approval chains. Risk-averse culture. Zero tolerance for initiative that wasn't pre-approved.

If your team doesn't show initiative, the first place to look isn't the team. It's the system you built around them.

How to spot resourceful people (two questions from the book)

Question 1: "What's something you taught yourself in the last year — and how did you do it?"

Resourceful people light up. They'll describe the rabbit hole, the failed attempts, the friend of a friend they cold-called.

Everyone else mentions a course their company paid for.

Question 2: "What are you obsessed with right now?"

Resourceful people always have a side obsession. Always.

If the answer is "nothing really"… that's your answer.

Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert guy) nailed this.

You don't need to be world-class at one skill. You need to be pretty good at a rare combination.

A lawyer who's decent at law, good at reading people, fast with numbers, and calm under pressure beats a brilliant lawyer who can only do law.

Next time you promote someone, ask: who has the most unusual combination of useful skills — and the energy to deploy them when things get messy?

That's the person you want near the business.

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AI Booster: PodShrink

47 saved podcast episodes. Zero time to listen. Sound familiar?

PodShrink turns full-length podcasts into narrated audio summaries. That 90-minute regulatory interview? Now it's 12 minutes on your commute.

Senior lawyers who stay sharp aren't reading more. They're compressing better.

"All progress depends on the unreasonable man." — George Bernard Shaw

The best GCs build small, sharp teams — and know when to bring in senior judgment without the overhead of a full hire.

M&A spike. New market. New hyper-niche regulatory firedrill. Contract operation that needs a steady hand for six months, not six years.

Fractional senior counsel. Niche experts. Senior judgment on demand. No fixed cost. Zero learning curve.

This is exactly when clients call us at Ambar.

Give us a call one day.

Stay cool,

Rosa & Manuel